Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: COVID-19 and peer review; blaming a spell-checker for plagiarism; the fastest retracting country

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Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

A retraction by a formerly high-profile researcher for “inadvertently misidentified” images;
the tale of the zombie papers;
recognition for a sleuth.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

A snake bites once, but its picture is used twice

For some people, a venomous snake is a venomous snake — and evidently, some of those people include journal editors.

The authors of a 2019 case report describing the unfortunate case of an African farmer killed by the bite of a lethal snake have lost the article because the mug shot of the reptilian culprit didn’t match its description in the paper.

The paper, “Severe Viperidae envenomation complicated by a state of shock, acute kidney injury, and gangrene presenting late at the emergency department: a case report,” appeared in BMC Emergency Medicine, a Springer Nature title.

“We thank Dr. Elisabeth Bik for drawing the irregularities to the authors’ attention.” A sleuth earns recognition.

A trio of researchers in Argentina is up to three retractions, and may well lose even more papers, for doctoring their images. And, in an unusual move, one of the leading data sleuths is getting credit for her work helping to out the problematic figures.

One article, “Apocynin-induced nitric oxide production confers antioxidant protection in maize leaves,” appeared in 2009 in the Journal of Plant Physiology, published by Elsevier. The authors were affiliated with the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata.

As the retraction notice states:

Zombie papers: Why do papers by the most prolific fraudster in history keep getting cited?

It’s a bit like a slugger crediting Barry Bonds for help with his homerun swing. An anesthesiology journal has retracted a 2018 paper that cited three retracted papers by Yoshitaka Fujii, the record-holder for most retractions by a single author.

As we’ve written before, journals had a spotty record in reacting to the Fujii scandal, which peaked in 2012. And the latest case involves a bit of that indifference — but other negligence, as well.

The article in question, “Priming with different doses of Metoclopramide preceded by tourniquet alleviates propofol induced pain: a comparative study with lidocaine,” appeared in 2018 in the Egyptian Journal of Anaesthesia (EJA). Three of the citations were of papers by Fujii, although the article had other failings, too.

A tale of one exceedingly clear retraction notice, and two nonexistent ones

In the market for an admirably clear and concise retraction notice? Look no further!

A researcher in China has lost one — well, maybe two, more on that in a moment — 2015 articles for falsification of data and other misconduct. And one of the journals he tried to dupe is having none of it.

The papers appeared in Tissue Engineering, which is published by Mary Ann Liebert. A related, but yet unretracted, article was in the Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, a Springer title. The focus of the case is Xing Wei, of the, National Engineering Research Center of Genetic Medicine at Jinan University, in Guangzhou.

Here’s the retraction notice:

Former UCSD prof who resigned amid investigation into China ties retracts paper for ‘inadvertently misidentified’ images

Kang Zhang, a formerly high-profile geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, who resigned his post last July amidst an investigation into undisclosed ties to China, has retracted a paper because some of its images were taken from other researchers’ work.

The paper, “Impaired lipid metabolism by age-dependent DNA methylation alterations accelerates aging,” was submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) last fall, months after Zhang’s resignation. One of Zhang’s fellow corresponding authors, Jian-Kang Zhu, used the journal’s “Contributed Submissions” process, in which “An NAS member may contribute up to two of her or his own manuscripts for publication in PNAS each year.”

PNAS published the paper on February 6 of this year. But on February 18, authors of a different paper, in Aging Cell, sent the editors of PNAS a letter, writing:

Weekend reads: Why coronavirus papers need a warning label; scientists correct the record

Sending thoughts to our readers and wishing them the best in this uncertain time.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

A researcher who felt “shocked” and “physically ill” — but still corrected the record.
A retraction mystery in which none of the authors of a paper knew anything about it.
The retraction of a paper in Nature after years of scrutiny.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

A German vocabulary lesson: Paper retracted because an “individuelle Heilversuche” is not a clinical trial

by mcmurryjulie

A co-editor of the Journal of Neurology has retracted a 2018 paper he helped write because the way the paper was written misled readers about the nature of the research.

The article, “Menière’s disease: combined pharmacotherapy with betahistine and the MAO-B inhibitor selegiline—an observational study,” purported to describe the effects of a combination treatment to reduce the incidence of dizziness in people with Menière’s, a neurologic disorder that affects the inner ear.

The first author of the paper is Michael Strupp, of the Munich Center for Neurosciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. Strupp also is one of a troika of editors in-chief of the Journal of Neurology.

According to the abstract:

“I was shocked. I felt physically ill.” And still, she corrected the record.

Two years ago, Julia Strand, an assistant professor of psychology at Carleton College, published a paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review about how people strain to listen in crowded spaces (think: when they’re doing the opposite of social distancing).

The article, titled “Talking points: A modulating circle reduces listening effort without improving speech recognition,” was a young scientist’s fantasy — splashy, fascinating findings in a well-known journal — and, according to Strand, it gave her fledgling career a jolt.

The data were “gorgeous,” she said, initially replicable and well-received:

A mystery: “none of the authors listed had any involvement with or knowledge of the article”

Even after close to 10 years of writing about retractions every day, some days we read retraction notices that make us say, “huh?”

Today is one of those days.

Take this retraction notice for “High-resolution ultrasound images in gouty arthritis to evaluate relationship between tophi and bone erosion,” a paper first published in Future Generation Computer Systems last year:

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