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
A group of OB/GYNs in the Middle East with a history of testing the patience of editors has lost a paper — and received in expression of concern for another — over concerns about the validity of their data.
The articles appeared in the BJOG, a Wiley publication. Both were led by Mohammad Maher, who is affiliated with Menoufia University in Egypt and the Armed Forces Hospital Southern Region, in Saudia Arabia.
Maher was first author of a 2017 paper in Obstetrics & Gynecology that the journal retracted earlier this year, after the editors were unable to resolve serious questions about the reliability of the data. As the retraction notice states, the journal made little headway with Menoufia University when it tried to follow up on concerns that the researchers’ results were almost certainly fabricated.
Continue reading ‘Patterns in the data have led to questions’: Ob-gyns lose another paper
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:
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: Hamsters, cats, dogs, and other fake authors; a fraudster regains her medical license; how to ruin journal titles
We’ve been keeping track of retracted coronavirus papers, but what about corrections? Here’s a guest post from Richard Jones of Cardiff University about a paper that earned widespread media coverage but turned out to be wrong.
According to our best knowledge, this is the first report on COVID-19 infection and death among medical personnel in a Forensic Medicine unit.
So ended a letter from Thailand to the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, accepted on 9th April 2020 within 3 days of receipt, and published as an ubiquitous “Pre-Proof.”
The authors of that letter stated that there had been only two COVID-19 patients amongst medical personnel in Thailand at that time, one of whom was a “forensic medicine professional” working in Bangkok.
Continue reading What it takes to correct the record: Autopsy of a COVID-19 corrigendum
The authors of a preprint on use of hydroxychloroquine — the controversial drug heavily promoted by, and now apparently taken by, President Trump, at least for a few more days — along with azithromycin for COVID-19 have withdrawn the paper.
The preprint, “Hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin: a potential interest in reducing in-hospital morbidity due to COVID-19 pneumonia (HI-ZY-COVID)?” was posted to medRxiv on May 11 by authors at Hopital Raymond Poincare, and sometime yesterday replaced with this statement:
Continue reading French hydroxychloroquine-COVID-19 study withdrawn
A former graduate student at the University of Cincinnati falsified data in a published article, since retracted, and an unpublished manuscript, according to government investigators.
The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said Logan Fulford doctored images while working at the university on experiments supported by two federally funded grants. Fulford, who is now a senior clinical research associate at IQVIA, a health care consulting company, entered into a voluntary settlement with the agency but neither denied nor admitted to the misconduct.
The published paper, titled “The transcription factor FOXF1 promotes prostate cancer by stimulating the mitogen-activated protein kinase ERK5,” appeared in Science Signaling in 2016. Fulford was first author on the article, which the journal retracted in 2018, after initially flagging it with an expression of concern.
Continue reading Former grad student faked cancer research data, says federal watchdog
A JAMA journal has retracted a 2018 paper linking physician burnout to poor patient care, after a misconduct inquiry found evidence of shoddy work but not data fabrication.
The article, “Association between physician burnout and patient safety, professionalism, and patient satisfaction: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” was published in JAMA Internal Medicine by a group based at the National Institute for Health Research Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, in England. The journal also published a commentary on the article and three letters to the editor, which have been flagged to indicate the new retraction.
The paper — which concluded that burned-out doctors might be jeopardizing the well-being of their patients — received a significant amount of coverage in the media, with stories trumpeting the take-home message that:
Continue reading JAMA journal retracts well-publicized paper linking doctor burnout to patient safety
The associate vice president for research at Georgia State University and founding director of the university’s Center for Molecular and Translational Medicine has had his tenth paper retracted.
Like the nine previous retractions for Ming-Hui Zou, the work underlying the newly retracted paper in PLOS ONE was performed while Zou was at Oklahoma State University.
The extensive retraction notice for “Activation of the AMP-Activated Protein Kinase (AMPK) by Nitrated Lipids in Endothelial Cells” refers to problems in six of the paper’s figures, including unexpected similarities and likely splicing. It concludes:
Continue reading Associate VP for research at Georgia State is up to 10 retractions