Retraction Watch

Getting medieval: Society says it is retracting 14 book reviews for plagiarism

More than a dozen book reviews by a history PhD student are under scrutiny for plagiarism concerns.

The reviews are published in the Al-Masāq Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, a Society for the Medieval Mediterranean journal published by Taylor & Francis. The majority of the papers appear to be stolen whole works from other authors published in different historical journals.

The society posted a retraction notice today saying that the reviews had been removed, but at the time of this writing, all 14 are still available on publisher Taylor & Francis’s site, without any editor’s notes or other flags.

The society’s notice says:

Diabetes-COVID-19 paper retracted for lack of ethical approval

An allegation of plagiarism in a paper about Covid-19 in people with diabetes led to a retraction, but not for lifted text.

Earlier this year, the journal Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics, a Mary Ann Liebert title, published “No deleterious effect of lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic on glycaemic control, measured by glucose monitoring, in adults with type 1 diabetes.” The author was Pilar Isabel Beato-Vi[accent over i]bora, of University Hospital Complex Badajoz, in Spain.

According to the article, the lockdown of Spain in response to the pandemic did not seem to make it harder for people with type 1 diabetes there to control their blood sugar.

The finding made at least one headline, in Medscape, which covered the paper when it appeared online in May.

But it also sounded alarms with at least one reader. As the retraction notice explains:

Study rating attractiveness of women with endometriosis is not yet retracted

Despite media reports announcing the retraction of a much-criticized study of whether women with endometriosis were more attractive than other women, the study has yet to be retracted by the journal.

Last week, several news outlets, picking up on a story in The Guardian, said the study, first published in 2012 in Fertility and Sterility, had been retracted.

The study, called “Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case-control study,” claimed to show that:

Paper earns expression of concern after author blames COVID-19 restrictions for not being able to find raw data

The pandemic ate our data.

A group of researchers in India whose findings in a 2015 paper evidently looked too good to be true have received an expression of concern because they claim Covid-19 restrictions have made it impossible to recover their raw data.

The article, “Possible role of P-glycoprotein in the neuroprotective mechanism of berberine in intracerebroventricular streptozotocin-induced cognitive dysfunction,” appeared in Psychopharmacology, a Springer Nature journal. The authors, led by Anil Kumar, were affiliated with the University Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Panjab University in Chandigarh.

Weekend reads: Unprofessional behavior in peer reviews; what to do when you’re wrong; an update on the ‘Space Dentist’

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.

We turned 10 years old on Monday. Here’s a brief history, and 10 takeaways from 10 years.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Legal threats and an alleged poisoning complicate a trial of a tea to treat malaria
A journal editor breaking protocol to thank an anonymous whistleblower
Scrutiny of dozens of papers about China’s ethnic minorities, for ethical violations
A retraction and a retraction request as Twitter users call out sexism, fat-shaming, and racism

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 30.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Cancer researcher hit with 10-year ban on federal US funding for nearly 100 faked images

A former scientist at Wayne State University in Detroit who lost his PhD from the institution has agreed to a 10-year ban on any federally funded research after being found guilty of misconduct.

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity says Zhiwei Wang fabricated data in nine grants funded by the National Institutes of Health, as well as in three grant applications and his 2006 doctorate.

Wang’s bogus data was published in 15 14 papers, according to the ORI, 14 13 of which already have been retracted. Under the terms of the agreement, Wang will ask for the retraction or correction of the 15th article, a 2008 study in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics titled “Induction of growth arrest and apoptosis in human breast cancer cells by 3,3-diindolylmethane is associated with induction and nuclear localization of p27kip.”

Journal that published paper linking 5G to COVID-19 blames “substantial manipulation of the peer review”

The journal that allowed a bizarre article linking Covid-19 to 5G cell phone waves to “slip through the net” now blames rigged peer review for the fishy paper.

The article, which earned raspberries from the likes of Elisabeth Bik (who called it potentially the “worst” paper of the year) and others, was retracted shortly after publication in the Journal of Biological Regulators and Homeostatic Agents.

As we reported last month, the journal initially simply withdrew the article without explanation. But the publisher, Biolife, then provided us with a few less-than-satisfying excuses, such as:

A retraction and a retraction request as Twitter users call out sexism, fat-shaming, and racism

Overweight people are more dishonest, women with endometriosis are more attractive, and affirmative action needs to stop: Papers with these three conclusions have come under intense scrutiny on social media in recent days, with at least one retracted.

First up, a study — widely criticized for being sexist — which claimed to find that

Women with rectovaginal endometriosis were judged to be more attractive than those in the two control groups. Moreover, they had a leaner silhouette, larger breasts, and an earlier coitarche.

The study, called “Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: a case-control study” was published in 2013 in Fertility and Sterility, an Elsevier publication. It received sharp criticism on PubPeer beginning a year ago when one commenter, “Ovine Mastadenovirus,” wrote:

Study of China’s ethnic minorities retracted as dozens of papers come under scrutiny for ethical violations

A legal journal has retracted a 2019 article on the facial genetics of ethnic minorities in China for ethics violations, and the publisher, Springer Nature, is investigating more than two dozen other articles for similar concerns.

The article, “Y Chromosomal STR haplotypes in Chinese Uyghur, Kazakh and Hui ethnic groups and genetic features of DYS448 null allele and DYS19 duplicated allele,” appeared in the International Journal of Legal Medicine.

Three of the authors were affiliated with the notorious Karamay Municipal Public Security Bureau, which the U.S. government hit with sanctions in October 2019 for being:

Cancer surgery group in China may lose second paper

After whistleblowers in China prompted the retraction of a 2018 paper that overstated the number of patients treated in a study, another journal says it’s investigating a second article by the same group.

Last month, as we reported, the Journal of Surgical Oncology retracted “Long‐term outcomes of 530 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients with minimally invasive Ivor Lewis esophagectomy.” The move was prompted by whistleblowers who notified the journal that the 530 cases could not have been performed at the authors’ institution, Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou.

After our post, a Twitter user pointed us to a second article by the group, in BMC Cancer, which claimed to report data on 697 subjects over just one additional year — a highly improbable figure.

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