Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: How to be a statistical detective; a $5.5 million settlement over hidden grants; 15 studies that challenged medical dogma

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads — the last of 2019! — 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:

The story of what happened when researchers tried to publish a Nature paper 600 times;
How a plagiarized image in NEJM was discovered;
A new scam involving special issues of journals;
Four retractions for an endocrinology researcher in South Korea.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

‘Disbelief’: Researchers, watch out for this new scam involving journal special issues

We’ve seen authors fake peer review by creating fake email addresses, and even companies that use photos of celebrities to lure unsuspecting authors. Now along comes a new scam, this one involving special issues of journals. In “Predatory publishing, hijacking of legitimate journals and impersonation of researchers via special issue announcements: a warning for editors and authors about a new scam,” Jamie Trapp, of Queensland University of Technology, describes what happened when scammers tried to snare the journal he edits — Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine. We asked Trapp to answer a few questions about the scheme.

Retraction Watch (RW): You recently wrote about what you call “a new scam.” Tell us about this scam.

How a plagiarized eye image in the NEJM was discovered

The Images in Clinical Medicine section of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is prime real estate for physicians and others wanting to share a compelling picture with their colleagues. But earlier this month, an eye specialist in Michigan saw double when he looked at the Dec. 5, 2019, installment of the feature.

Depicted was a picture from a pair of eye specialists in India who claimed to have seen a case of a person who’d suffered retinal bleeding after having been struck in the eye by a tennis ball:

A ‘stress test’ for journals: What happened when authors tried to republish a Nature paper more than 600 times?

Journal stings come in various shapes and sizes. There are the hilarious ones in which authors manage to get papers based on Seinfeld or Star Wars published. There are those that play a role in the culture wars. And then there are some on a massive scale, with statistical analyses.

That’s how we’d describe the latest paper by Ottawa journalologists Kelly Cobey, David Moher and colleagues. We asked Cobey and Moher to answer some questions about the recently posted preprint, “Stress testing journals: a quasi-experimental study of rejection rates of a previously published paper.”

Retraction Watch (RW): What prompted you to do this study?

Endocrinology researcher in South Korea scores four retractions in a year

Chonnam National University via Wikimedia

Hueng-Sik Choi, a researcher at Chonnam National University in Gwangju in South Korea, is up to four retractions for image manipulation.

The latest retraction for Choi, for a 2006 paper titled “Orphan nuclear receptor Nur77 induces zinc finger protein GIOT-1 gene expression, and GIOT-1 acts as a novel corepressor of orphan nuclear receptor SF-1 via recruitment of HDAC2,” appeared in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) earlier this month:

Weekend reads: 100 fake professors; study on police killings retracted; false data won’t scuttle company buyout

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:

The top retractions of 2019;
Two retractions and three corrections by an award-winning researcher;
The retraction of a neuroscience paper from Science.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Duke misconduct case prompts another expression of concern — but not a retraction

Here’s an expression of concern that raised some eyebrows around the Retraction Watch HQ.

Neuroscience group retracts Science paper

A group of neuroscientists in Switzerland have retracted a 2019 paper in Science whose first author they say falsified data in the study.

The article, “Insular cortex processes aversive somatosensory information and is crucial for threat learning,” came from the lab of Ralf Schneggenburger, of the Ecole Polytechniqe Federale De Lausanne (EPFL). The first author was Emmanuelle Berret, then a post-doc in the lab.

EPFL issued a press release about the study when it appeared. According to the release, the research showed that the insular cortex — a region “deep within the lateral sulcus” — is in charge of processing how mice and humans (pace, James Heathers) apparently learn from painful stimuli:

The top retractions of 2019: A new record, some impressive numbers, and some bizarre stories

Not surprisingly, the year that saw our database surpass 20,000 retractions was a busy one for us. In what has become an annual tradition, our friends at The Scientist asked us to round up what we thought were the biggest retractions of the last 12 months.

Embattled cancer researcher loses legal bid to be reinstated as department chair at OSU

Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher at The Ohio State University who has waged legal battles against those he feels have wronged him, has lost another of those fights.

A judge in Franklin County, Ohio, ruled against Croce in a case he brought against OSU to stop them from removing him as chair of his department. Croce had filed the suit late last year. Details are scant, but an order to terminate the case appeared in court records earlier this week.

An OSU spokesperson told Retraction Watch:

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