[See update on this story.]
As controversy swirls around two papers that used data from Surgisphere, the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet have placed expression of concerns on the relevant papers.
Here’s the NEJM expression of concern:
Continue reading NEJM, Lancet place expressions of concern on controversial studies of drugs for COVID-19
A group of anesthesiology researchers in India has had 10 papers retracted from a single journal because of a “high rate of similarity from various other articles along with overwhelming evidence of data fabrication.”
The retractions came after one of the authors of the papers submitted a manuscript to a different journal whose editor sniffed out issues and raised a red flag.
The Saudi Journal of Anesthesia has retracted ten articles by Anjan Das, of Kolkata, and colleagues:
Continue reading Anesthesiology group loses ten papers at once in one journal
One of the world’s leading medical journals has retracted a widely circulated paper published in April that concluded that “both surgical and cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment and external mask surface.”
The study, published by the Annals of Internal Medicine, has been cited by dozens of news stories, nearly 10,000 Twitter users — some of whom raised red flags about its methods — and by the World Health Organization.
But it turns out that the authors failed to consider the limits of the test they were using to detect the presence of coronavirus.
The paper only involved four participants. Apparently, the authors thought a correction — adding more patients — would be enough:
Continue reading Top journal retracts study claiming masks ineffective in preventing COVID-19 spread
A Nature study that could have provided a “potential therapeutic target for osteoporosis and bone metastases of cancer” has been retracted.
Since being published in 2014 by researchers at UT Southwestern, MD Anderson and elsewhere, “miR-34a blocks osteoporosis and bone metastasis by inhibiting osteoclastogenesis and Tgif2” has been cited more than 200 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
A year ago — on May 24, 2019 — Nature published a correction to the paper:
Continue reading Nature retracts study touted as step toward treatments for bone diseases
Some words do more work in sentences than others. Take the example of the word “negligence,” which in the case of the following retraction notice is a veritable beast of burden.
The 2019 article, “Conservative management of subglottic stenosis with home based tracheostomy care: A retrospective review of 28 patients,” appeared in the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology, an Elsevier title. The authors, led by Andrew Pelser, have affiliations in the United Kingdom and South Africa — a fact that appears to be non-trivial.
Per the abstract:
Continue reading ‘Negligence’ — a lot of it — leads to a retraction
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:
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:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Hydroxychloroquine paper earns correction; company allegedly fakes COVID-19 data; why retractions fail
Richard Fleming, a felon convicted of health care fraud who has been debarred by the US Food and Drug Administration, would like to invite you to participate in a clinical trial.
Fleming has registered a study on ClinicalTrials.gov to evaluate what he calls the “Fleming Method for Tissue and Vascular Differentiation and Metabolism” — a method he claims can help physicians assess pneumonia resulting from Covid-19.
According to the notes for the study:
Continue reading A convicted felon wants people to enroll in a COVID-19 clinical trial. What could go wrong?
On Sept. 17, 2019, virologist David Sanders — who recently won a lawsuit brought against him for efforts as a scientific sleuth — wrote a letter to the Journal of Cellular Physiology about a 2004 paper whose images raised his eyebrows.
The response a day later from an editorial assistant was a hint of what was to come:
Continue reading A journal publishes a critical letter — then says it was a mistake
A group of researchers in China is teetering on the edge of losing a paper because they have apparently tried to publish it three times.
Our story starts in Turkey, home to Taner Kemal Erdag, the editor in chief of Turkish Archives of Otorhinolaryngology. In August 2018, Erdag received a submission titled “Increased maternal serum placental growth hormone variant in pregnancies complicated by otosclerosis.” The corresponding author on the work was Ruiying Chen, an ear, nose and throat specialist at The First Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University.
Three weeks later, Chen contacted Erdag and asked to withdraw their article. Request denied. Erdag told us:
Continue reading An attempt at a triple play seems likely to result in a retraction
A team of stem cell researchers at the University of Maryland has lost a 2020 paper after failing to correct an error that they’d caught prior to submission.
The paper, “Endothelial/mesenchymal stem cell crosstalk within bioprinted coculture,” appeared in Tissue Engineering Part A, a Mary Ann Liebert publication. The senior author of the article was John Fisher, who holds an endowed chair in bioengineering at Maryland and also is one of the journal’s co-editors.
According to the retraction notice:
Continue reading ‘[A] disappointing situation’: Stem cell group retracts with ‘rectitude’ after error