Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: 800 retractions from Russia; paying to publish in Vietnam; a retraction involving Facebook, political misinformation, and Teen Vogue

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:

Crossfit being awarded $4 million in sanctions in a case stemming from a now-retracted paper;
the WHO formally retracting opioid guidelines tainted by conflict of interest;
the retraction of 17 papers by one journal for citation manipulation.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

There are retractors in plastic surgery — and not just of the instrument kind

A plastic surgeon in Turkey has notched his fifth retraction for plagiarism and other issues.

That makes him a retractor — even if most plastic surgeons would have something else in mind if they used that term.

Ilteris Murat Emsen, then of the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery at the Numune State Hospital in Erzurum, has lost five papers dating back to 2006. Four were pulled in 2009. The most recent retraction appeared last month in the European Journal of Plastic Surgery, for a 2007 article titled “Management of the large septal perforations with the support of porous high-density polyethylene (MEDPOR).”

According to the notice:

Two retractions prove fresh is best

To the list of best practices in experimental research, here’s another item to add: Always use fresh cheesecloth when separating biomasses.

We’ll explain.

WHO formally retracts opioid guidelines that came under fire

The World Health Organization has officially retracted its controversial guidelines on the use of opioid analgesics.

The agency’s move applies to two statements, issued in 2011 and 2012. Last June, WHO announced that it was “discontinuing” the guidelines in the wake of a critical report which said the documents were heavily tainted by commercial bias. According to a BMJ story published at the time:

Crossfit wins $4 million sanction in lawsuit stemming from now-retracted paper

A Federal court in California has ruled in favor of the popular training program CrossFit in its lawsuit against a nonprofit group — a competitor in fitness training — awarding the workout company nearly $4 million in sanctions.

Why are you reading about this case on Retraction Watch, you might ask? Well, at the heart of the suit, first filed in 2014, was a now-retracted 2013 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research — published by the NSCA — showing, erroneously, that CrossFit was linked to an increased risk for injuries. The journal initially corrected the article, but as CrossFit noted, the publication never acknowledged fabrication of data.

The senior author of that paper, Steven Devor, resigned his position at The Ohio State University after the retraction in mid-2017. As we reported at the time, the institution had demanded:

Journal retracted at least 17 papers for self-citation, 14 with same first author

A medical journal in Italy has retracted at least 17 papers by researchers in that country who appear to have been caught in a citation scam. The journal says it also fired three editorial board members for “misconduct” in the matter.

The retractions, from Acta Medica Mediterranea, occurred in 2017 and 2018, but we’re just finding out about them now; 14 involve roughly the same group of neuroscientists, while three are by different authors from some of the same institutions as the first team.

The journal last year issued two statements on its website about the cases, which it began investigating in 2018. The first, on Feb. 1, 2019 (we think), declared:

Weekend reads: Advice from an author with 18 retractions; ‘TripAdvisor for peer review’; theft, indictments, and prison

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads — the first of 2020! — 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 retraction of a Science paper by a Nobel winner;
Nine retractions at once for a prominent cancer researcher;
A journal that topped 100 retractions in 2019;
Findings of misconduct in a case that also included embezzlement of grant funds.

Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Prominent cancer researcher loses nine papers, making 10

Andrew Dannenberg (credit Patricia Kuharic)

The Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) has retracted nine papers in bulk by a group of cancer researchers in New York led by the prominent scientist Andrew Dannenberg.

The work of Dannenberg’s group at Weill Cornell — and the figures in particular — has been the subject of scrutiny on PubPeer for more than two years.

The group also lost an article more than a decade ago in The Lancet, bringing their total so far to 10. Cancer Discovery subjected a paper to an expression of concern in August. Much of the tainted work was funded by grants from the U.S. government, as well as from funding authorities in other countries.

According to the notice for 2014’s “p53 protein regulates Hsp90 ATPase activity and thereby Wnt signaling by modulating Aha1 expression“:

Nobel winner retracts paper from Science

A Caltech researcher who shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has retracted a 2019 paper after being unable to replicate the results.

Frances Arnold, who won half of the 2018 prize for her work on the evolution of enzymes, tweeted the news earlier today:

PLOS ONE retracts a paper first flagged in 2015 — and breaks the 100 retraction barrier for 2019

A team of researchers in Saudi Arabia, led by an ex-pat from Johns Hopkins University, has lost three papers for problems with the images in their articles.

The three retractions pushed the journal — which has become a “major retraction engine” for reasons we explain here and here — over 100 for 2019.

In December, PLOS ONE retrcated three papers by the group, led by Michael DeNiro, of the King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital in Riyadh. First, the journal retracted a 2011 article, “Inhibition of reactive gliosis prevents neovascular growth in the mouse model of oxygen-induced retinopathy,” the co-authors were Falah H Al-Mohanna and Futwan A Al-Mohanna. According to the retraction notice:

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