Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: Questions about Russian COVID-19 vaccine data; a p-value pledge; why one author removed her name from a paper

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

An Elsevier book chapter that claims COVID-19 came from space;
An Elsevier journal that shares concerns about a ‘transparently ridiculous’ genetics paper
A paper retracted because the references didn’t say what the authors said they did — and because the authors couldn’t come up with the underlying data
An investigation by Arizona State into two of its former neuroscience researchers

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 32.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Arizona State investigating data anomalies in work by two former neuroscience faculty members

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:

‘An isolated incident’: Should reviewers check references?

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:

‘Transparently ridiculous’: Elsevier says journal shares critic’s concerns about bizarre genetics paper

Elsevier says it is investigating how one of its journals managed to publish a paper with patently absurd assertions about the genetic inheritance of personality traits.

The paper, “Temperament gene inheritance,” appears this month in Meta Gene and was written by authors in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It states:

COVID-19 arrived on a meteorite, claims Elsevier book chapter

If bats and pangolins could review scientific papers, they’d definitely have given the following article an “accept without revisions.”

An international group of researchers has proposed that COVID-19 hitched a ride to this planet from space. Same for the fungal infection Candida auris.

We’ve heard plenty of bizarre theories about the novel coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, from its having been manufactured in a Chinese lab to its links to 5G cell technology. But this one wins the prize for being, as one Twitter user said, “batshit.”

Weekend reads: A pay-for-peer review movement; toxic PIs; why plagiarism is not a victimless crime

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

A poultry researcher who’s up to 14 retractions
A swift expression of concern in Science
A researcher who objected to being left off a list of bogus co-authors
An update on a professor’s legal threats against us

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 32.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

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”:

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