Retraction Watch

Professor’s legal threats “were personal and not made on behalf of the University,” says University of California, Irvine

The University of California, Irvine, appears to be putting some distance between the administration and a lecturer at the school who threatened Retraction Watch with legal action after we inquired about the misbehavior of one of his colleagues.

Last month, we reported on the case of Constance Iloh, a UCI education scholar whose work has come under scrutiny for plagiarism and misuse of references. Before posting our story, we emailed Iloh multiple times for comment on two retractions and a pair of corrections.

She didn’t reply — but we did hear from Eric Lindsay, a composer at the school, who told us, using a UCI email address:

Let me get this straight: You added a bunch of co-authors without their consent, and you couldn’t be bothered to include me?

This retraction reminds us of an old joke about food in the Borscht Belt resorts: It’s terrible, and such small portions!

A group of researchers in Japan and Singapore objected to being included on a 2019 paper without their consent — and someone’s feelings appear to have been hurt for having been left off the bogus list of authors.

The paper, “Effect of copper substitution on the local chemical structure and dissolution property of copper-doped β-tricalcium phosphate,” appeared in Acta Biomaterialia, an Elsevier title.

PubPeer comments prompt Science expression of concern

Science has issued an expression of concern for a paper it published earlier this summer after readers pointed out suspect images in the work.

The July 10 article, titled “Proton transport enabled by a field-induced metallic state in a semiconductor hetero-structure,” came from a group in China and the United Kingdom. The corresponding authors were Bin Zhu and Huaibing Song, of China University of Geosciences in Wuhan. Zhu also is affiliated with the Southeast University School of Energy and Environment in Nanjing.

Shortly after publication, data-sleuth Elisabeth Bik posted on PubPeer that she’d been alerted by a reader to potential problems with two of the figures in the paper:

Going cold turkey: Infectious disease-poultry researcher up to 14 retractions

Nine strikes in a row in bowling is called a “golden turkey.” So what do you call 10 papers on poultry pulled at once for plagiarism?

We first wrote about Sajid Umar in July 2018, when he’d lost a 2016 article in Scientifica for plagiarism and other sins, and then again earlier this summer when he notched two more retractions from Poultry Science for “grave mistakes.”

Now, the World’s Poultry Science Journal, a Taylor & Francis title, has pulled 10 more of Umar’s articles — bringing his total to 14, by our count. According to the retraction notice for the 2017 paper “Mycoplasmosis in poultry: update on diagnosis and preventive measures”:

Researcher republishes paper retracted for fake authorship — with a different co-author

A researcher in Bangladesh who fabricated a list of co-authors — and possibly her data, too — in a paper on dengue fever that was recently retracted has published the same article in a different journal.

In 2019, Farzana Ahmed was a pediatric intensivist at United Hospital Ltd, in Dhaka, when she published a study in the Journal of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University. Titled “Diagnostic value of ferritin for the severity of dengue infection in children,” the article described a study of:

How did content from a hijacked journal end up in one of the world’s most-used databases?

Scopus is the world’s largest database of abstracts and citations, and calls itself “comprehensive,” “curated,” and “enriched.” But my recent experience with it suggests its curation could use some work.

In October 2019, I discovered that the Scopus profile of the journal Transylvanian Review contained numerous faked articles. How did I know? A few years ago, a legitimate Scopus indexed journal, Transylvanian Review, was hijacked and listed on the well-known — but controversial — Beall’s List of predatory and unscrupulous publishers.

Many of these articles appeared on the cloned website and were authored by Iraqi researchers.

Wait, how did my name end up on that paper?

There’s an “us” in lupus, but no “we” — at least in the case of a 2020 paper whose list of authors was a fabrication.

Published in the journal Lupus, the article, “Antibodies to cellular prion protein and its cognate ligand stress-inducible protein 1 in systemic lupus erythematosus,” was written by a group led by Jozélio F Carvalho, a rheumatologist at the University of São Paulo. Or rather, by Carvalho himself.

According to the notice:

Weekend reads: A plagiarizing priest; a journal of trial and error; disappearing journals

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Why you shouldn’t try to republish a paper you had retracted for plagiarism
A Duke engineering professor who had seven papers corrected for failure to disclose a significant conflict of interest
Continuing investigation into a paper claiming to link obesity and dishonesty
A retraction and corrections for a high-profile education researcher

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 32.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

University of Kentucky demotes cancer researcher following finding of misconduct by scientist in his lab

A misconduct scandal at the University of Kentucky has led to the demotion of a senior cancer researcher for his lack of oversight of a now-former scientist who fabricated data in at least four papers and two grant applications.

According to the university, the inquiry began in April 2019, after the institution received complaints about suspect figures in six papers published by UK researchers. The lead on the articles was John D’Orazio, a clinician and researcher with appointments at the Markey Cancer Center and UK Healthcare.

In November 2019, UK investigators turned their attention to Stuart Jarrett, a co-author on all six papers who had joined D’Orazio’s lab in 2012 but left in September 2019.

According to the university:

Major indexing service rejects appeals by two suppressed journals

Journals hoping that Clarivate Analytics — the company behind the Impact Factor — would reverse their decision to suppress their titles from the closely watched metric are batting .500.

In July, as we reported, Clarivate suppressed 33 journals from its Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which means they will not have a 2019 Impact Factor, because of what Clarivate said was excessive self-citation. As affected journals have noted, suppression from the list can have a major impact on journals and researchers, many of whom are judged based on where they publish, using Impact Factor as a key metric.

Two journals — Zootaxa and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology — successfully appealed the decision, and have been reinstated in the 2019 JCR. But appeals by two others — Body Image and Forensic Science International: Genetics (FSIGEN) — have been denied, Retraction Watch has learned.

Between August 18 and August 26, nearly 500 forensic scientists from 49 countries signed a petition objecting to Clarivate’s move, according to Ulises Toscanini, director of the Laboratory PRICAI-Fundación Favaloro and a professor at Favaloro University in Buenos Aires. Toscanini, president of the executive committee of the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Working Group of the International Society for Forensic Genetics, said FSIGEN “is a ‘niche’ journal,” and is “broadly recognized as the top journal of the area.” He continued:

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