Retraction Watch

“Based on the literature, we have no reason not to believe to the authors.”

If you’re a fan of the post hoc fallacy, this post is for you. If not, we hope you’ll bear with us anyway.

In June, we reported on an expression of concern in the Journal of Cell Science for a 2006 paper “several bands…in Fig. 5 look very similar.” At the time, we noted that while the expression of concern claimed that the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the authors’ institution, “does not have a suitable body to investigate this matter,” it in fact does.

After hearing that from us, Sharon Ahmad, the journal’s managing editor, approached Carlos Petrini, the director of bioethics at the ISS, who proceeded to investigate the work. Petrini has now sent us the summary of that investigation, which we’ve made available here.

Weekend reads: Retract papers, win major awards; “citation doping;” authorship abuse

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 a paper that used a mouse that doesn’t exist; the departure of a Columbia professor after plagiarism findings; and the correction of a paper whose authors claimed that cell phone use was causing people to grow “horns.” Here’s what happening elsewhere:

Fishy data doom paper by USDA aquaculture researcher

A scientist for the U.S. government has lost a 2017 paper on spawning in catfish for problems with the data.

The paper, “Effective dose of salmon GnRHa for induction of ovulation in channel catfish,” was written by Nagaraj G. Chatakondi and appeared in the North American Journal of Aquaculture. Chatakondi is a geneticist with the Stoneville, Miss., office of the Agricultural Research Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to the notice:

Northwestern psychology researcher out following retraction

A psychology researcher at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has left a tenure-track position there less than a year after she and a co-author retracted a paper whose methods had been questioned online, Retraction Watch has learned.

Ping Dong and Chen-bo Zhong, a professor at the University of Toronto, where Dong received her PhD, retracted a paper from Psychological Science in November 2018, six months after publishing it. As we reported at the time, the paper

‘Text neck’ — aka ‘horns’ — paper earns corrections

A highly controversial 2018 paper suggesting that too much bent-neck staring at your cell phone could sprout, in the words of one of the authors, a “horn” on the back of your head is — perhaps unsurprisingly — getting corrected.

The article, “Prominent exostosis projecting from the occipital squama more substantial and prevalent in young adult than older age groups,” which appeared in Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Reports in February 2018, received scads of media coverage earlier this year. The stories initially were alarmist but grew increasingly skeptical as journalists and experts began poking holes in the authors’ claims.

The corrected paper doesn’t completely walk back the association, but it definitely mutes the assertions significantly. For example, the original discussion section included this passage:

Columbia historian stepping down after plagiarism finding

A tenured professor of history at Columbia University will be stepping down at the end of next year after an investigating committee at the school found “incontrovertible evidence of research misconduct” in his controversial 2013 book.

Charles King Armstrong, the Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences, was found to have “cited nonexistent or irrelevant sources in at least 61 instances” in “Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950-1992,” according to the Columbia Spectator, which first reported on the resignation last week.

In a September 10 letter, Maya Tolstoy, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, announced the news to the institution:

‘The problem is that there is no IL-26 gene in the mouse’ — an exasperated letter leads to a retraction

A group of ophthalmology researchers in China got caught trying to pull the wool over the eyes of readers by falsely claiming to have used a therapy that doesn’t exist.

As its title would indicate, the article, “Anti-angiogenic effect of Interleukin-26 in oxygen-induced retinopathy mice via inhibiting NFATc1-VEGF pathway,” by a team from Jinhua Municipal Central Hospital in Zhejiang, purported to show that IL-26 could prevent the growth of new blood vessels in mice with damaged retinas.

Per the abstract of the paper, which appeared in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (BBRC):

Weekend reads: Citation manipulation gone wild; astrology meets research; a classic mistake in a study of free will

The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper that claimed that scientists were suppressing evidence about the risks of cell phones; the retraction of a study by the daughter of an embattled South Korean politician; and 22 retractions for a materials scientist that might be the tip of the iceberg. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

A publisher just retracted 22 articles. And the whistleblower is just getting started.

SAGE Publishing is today retracting 22 articles by a materials science researcher who published in two of their journals — but the anonymous reader who brought the problems to their attention says the author’s duplication affects more than 100 articles.

Ali Nazari, now of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, had five papers retracted earlier this year from an Elsevier journal. His total of now 27 retractions — the others from the International Journal of Damage Mechanics and the Journal of Composite Materials — came following emails in January of this year from an anonymous reader to several publishers raising concerns that Nazari had duplicated his work in more than 100 articles.

Here’s the retraction notice for the 22 articles retracted by SAGE:

A publisher wants to destigmatize retractions. Here’s how.

It’s no secret that retractions have a stigma, which is very likely part of why authors often resist the move — even when honest error is involved. There have been at least a few proposals to change the nomenclature for some retractions over the years, from turning them into “amendments” to a new taxonomy.

Erica Boxheimer, data integrity analyst at EMBO Press, and Bernd Pulverer, chief editor of The EMBO Journal and head of scientific publications for the Press, have suggested a related solution, which builds on a 2015 proposal:

We proposed to use the term “withdrawal” instead of the canonical “retraction” for an author‐initiated retraction based on “honest mistakes”. We are now using the terms “retraction” and “withdrawal” as formally distinct content types across EMBO Press in the hope that “withdrawal” attracts less stigma and encourages self‐correction.

As they note in an editorial in the journal last month:

In a move to add transparency in a more systematic manner, we have begun trialing a “process file” for corrections—similar to the “review process files” on our published papers, which capture the review and editorial process at the journal—for corrigenda and retractions.

Here’s one such “process file.” We asked Pulverer and Boxheimer to describe how the approach would work.

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