Retraction Watch

‘Aggressive’ COVID-19 strains: What it takes to correct a flawed paper

A group of researchers in Scotland have taken aim at a study published in early March which reported surprising findings on the genetics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.

But the story of what it took to correct the record about the paper is likely to be all too familiar to those who attempt such feats. It involved a blog post and a new paper — neither of which appeared on the site of the original journal that published the work, and neither of which is seeing the kind of attention paid to the original article.

The paper, “On the origin and continuing evolution of SARS-CoV-2,” appeared in National Science Review, published by Oxford Academic. According to the abstract:

Weekend reads: A COVID-19 conspiracy theory; a 15-year-old publishes in NEJM; the need for speed

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:

A study finding no evidence of racial bias in police shootings earns a correction that critics call an “opaque half measure”
Doing the right thing: Researchers retract clinician burnout study after realizing their error
The circle of life, publish or perish edition: Two journals retract more than 40 papers
“[I]t took a long time for the scientific community to realize that he was simply making things up”

How many papers about COVID-19 have been retracted?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:

Materials scientist up to nine retractions

An itinerant materials scientist whose former lab head has accused publicly of misconduct is up to nine retractions for manipulating his data.

We last wrote about Hossein Hosseinkhani in 2016, after he’d lost seven papers stemming from his time as a researcher in the lab of Yasuhiko Tabata, of the Institute for Frontier Life and Medical Sciences at Kyoto University in Japan.

Since then, the researcher has lost two more articles, including, most recently, a 2001 article he wrote with Tabata that appeared in the Proceedings of the Japanese Academy of Sciences. According to the retraction notice for the paper, titled “In vitro transfection of plasmid DNA by different cationized gelatin with or without ultrasound irradiation.”

The notice reads:

“[I]t took a long time for the scientific community to realize that he was simply making things up”

In a world increasingly haunted by fake news, email scams and trolls on the internet deliberately emotionalizing debate and making unfounded attacks, trust is perhaps more endangered than ever.

That sounds like the breathless text of a movie trailer, but it’s how the editors of Ethnologia Europaea announce the retractions of seven more papers by Mart Bax, the Dutch anthropologist whose misconduct includes not only making up data but making up papers — at least 61 of them — as well. Bax is now up to nine retractions.

The journal, which has published an article titled “On scholarly misconduct and fraud, and what we can learn from it,” by Peter Jan Margry about Bax’s checkered career at Amsterdam Free University (Margry helped to out the misconduct), notes the sweep and success of the fraud:

Who is Judy Mikovits?

Over the past few days, we’ve noticed a spike in traffic — sometimes so large that it crashes our site — to older posts about Judy Mikovits. It appears that Mikovits is once again in the news. Here’s a story from Vice that provides some context:

The circle of life, publish or perish edition: Two journals retract more than 40 papers

Talk about the publish-or-perish version of the circle of life.

A Springer Nature journal has retracted 33 articles — 29 from one special issue, and four from another — for a laundry list of publishing sins, from fake peer review to plagiarism to stealing unpublished manuscripts.

And an Elsevier journal has retracted ten papers recently for duplication — of ten of the Springer Nature journal’s papers.

A typical notice from the Springer Nature journal, Multimedia Tools and Applications (MTAP):

Doing the right thing: Researchers retract clinician burnout study after realizing their error

A journal is retracting and replacing a 2016 study which found that nearly two-thirds of clinicians who focus on end-of-life care experienced burnout, after the authors found an error that had dramatically inflated the findings.

The article, “Prevalence and predictors of burnout among hospice and palliative care clinicians in the U.S.,” appeared in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, and has been cited 72 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. The authors, led by Arif Kamal, of Duke University, included researchers at Mayo Clinic, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, the University of Pittsburgh and other institutions.

But while working on a subsequent paper, the authors realized that something was amiss with their first article. The two studies revealed strikingly different rates of burnout in the surveys the researchers had conducted, 62% vs. 39%, an unusual finding given that a relatively short time had elapsed between the surveys, they said. A closer look revealed a critical error.

This Giving Tuesday Now, please consider supporting Retraction Watch

We know there are a lot of causes that matter to you, but since you’re reading this, we may be one of them. So we’d like to ask for your support.

On this Giving Tuesday Now, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to The Center For Scientific Integrity, the 501(c)3 parent organization of Retraction Watch. Any amount helps. Your donation will help us shine a spotlight on scientific misconduct, and on the process — too often messy and slow — of correcting the scholarly record.

Here’s what your donations will continue to help make possible:

A study finding no evidence of racial bias in police shootings earns a correction that critics call an “opaque half measure”

A group of researchers who published a controversial study that found no evidence of racial bias in deadly police shootings have corrected their paper but are standing by their findings — to the displeasure of some scholars who say the article is too flawed to stand.

The 2019 study, “Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings,” was written by David Johnson, of the University of Maryland, and several co-authors from Michigan State University. According to the abstract:

Weekend reads: Retracted COVID-19 papers; a coronavirus study kept under wraps; Harvard and Jeffrey Epstein

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

the correction of an influential paper on COVID-19 because it cited a withdrawn preprint;
the retraction of a paper on gender dysphoria following a petition signed by 900 critics
20 expressions of concern for papers by a doctor who ran afoul of the FDA;
the return of the peer review bandits.

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:

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