Retraction Watch

The tale of the secret publishing ban

We have an update on a post we published late last month.

We reported on March 31 that Tissue Engineering had retracted a paper by Xing Wei, of the, National Engineering Research Center of Genetic Medicine at Jinan University, in Guangzhou, China, because of image manipulation. The retraction notice for that paper, “Use of Decellularized Scaffolds Combined with Hyaluronic Acid and Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor for Skin Tissue Engineering, referred to another paper in the journal that was being retracted, but had not yet been. It also referred to a paper in a different journal that showed signs of misconduct, but that had yet to be retracted, either.

We were checking this week to see if the other papers had been retracted, mostly just to make sure our database was up to date. The second paper, Promoting the Recovery of Injured Liver with Poly (3-Hydroxybutyrate-Co-3-Hydroxyvalerate-Co-3-Hydroxyhexanoate) Scaffolds Loaded with Umbilical Cord-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells, has indeed been retracted, although the one in Tissue Engineering Constructs and Cell Substrates has not.

What was far more interesting, however, was that when we looked at a retraction notice for the first paper, we saw something we hadn’t seen in it before: Wei had earned an “indefinite ban” from publishing in the journal:

Journals have retracted or flagged more than 40 papers from China that appear to have used organ transplants from executed prisoners

Journals have retracted 30 papers, and added expressions of concern to 13 more, because the research likely involved organs from executed prisoners in China.

The issue surfaced as early as 2016, and two of the retractions occurred in 2017, but all of the other retractions, and all of the expressions of concern, happened after a February 2019 paper by Wendy Rogers of Macquarie University, in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues calling for the retraction of more than 400 papers

A paper plagiarizes an article retracted for plagiarism and other sins — but it isn’t being retracted.

We make a point of never calling for a particular paper’s retraction, nor ever weighing in on whether a journal should have made that move. That would be, we often say, like a financial reporter recommending stocks. But a recent expression of concern is sorely testing our resolve on the matter.

The expression of concern is for a 2014 article, “shRNA-mediated silencing of ZFX attenuated the proliferation of breast cancer cells,” which appeared in Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology, a Springer title, and was led by a team from Zhejiang Cancer Hospital in Hangzhou.

Here’s the notice:

Elsevier investigating hydroxychloroquine-COVID-19 paper

Elsevier has weighed in on the handling of a controversial paper about the utility of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 infection, defending the rigor of the peer review process for the article in the face of concerns that the authors included the top editor of the journal that published the work.

On April 3, as we reported, the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy issued an expression of concern (without quite calling it that) about the paper, which had appeared in March in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, which the ISAC publishes, along with Elsevier. According to the society, the article, by the controversial French scientist Didier Raoult, of the University of Marseille, and colleagues:

Weekend reads: Should expertise in COVID-19 modeling justify a reprieve for grant fraud?; bypassing publishing; “a torrent of ‘bad science?'”

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:

An “expression of concern” — or something very much like it — for a highly influential paper about hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19.
The eighth retraction for a researcher who sued his university for discrimination.
The 15th retraction for an author who engaged in fake peer review.
Some authors unhappy after their retraction count grows to five.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Authors aren’t happy to lose four more papers in chemistry journals

A pair of researchers in India with a history of stealing a paper from other authors during the peer review process have lost four more articles, this time for questionable data.

The papers, by Priyadarshi Roy Chowdhury and Krishna G. Bhattacharyya, of Gauhati University in Jalukbari, appeared in journals published by the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry. At least some of the hijinks by the pair resulted in a misconduct inquiry by the institution — the report of which one of the authors told Retraction Watch “was completely one-sided and vindictive.”

One of the papers, “Ni/Co/Ti layered double hydroxide for highly efficient photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B and Acid Red G: a comparative study,” was published in 2017 in Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences. According to the notice:

Agriculture researcher up to 15 retractions for fake peer review

Christos Damalas, an agriculture researcher at Democritus University of Thrace, has had more papers retracted from Elsevier journals for fake peer review reports, giving him a total of 15.

The three most recent retractions appear, as did some previously, in Science of the Total Environment. Damalas also had papers retracted from Chemosphere and Land Use Policy in October. We reported on nine of his retractions last October. (For background on how fake peer review works, read this.)

Here’s a typical notice (the repeated “request of” appears in the three from Science of the Total Environment):

A building consultant rigs peer review

The construction industry in New York City is notorious for rigged bids, but rigged peer review?

A Queens, NY, building consultant has lost four papers for forging — or having had forged — the peer reviews of his manuscripts. (For background on how this works, read this.)

Faruque Hossain’s articles appeared in a variety of engineering-based Elsevier publications between 2017 and 2019. Hossain is listed as being the owner of an outfit called Green Globe Technology Inc., which is based in Flushing.

Here’s the notice for “Green science: Decoding dark photon structure to produce clean energy,” which Energy Reports published in 2018:

Hydroxychloroquine-COVID-19 study did not meet publishing society’s “expected standard”

The paper that appears to have triggered the Trump administration’s obsession with hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for infection with the novel coronavirus has received a statement of concern from the society that publishes the journal in which the work appeared.

The April 3, 2020, notice, from the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, states that the March 20 article, “Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of Covid-19: results of an open-label non-randomized clinical trial”

Former star cancer researcher who sued his university for discrimination notches eighth retraction

Jasti Rao, who once earned $700,000 a year at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria and was named the first “Peorian of the Year” before a misconduct investigation put an end to his time there, has now lost eight papers.

Rao’s case is among the more colorful that we’ve covered. A highly-regarded cancer specialist, Rao was caught up in a morass of misdeeds, including not only plagiarism and manipulation of data but gambling and behavior tantamount to extortion of his employees. As we reported in 2018:

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