Retraction Watch

Student of yoga tourism won’t get PhD as he earns five retractions

For Pramod Sharma, the study of yoga tourism has proven to be a downward-facing dog.

Last year, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Roorkee blocked Sharma – who posed as a legit yoga researcher but in reality stole other people’s work – from receiving his PhD after determining that his thesis was “plagiarized and lacks originality.” What’s more, according to the institution, a 2018 article by Sharma contained a “discrepancy in data…casting a doubt on the validity of the results.”

Journals have now retracted five papers by Sharma, although earlier concerns about the work didn’t reach his PhD committee in time to prevent him from defending his thesis in 2019.

We reviewed the IIT report on the Sharma case, and pulled out a couple of the choicest passages:

Researchers sound alarm on ‘predatory’ rankings

Hey, researchers and universities, want to be included in a new ranking scheme? No problem, just pony up some cash.

Tanvir Ahmed, a postdoc at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says this year has seen a rise in news stories— for example from Bangladesh, Kashmir, and Nigeria — reporting so-called predatory rankings. These come to light due to the lack of knowledge about rankings at universities and the media in certain countries, he says.

Ahmed is referring to AD Scientific Index, which charges $30 USD for an individual researcher to be included in the ranking and an unspecified sum for institutions wishing to be ranked.

Paper on sexual orientation and neuropsychiatric disorders earns an expression of concern

Dick Swaab By Sxologist Wikipedia – , CC BY 2.0

An Elsevier journal has issued an expression of concern for a paper it published earlier this year by a Dutch researcher who studies the neurobiology of sexuality.

The article,“Sexual orientation, neuropsychiatric disorders and the neurotransmitters involved,” was written by a group led by Dick Swaab, of the Department of Neuropsychiatric Disorders at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam.

The abstract of the latest study reads:

Pentagon-funded Duke research on soldier brain damage under investigation

Duke University is investigating potential misconduct in a trio of studies of ways to identify brain damage in soldiers.

The studies were conducted by Mohamed B Abou-Donia and Brahmajothi Mulugu, and appeared in the February 2020 issue of Military Medicine, which has issued an expression of concern about the articles. The research was performed using funding from the U.S. Department of Defense; two of the studies were presented as posters at the 2018 Military Health System Research Symposium.

Dr. Mulugu is listed as a research scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at Duke. Abou-Donia, who has been at the institution for nearly 50 years, is a professor of pharmacology, cancer biology and neurobiology.

The three papers are:

Weekend reads: Chair leaves post during investigation of double-dipping allegations; geoscientist fined; prof claims another’s papers are hers

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:

Our co-founder Ivan Oransky presented oral evidence to the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday. (His panel begins at time stamp 11:15. Coverage here.)
AHA “regrets any confusion” and is reviewing meeting policies after outcry over Covid-19 vaccine abstract
Engineering researcher who suddenly left postdoc has ninth paper retracted
Authors retract, resubmit “very poorly conducted” meta-analysis of COVID-19 treatment
Abstract linking COVID-19 vaccines to heart trouble risk earns expression of concern
Journal retracts three papers — including two on COVID-19 — because ‘trainee editor’ committed misconduct
Exclusive: Shell employee confesses to graduate student misdeeds

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 199. There are now more than 31,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

AHA “regrets any confusion” and is reviewing meeting policies after outcry over Covid-19 vaccine abstract

Days after a leading heart journal issued an expression of concern for a meeting abstract suggesting that vaccines against Covid-19 may cause cardiac damage, its publisher, the American Heart Association (AHA), says it is reviewing how it screens such submissions.

As we reported late last month, “Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning,” was presented at the AHA’s 2021 Scientific Sessions in mid-November and was published in Circulation.

The author was Steven Gundry, a cardiac surgeon by training who now sells dietary supplements on his website. Gundry also sees patients at the Center for Restorative Medicine and International Heart & Lung Institute in California and offers advice on YouTube. (His critics say what Gundry peddles costs much more than it’s worth.)

After an outcry, Circulation flagged the published poster with the following notice:

Engineering researcher who suddenly left postdoc has ninth paper retracted

An author with ties to researchers believed to have published hundreds of problematic papers has earned his ninth retraction, this time for forged authorship.

Mostafa Jalal, once a postdoc at Texas A&M University, is alleged to have “engaged in some manner of collaboration or communication” with three other researchers, including Ali Nazari, who has now had 85 papers retracted and lost his job at Swinburne University in 2019. Those retractions came after the whistleblower, the pseudonymous Artemisia Stricta, called attention to problems in Nazari’s work.

In a 42-page report we wrote about in August 2020, Artemisia drew attention to four main groups centered on Jalal, Nazari, Ehsan Mohseni of the University of Newcastle in Australia, and Alireza Najigivi of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. The whistleblower lists a total of 287 potentially compromised papers.

Authors retract, resubmit “very poorly conducted” meta-analysis of COVID-19 treatment

A journal has retracted a meta-analysis on Covid-19 after concerned readers complained about the quality — or lack thereof — of the study.

The article, “A meta-analysis of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) antibody treatment for COVID-19 patients,” appeared in Therapeutic Advances in Chronic Disease, a SAGE title.

According to the retraction notice:

Abstract linking COVID-19 vaccines to heart trouble risk earns expression of concern

A leading heart journal has issued an expression of concern for a meeting abstract it published earlier this year by a cardiac surgeon who sells dietary supplements of questionable utility.

The case is the second involving a recent meeting of the American Heart Association.

The abstract, titled “Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning,” was presented at the AHA’s 2021 Scientific Sessions in mid-November and was published in Circulation.

But critics have accused Gundry of peddling worthless — if ultimately expensive — advice.

Journal retracts three papers — including two on COVID-19 — because ‘trainee editor’ committed misconduct

A psychiatry journal has retracted two papers on Covid-19 and mental health, and a third on racism, after concluding that an author on the articles rigged the peer-review process.

The papers, which appeared in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry (IJSP), were co-authored by Debanjan Banerjee, then geriactric psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bengaluru, and his colleagues.

Banerjee, who has since left the institution, was also until recently a “trainee editor” at the journal, as Neuroskeptic noted on Twitter last week, as well as an associate editor of the Journal of Psychosexual Health — both of which are SAGE titles. He’s also an associate editor for the Frontiers journal Aging Psychiatry.

According to the IJSP:

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