A psychology journal has retracted a 2020 paper purporting to find that smarter people are more likely to use a condom during sex to avoid HIV.
The new study, by researchers from Singapore and the United States led by Sean Lee of the Singapore Management University School of Social Sciences, appeared in Personality and Individual Differences.
The paper claimed to find that:
Continue reading Journal retracts paper claiming smarter people are more likely to use a condom to avoid HIV
IOP Publishing has retracted nearly two dozen conference proceedings which had been cribbed from other articles, translated into English and festooned with citations to the authors’ own work.
According to the publisher, 12 of the 29 authors on the papers come from the same institution, Universidad de la Costa, in Barranquilla, Colombia. IOP says the institution is investigating.
The first author on most of the papers is Jesus Silva, who appears to be affiliated with the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, in Lima, Peru — and has now joined our leaderboard with 23 retractions. For some, the first author is Amelec Viloria, of Universidad de la Costa.
Except, according to IOP Publishing, Silva and Viloria are the same person, using an alias on some of the articles.
Continue reading Publisher retracts nearly two dozen articles, blocks nearly three dozen more, from alias-employing author who plagiarized
To the list of COVID-19 papers that have been retracted so far, add this:
The Korean Journal of Anesthesiology has retracted an article it published last month on ventilating COVID patients because it was nearly identical to one that had appeared in a different journal three months earlier.
The offending article, “Noninvasive versus invasive ventilation: one modality cannot fit all during COVID-19 outbreak,” was written by Abhishek Singh, an anesthesiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.
Continue reading The list of retracted COVID-19 papers is up to 33
A Springer Nature journal waited eight months to retract a paper flagged by the Office of Research Integrity for containing fabricated data — a delay the publisher blames on “staff changes and human error.”
The 2014 article in Neuropsychopharmacology by Alexander Neumeister included “falsified and/or fabricated research methods and results,” according to the findings of the ORI investigation, which were reported in late December of last year. But the retraction notice is dated September 8, 2020.
The notice itself sounds a lot like a child who says “I’m invisible because my eyes are closed.” It reads:
Continue reading Springer Nature journal takes eight months to retract paper after US government misconduct finding
A group of veterinary researchers at the University of California, Davis, has received an expression of concern for their May 2020 study on heart disease in dogs, for failing to adequately disclose conflicts of interest and for other aspects of the article.
The paper, “Development of plasma and whole blood taurine reference ranges and identification of dietary features associated with taurine deficiency and dilated cardiomyopathy in golden retrievers: A prospective, observational study,” appeared in PLOS ONE. The authors, from the lab of Joshua A. Stern, looked at the effects on the animals of “non-traditional” diets — those high in legumes but low in grains, which contain taurine, a key amino acid. Golden retrievers are known to be particularly vulnerable to cardiac problems associated with a lack of taurine. The FDA has been investigating the connection.
According to the authors:
Continue reading PLOS ONE issues expression of concern for study of dog food and heart problems for failure to disclose conflicts of interest, other issues
The journal that published a paper claiming that attractive women were more likely to develop endometriosis has finally retracted the article, more than a month after the authors called for the move.
The article, “Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case-control study,” appeared in September 2012 in Fertility and Sterility, an official publication of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Over the years, it had been the subject of criticism.
In early August, the authors of the paper, from Italy, called for the retraction of the work. But that didn’t happen until now.
Per the retraction notice, which is undated — as has become common for Elsevier journals that overwrite their original HTML pages — but seems to have appeared within the last few days:
Continue reading ‘Women’s respect is a priority for us’: Journal finally retracts paper claiming women with endometriosis are more attractive
Oh, those insufferably progressive Scandinavians, always doing the right thing.
A group of alcoholism researchers in Denmark has retracted a 2020 paper on gender and alcohol treatment after finding errors in their results. And they’ve set up a system to avoid similar problems in the future.
The paper, “Gender differences in alcohol treatment,” appeared in Alcohol & Alcoholism in July, with authors from the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. The paper found that:
Continue reading Doing the right thing: Alcoholism researchers retract six-week old paper after finding errors
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 32.
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Questions about Russian COVID-19 vaccine data; a p-value pledge; why one author removed her name from a paper
Arizona State University is investigating two former faculty members suspected of falsifying data in several of their papers.
The inquiry centers on Antonella Caccamo and Salvatore Oddo, who recently lost their 2016 article in Molecular Psychiatry, a Nature journal, titled “p62 improves AD-like pathology by increasing autophagy.”
Caccamo once held a research appointment in the ASU-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center. Oddo, also worked in the center, where he was an associate professor.
While at ASU — including Banner Health — Oddo received more than $11 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was co-PI on grant from the National Science Foundation worth more than $220,000. Caccamo received one grant from NIH, in 2018, totaling roughly $543,000.
According to the retraction notice:
Continue reading Arizona State investigating data anomalies in work by two former neuroscience faculty members
Peer reviewers are supposed to be experts in their fields, competent enough at least to spot methodological errors, wayward conclusions and implausible findings. But checking references? Apparently, not so much.
A journal about academic medicine has retracted a 2020 article because its reviewers and editors didn’t bother to confirm that the references said what the authors said they did — and because when pressed, the corresponding author couldn’t provide the underlying data for the paper.
The paper, “Medical students’ perception of their education and training to cope with future market trends,” appeared in March in Advances in Medical Education and Practice, a Dove Press title. The author was Mohamed Abdelrahman Mohamed Iesa, a physiologist at Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia.
The article presented the results of a survey of 500 medical students at 10 schools in the United Kingdom. It purported to find that:
Continue reading ‘An isolated incident’: Should reviewers check references?