Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: Citation manipulation gone wild; astrology meets research; a classic mistake in a study of free will

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The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a paper that claimed that scientists were suppressing evidence about the risks of cell phones; the retraction of a study by the daughter of an embattled South Korean politician; and 22 retractions for a materials scientist that might be the tip of the iceberg. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

A publisher just retracted 22 articles. And the whistleblower is just getting started.

SAGE Publishing is today retracting 22 articles by a materials science researcher who published in two of their journals — but the anonymous reader who brought the problems to their attention says the author’s duplication affects more than 100 articles.

Ali Nazari, now of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, had five papers retracted earlier this year from an Elsevier journal. His total of now 27 retractions — the others from the International Journal of Damage Mechanics and the Journal of Composite Materials — came following emails in January of this year from an anonymous reader to several publishers raising concerns that Nazari had duplicated his work in more than 100 articles.

Here’s the retraction notice for the 22 articles retracted by SAGE:

A publisher wants to destigmatize retractions. Here’s how.

It’s no secret that retractions have a stigma, which is very likely part of why authors often resist the move — even when honest error is involved. There have been at least a few proposals to change the nomenclature for some retractions over the years, from turning them into “amendments” to a new taxonomy.

Erica Boxheimer, data integrity analyst at EMBO Press, and Bernd Pulverer, chief editor of The EMBO Journal and head of scientific publications for the Press, have suggested a related solution, which builds on a 2015 proposal:

We proposed to use the term “withdrawal” instead of the canonical “retraction” for an author‐initiated retraction based on “honest mistakes”. We are now using the terms “retraction” and “withdrawal” as formally distinct content types across EMBO Press in the hope that “withdrawal” attracts less stigma and encourages self‐correction.

As they note in an editorial in the journal last month:

In a move to add transparency in a more systematic manner, we have begun trialing a “process file” for corrections—similar to the “review process files” on our published papers, which capture the review and editorial process at the journal—for corrigenda and retractions.

Here’s one such “process file.” We asked Pulverer and Boxheimer to describe how the approach would work.

“Highly unusual and unfortunate error” delays retraction two years in high-profile Duke case

As we’ve noted before, “the wheels of scientific publishing turn slowly … but they do (sometimes) turn.”

More than six years after the first retraction for Erin Potts-Kant, who was part of a group at Duke whose work would unravel amid misconduct allegations and lead to a $112.5 million settlement earlier this year with the U.S. government — and two years after a journal says it first became aware of the issues — a retraction by the group has appeared in Pediatric Research, a Springer Nature title.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Intra-amniotic LPS amplifies hyperoxia-induced airway hyperreactivity in neonatal rats”:

“Unjustified authorship” spikes paper by daughter of South Korea official

Following weeks of scrutiny, the daughter of a high-profile official in South Korea has had a paper she wrote as a high school student retracted, in part because the journal determined she had made no intellectual contributions to the study.

Cho Kuk, who was officially appointed yesterday (September 9) as the top justice official in South Korea, is embroiled in a controversy over undeserved academic advantages his daughter, Cho Min, obtained.

According to a story by Reuters about the larger controversy last week:

‘No scientific contribution’: Journal pulls paper alleging radiation coverup

The journal Magnetochemistry has retracted a 2019 article by a controversial researcher in New Zealand who argued that scientists are suppressing evidence that microwave radiation from smartphones and other devices cause harm to people.

The paper was titled “Conflicts of interest and misleading statements in official reports about the health consequences of radiofrequency radiation and some new measurements of exposure levels.” In it, author Susan Pockett, a psychologist at the University of Auckland, argued that:

Weekend reads: The scale of misconduct in China; toxic peer reviews; license to publish?; an editorial revolt

The week at Retraction Watch featured a researcher at Northwestern who’s up to five retractions; a retraction because editors found it implausible that a researcher could perform a clinical trial single-handedly; and seven retractions at once when a researcher blamed a flood for lost data. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Criminology saga leads to an expression of concern, and a correction

Earlier this year, Justin Pickett, a criminologist at the University of Albany at the State University of New York, asked journals to look into potentially problematic data in five papers — including one on which he had been a co-author.

As we reported in July, Pickett’s request came after he’d received an anonymous email pointing out issues with the data — concerns ranging from “Anomalies in standard errors, coefficients, and p-values” to “Unlikely survey design and data structure.”

At the time, one of the five articles had already received a correction for a “coding error” that changed the results. Pickett requested that the journal retract the paper entirely, but was rebuffed.

Now, two other journals have taken action on the articles on the list.

Northwestern researcher has four more papers retracted, making five

A pathologist in Chicago has lost five papers for image manipulation and other problems.

The first retraction for Yashpal Kanwar, of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, appeared in 2013, for a review article published earlier that year in the American Journal of Physiology Renal Physiology. According to the notice:

“Questioned as implausible:” Journal retracts paper because a researcher claimed to perform a large clinical trial single-handedly

Is it possible for just one researcher to perform a clinical trial of more than 200 participants?

According to the editorial board of the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, an Elsevier title, the answer would seem to be no. The journal has decided to retract a 2016 paper in which the author claimed to have conducted such a large trial on their own.

Here’s the notice for “Calcium versus oral contraceptive pills containing drospirenone for the treatment of mild to moderate premenstrual syndrome: A double blind randomized placebo controlled trial:”

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