Retraction Watch

BMJ journal retracts, replaces study on chronic fatigue in children

A BMJ journal has retracted and replaced a paper on chronic fatigue in children after admitting that it misrepresented the nature of the research in the editing process. But the article has drawn scrutiny beyond merely the characterization of the analysis.

The paper, “Cognitive–behavioural therapy combined with music therapy for chronic fatigue following Epstein-Barr virus infection in adolescents: a feasibility study,” appeared in early April in BMJ Paediatrics Open, and was written by a group in Norway. The paper is technically not about chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), but in the introduction the authors write:

If accompanied by other symptoms, such as exertion intolerance, chronic pain and cognitive impairments, the patient might fulfil one of the diagnostic criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

Researcher faked the names of Duke and University of Chicago co-authors

A medical journal has retracted two papers by a researcher with a penchant for fabricating co-authors.

According to the Singapore Medical Journal and earlier news reports, Shunjie Chua published the articles with two fictitious authors: Mark Pitts and Peter Lamark, whom he placed at Duke University and the University of Chicago.

The articles, “A simple, flexible and readily applicable method of boundary construction to prevent leech migration,” and “A handy way to handle hemoclips® in surgeries,” appeared in 2015. Per the retraction notice for the former:

Hands up! Carpal tunnel expert loses 12th paper for misconduct

You can no longer count on two hands the number of retractions tallied by Young Hak Roh, an orthopedic surgeon at Ewha Womans University in Korea found guilty of “intentional, repetitive, and serious misconduct.”

The hand specialist has notched his 12th retraction in the wake of the institutional investigation, which, as we reported in July, found sweeping violations by Roh of:

“I do wish that journal editors would not take six years to perform an investigation and to retract.”

In July 2014, Elisabeth Bik notified PLOS ONE that she’d found three papers in the journal by a group of researchers who had clearly manipulated figures in the articles.

More than six years later, the journal has finally retracted the publications.

The authors were affiliated with the Fourth Military Medical University in Shaanxi, China. The notice for 2013’s “Hyperthermia-induced NDRG2 upregulation inhibits the invasion of human hepatocellular carcinoma via suppressing ERK1/2 signaling pathway” refers to overlapping data in Figure 1A, similarities between data in Figure 1B and Figure 6C despite the fact that lanes “represent samples exposed to different experimental conditions,” and more:

Weekend reads: How retracted work continues to spread; claims of PhD thesis plagiarism in the wine industry; Brexit and research integrity

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 list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 36.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Study finding patients of female surgeons fare better is temporarily removed

An Elsevier journal has, for the moment, removed a paper which found that the patients of female surgeons fare better than those treated by men.

Although the journal didn’t provide an explanation for the move — unfortunately not unusual for Elsevier — a spokesman for the publisher told us that reader complaints about the methodology and statistics in the article prompted the action.

The paper, which appeared last month in Surgery — the official journal of the Society of University Surgeons, Central Surgical Association, and the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons — was written by a group at the University of South Florida, in Tampa, led by Tara M. Barry, a general surgery resident at the institution.

“Battle of the sexes: The effect of surgeon gender on postoperative in-hospital mortality,” isn’t available on the journal website. However, a conference abstract by the authors states:

Editors say they won’t retract intelligent design paper despite subject being “not in any way a suitable topic” for their journal

The editors of a journal that published a highly controversial paper on intelligent design say retraction is off the table, at least for the moment.

The drama involves an article in the September issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, an Elsevier title, titled “Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems.” The authors, Steinar Thorvaldsen, of the University of Tromsø, Norway, and Ola Hössjer, a mathematician at Stockholm University in Sweden, tried to make the case that they saw evidence of a Master Builder in biological systems:

The bizarre anti-vaccine paper a Florida professor has been trying to have retracted to no avail

Fly, meet elephant’s back.

Robert Speth has spent the last 19 months trying to get two of the world’s largest medical publishers to retract an article he considers to be a “travesty” of pseudoscientific claims and overtly anti-vaccination bias. In the process, he has uncovered slipshod management of a journal’s editorial board that angered, among others, a former FDA commissioner.

The paper that triggered Speth, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., appeared in 2018 in Clinical and Translational Medicine. Titled (awkwardly) “Cancer; an induced disease of twentieth century! Induction of tolerance, increased entropy and ‘Dark Energy’: loss of biorhythms (Anabolism v. Catabolism),” it was written by Mahin Khatami, formerly a program director at the National Institutes of Health.

Although you might not be familiar with Khatami, who was born in Iran but trained in the United States, her bio speaks (loudly) for itself:

In which a researcher named Das plagiarizes from another researcher named Das, one with 20 retractions

Sometimes things get pretty meta around here.

Exhibit A: The journal Current Medical Chemistry has retracted a 2012 paper for plagiarizing from a 2011 article — and the senior authors of each article share the same last name.

Ho hum, you say. But that name is one that might be familiar to RW readers.

Here’s the notice:

Journal retracts paper claiming that group of Indigenous Americans were Black Africans

A journal has retracted a paper on the origins of a group of Indigenous Americans after readers said the basis of the paper was long discredited.

The paper, “Early pioneers of the americas: the role of the Olmecs in urban education and social studies curriculum,” was written by scholars at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, including corresponding author Greg Wiggan, and researchers at Towson State University, and published on June 25, 2020, in the Urban Review.

In a July 23 post on Medium, Kurly Tlapoyawa and Ruben A. Arellano “ask that the The Urban Review journal retract the article by Wiggan et al and discontinue its promotion of ‘Black Olmecs:’”

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