Retraction Watch

A study finding no evidence of racial bias in police shootings earns a correction that critics call an “opaque half measure”

A group of researchers who published a controversial study that found no evidence of racial bias in deadly police shootings have corrected their paper but are standing by their findings — to the displeasure of some scholars who say the article is too flawed to stand.

The 2019 study, “Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings,” was written by David Johnson, of the University of Maryland, and several co-authors from Michigan State University. According to the abstract:

Weekend reads: Retracted COVID-19 papers; a coronavirus study kept under wraps; Harvard and Jeffrey Epstein

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.

Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

the correction of an influential paper on COVID-19 because it cited a withdrawn preprint;
the retraction of a paper on gender dysphoria following a petition signed by 900 critics
20 expressions of concern for papers by a doctor who ran afoul of the FDA;
the return of the peer review bandits.

How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted? We’ve been keeping track, as part of our database. Here’s our frequently updated list.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Litigious OSU cancer researcher earns his 10th retraction

Carlo Croce, the prolific cancer researcher at The Ohio State University (OSU) with a penchant for hiring — and then losing — lawyers to sue those who displease him, has lost an 10th paper to retraction.

Croce, who in addition to the 10 retractions also has three expressions of concern and 18 corrections for his work, unsuccessfully sued the New York Times for defamation after the newspaper reported on misconduct allegations against him. He has also sued OSU — also unsuccessfully — to force them to restore him as chair of the Department of Cancer Biology and Genetics.

Apparently, Croce and his co-author thought that a correction to the newly retracted article was necessary because of “improper reuse of text from previous articles.” The journal, however, felt differently.

Journal retracts paper on gender dysphoria after 900 critics petition

A journal has retracted a controversial paper that questioned what it called the “existing dogma” about gender.

The article, “A new theory of gender dysphoria incorporating the distress, social behavioral, and body-ownership networks,” was written by Stephen Gliske, a physicist-turned-neuroscientist at the University of Michigan.

Gliske’s paper, which received a modest amount of media attention, argued for what he calls a “multisense theory” of gender identity. As he told Newsweek last December:

Peer review bandits purloin again, this time in chemistry

A pair of researchers in India have lost a 2017 paper published by the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry after an inquiry found that they’d stolen the guts of the work from an unpublished manuscript one of them had reviewed for another journal.

The article in question, “Tri-s-triazine (s-heptazine), a novel electron-deficient core for soft self-assembled supramolecular structures,” appeared in Chemical Communications was submitted on August 4, 2017 and published on September 25, 2017, and was written by Irla Kumar and Sandeep Kumar, of the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore.

Sandeep Kumar, who is now retired, was a leading figure in the field of liquid crystals. The Royal Society of Chemistry feted him as one of the “most cited” researchers in Chemical Communications and another of its journals in 2006 and 2007. He also served on the editorial boards of several journals, including Liquid Crystals — a post that is particularly relevant in light of what follows.

According to the retraction notice:

Publisher slaps expressions of concern on 20 papers by nutrition supplement-selling doctor

More than two years after being made aware of undisclosed conflicts of interest by a Minnesota physician who ran afoul of the U.S. FDA for health claims about supplements sold by his company, a publisher has added expressions of concern on 20 of the doctor’s papers.

As we reported in August 2019, on Feb. 23, 2018, Stephen Barrett — a U.S. physician and founder of Quackwatch — sent Dove Press a message about the 20 papers by Marty Hinz:

Authors to correct influential Imperial College COVID-19 report after learning it cited a withdrawn preprint

A March paper by researchers at Imperial College London that, in the words of the Washington Post, “helped upend U.S. and U.K. coronavirus strategies,” cited a preprint that had been withdrawn.

Retraction Watch became aware of the issue after being contacted by a PubPeer commenter who had noted the withdrawal earlier this month. Following questions from Retraction Watch this weekend, the authors said they plan to submit a correction.

In March, the New York Times wrote:

Weekend reads: The promise and peril of speedy coronavirus research; a JAMA retraction; Google Scholar indexes a lunch menu

Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

The retraction of a paper claiming that aerosolized coronavirus spread much further than previously thought
Two Elsevier journals that haven’t retracted papers a year after a university asked them to
The retraction of a paper in Science on electromagnetics
A Springer Nature journal that took four years to retract a plagiarizing paper

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Too hot to handle: Authors retract Science paper on electromagnetics

Sometimes scientific findings can be too hot to handle. Literally.

A team of researchers in India and Japan who reported breakthrough results in two papers about electromagnetics, including an article in Science, are retracting the articles because the exciting data resulted from experimental error. To be precise: unbeknownst to them, inadvertent heating of their samples had contaminated their data.

The first author of both articles is Chanchal Sow, of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. The last author on both is Yoshiteru Maeno, a professor of physics at Kyoto University.

Here’s the notice:

Former UCSD prof who resigned amid investigation into China ties has paper flagged for using the wrong test

Science Translational Medicine has issued an expression of concern about a 2020 paper on the genetics of colorectal cancer by a group in China whose results were pegged on a test that couldn’t have produced the findings.

The article, “Circulating tumor DNA methylation profiles enable early diagnosis, prognosis prediction, and screening for colorectal cancer,” appeared in January, with authors from both academia and an outfit called the Guangzhou Youze Biological Pharmaceutical Technology Company.

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