Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: Self-citation farms; an editor refuses to retract; publishing enters politics

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a request: Our co-founder Ivan Oransky celebrated a birthday this past week, and he’d like nothing more than a gift to Retraction Watch to support our work. Here’s your chance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured a massive correction for a paper used to support the ban on Caster Semenya competing; a book retraction that took eleven months; and a husband and wife team about to lose their jobs for research misconduct. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

University of Kentucky moves to fire researchers after misconduct finding

The University of Kentucky has started termination proceedings against a pair of scientists found guilty of “significant departures from accepted practices of research,” according to the institution.

The scientists, Xianglin Shi, who up until now had held the William A. Marquard Chair in Cancer Research and served as associate dean for research integration in the UK College of Medicine, and Zhuo Zhang in the Department of Toxicology and Cancer Biology in the College of Medicine, have lost access to their laboratories, which are shuttered, and other university equipment, UK said in a statement. A third researcher, Donghern Kim, who worked under Zhang, already has been fired in the scandal.

In October, the university told us that it was aware of the retractions but “not able to provide more information at this time.” The ongoing investigation was first reported in April by the Lexington Herald-Leader.

According to the UK’s announcement today, the inquiry, which began in June 2018, into Shi, Zhang and Kim found that:

Forensics Friday: You’re the reviewer. How do you react to this image?

Ever wanted to hone your skills as a scientific sleuth? Now’s your chance.

Thanks to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), which is committed to educating authors on best practices in publishing, figure preparation, and reproducibility, we’re presenting the fourteenth in a series, Forensics Friday.

Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. (We recommend using the Chrome browser.) After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.

Hepatitis expert up to five retractions and one expression of concern denies reusing images

A microbiology journal has issued an expression of concern over image reuse in a 2010 paper whose senior author has already racked up five retractions for duplicating figures.

The article, “Activation of transcription factor Nrf2 by hepatitis C virus induces the cell-survival pathway,” appeared in the Journal of General Virology, a publication of the Microbiology Society. The last author of the paper is Gulam Waris, an expert in viral hepatitis who is on the faculty of the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago. The paper has been cited 75 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

By our count, Waris — whose work has made several appearances in PubPeer — has lost at least five papers to retraction for image duplication and questionable data.

Springer Nature took eleven months to retract a plagiarized book, then made it disappear without a trace

A year ago today, Jennifer Powers, a co-author of a 2009 paper wrote to Springer Nature to alert the publisher to the fact that Tropical Dry Deciduous Forest: Research Trends and Emerging Features, a 2017 textbook by J. S. Singh and R.K. Chaturvedi, had plagiarized her work, and the work of others. A publisher representative responded six days later, saying they would look into the matter.

Then, for five months, crickets.

On January 23 of this year, Powers, of the University of Minnesota, sent another message asking for a progress report. Several days later, a Springer Nature staffer wrote to say they would provide an answer by mid-February.

Mid-February came and went, and the co-author sent another reminder, as did Jesse Lasky, of Penn State, another of the authors who said his work had been plagiarized. Back from Springer came this message:

Paper used to support ban on Caster Semenya competing earns massive correction

The authors of a controversial paper on what constitutes “normal” hormone levels in men and women — and, by implication, “male” and “female” athletes — are set to issue a massive correction of the work, Retraction Watch has learned. But an outside, albeit not disinterested, researcher who prompted the correction says the correction itself is amiss.

The article, “Large divergence in testosterone concentrations between men and women: frame of reference for elite athletes in sex-specific competition in sports, a narrative review,” appeared earlier this year in Clinical Endocrinology, a Wiley title. The authors of the meta-analysis, led by Richard Clark, of the US Anti‐Doping Agency, argued that testosterone levels between the sexes do not overlap in the absence of chromosomal or genetic anomalies that blur the distinction between male and female.

That finding was cited recently by an architect of the International Association of Athletics Federations’ decision to bar the South African trackstar, Caster Semenya, and other “hyperandrogenic” women (Semenya’s hormonal status has not been made public) whose hormonal constitution is arguably more male than female.

Meta-meta-analysis meets with retraction for group that had faked peer review elsewhere

Researchers in China have lost a 2015 meta-analysis on pancreatic cancer, one of several retractions for members of the group stemming from a variety of abuses including bogus authorship and fake peer review.

The meta-analysis, “Correlation between serum levels of high mobility group box-1 protein and pancreatitis: a meta-analysis,” appeared in BioMed Research International, a Hindawi journal. The authors are affiliated with China Medical University in Shenyang and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Here’s the notice:

Weekend reads: A week of whistleblower news, including what happens when one gets it wrong; questions about a widely covered study of men with guitar bags

Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a request: Our co-founder Ivan Oransky is celebrating a birthday this coming week, and he’d like nothing more than a gift to Retraction Watch to support our work. Here’s your chance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured a psychology researcher who did the right thing; 15 retractions by journals because of questions about where organs came from; and a foiled paper on aluminum. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

Forensics Friday: Is this paper worth reading?

Ever wanted to hone your skills as a scientific sleuth? Now’s your chance.

Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. (We recommend using the Chrome browser.) After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.

Retraction Watch readers, we still need your help to be able to continue our work

Dear Retraction Watch readers:

Maybe you’re a researcher who likes keeping up with developments in scientific integrity. Maybe you’re a reporter who has found a story idea on the blog. Maybe you’re an ethics instructor who uses the site to find case studies. Or a publisher who uses our blog to screen authors who submit manuscripts — we know at least two who do.

Whether you fall into one of those categories or another, we need your help.

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