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:
Continue reading WHO formally retracts opioid guidelines that came under fire
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:
Continue reading Crossfit wins $4 million sanction in lawsuit stemming from now-retracted paper
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:
Continue reading Journal retracted at least 17 papers for self-citation, 14 with same first author
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:
Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
Continue reading Weekend reads: Advice from an author with 18 retractions; ‘TripAdvisor for peer review’; theft, indictments, and prison
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“:
Continue reading Prominent cancer researcher loses nine papers, making 10
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:
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:
Continue reading PLOS ONE retracts a paper first flagged in 2015 — and breaks the 100 retraction barrier for 2019
In August 2020, Retraction Watch will turn 10 — a milestone we still can’t quite wrap our minds around. When we started the blog in 2010, we thought we might have enough material for a post or two a month. Little did we know that our little side gig would eventually lead to the world’s largest database of retracted papers; or that there would be so many of them (now more than 1,400 per year); or, to be honest, how little we (and others) knew about these events.
This year saw several important developments for our project. We entered into a partnership with Zotero that allows them to alert users to retractions of any papers in their personal libraries — and, we hope, helps researchers to better avoid citing retracted papers in their work. Our database now includes more than 20,000 retractions.
Continue reading A look back at Retraction Watch in 2019 — and forward to our 10th anniversary
Retraction Watch readers may recall the name Alexander Neumeister.
In 2016, The New York Times reported on his dismissal from the New York University School of Medicine following claims of misconduct in a trial Neumeister was running.
A lot has happened in the case since, including embezzlement charges for which he pleaded guilty. Now, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity has found that Neumeister also committed research misconduct.
Continue reading Psychiatrist who stole grant funds also engaged in research misconduct, says ORI
A team of physicists in India has notched their third retraction for problematic images and other issues that also have prompted at least four corrections of their work.
The authors, Sk. Shahenoor Basha, of the Solid State Ionics Laboratory at KL University in Guntur, and M.C. Rao, of Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada, have lost a 2018 article in the International Journal of Polymer Science titled ““Spectroscopic and electrochemical properties of [PVA/PVP]:[MgCl2{6H2O}] blend polymer electrolyte films.”
According to the retraction notice:
Continue reading ‘A satisfactory explanation was not provided’: Physicists in India lose third paper