A second article describing new pain syndrome under scrutiny

Among the critiques of a new article is a figure (left) duplicated from a retracted paper (right).

A second paper on a contested pain disease is under investigation after sleuths raised questions about the methodology and possible fabrication of data. 

Last year, Scientific Reports retracted a paper comparing the condition, which the authors dubbed Middle East Pain Syndrome, to rheumatoid arthritis for failing to establish a clear distinction between the two ailments.

The new article, published in January in BMC Rheumatology with two overlapping authors, compares MEPS to fibromyalgia, claiming it is distinct for its  “hand tufts spur-like excrescences.”  

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Weekend reads: Frustration over unpaid peer review; NIH axes research grants; publishers sue Meta

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 57,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Frustration over unpaid peer review; NIH axes research grants; publishers sue Meta

Food scientist impersonated as an editor and reviewer in Frontiers articles

Frontiers has issued a retraction and multiple corrections for papers in several of its journals after the publisher discovered a reviewer had been impersonated.

Alla El-Din Bekhit is listed as the editor of the retracted article, a study of the potential anti-cancer effects of asparagus extract published in Frontiers in Pharmacology in May 2023. According to the retraction notice, dated January 26, the article contained duplicated images and “concerns were raised regarding scientific validity of the article.” The notice continues:

Further, the investigation confirmed that a non-genuine email address was used to impersonate Alaa El-Din Bekhit and the real Alaa El-Din Bekhit did not take any actions on this manuscript.

Continue reading Food scientist impersonated as an editor and reviewer in Frontiers articles

Editorial board resigns after journal cancels special issue on Palestine

The editorial board of an architecture journal has resigned after its parent association cancelled an upcoming theme issue titled “Palestine.”  

The Journal of Architectural Education planned to publish the issue in fall 2025, according to an archived version of the call for papers, which refers to the “Zionist, militarist, carceral, and capitalist regime of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid.”

“In the face of the ongoing Israeli genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, this issue of the Journal of Architectural Education calls for urgent reflections on this historical moment’s implications for design, research, and education in architecture,” the call for papers read. 

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Osaka misconduct investigation leads to four retractions, with more likely

Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University

A microbiologist formerly of Osaka University has lost four papers, with at least one more retraction pending, after an institutional investigation found fabrication and falsification of data in his published research. 

The investigation found evidence of manipulated results in seven of the papers examined. The university published the notice of its completed inquiry, along with a full report in Japanese, on February 6. 

The report did not name the scientists or cite the articles investigated, but it did include a figure or table with altered data from each paper. Three papers retracted in February mentioned an investigation by Osaka University in the notices; Yukihiro Hiramatsu was the first author on all three. Comparing the figures in the report with ones in Hiramatsu’s publications, we identified the seven articles. (See the list here.) 

Continue reading Osaka misconduct investigation leads to four retractions, with more likely

Guest post: Should Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment be retracted?

A prisoner and guard in the Stanford Prison Experiment. | PrisonExp.org

Philip G. Zimbardo passed away in October 2024 at age 91. He enjoyed an illustrious career at Stanford University, where he taught for 50 years. He accrued a long list of accolades, but his singular and enduring contribution to scholarship was the Stanford Prison Experiment, a simulation carried out in the university’s psychology department in August 1971. The research project became the best-known psychological analysis of institutionalization at the time. 

The study has always been treated with skepticism by penologists and psychologists, and recent scholarship by social scientist Thibault Le Texier has raised fundamental questions about the scientific validity of the investigation, the originality of the research design, the unethical treatment of the subjects, and the credibility of the reported results. 

Many consider Zimbardo’s SPE to be one of the classic studies of experimental psychology in the post-war period. It continues to be reported as a landmark achievement in many psychological textbooks today, despite drawing decades of criticism both in and out of the scientific literature. But considering Le Texier’s findings, should Zimbardo’s work be retracted?

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Weekend reads: Former NIH director suddenly retires; more on patent mills; journal editors talk damage control

Dear RW readers, can you spare $25?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 57,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Former NIH director suddenly retires; more on patent mills; journal editors talk damage control

Don’t tread on me: Snake paper retracted for ‘soft-stepping’ technique

Bothrops jararaca is a pit viper species prevalent in southeastern Brazil.
Credit: Butantan Institute

Agitating snakes isn’t something most of us would do on purpose, but for a group of researchers, it was central to their research. The authors of a May 2024 paper in Scientific Reports achieved that by “softly” stepping on the head, tail and mid-body of newborn, juvenile and adult pit vipers to see how often they would bite. 

But the technique wasn’t quite what the authors’ ethics committee had in mind when approving the study. The journal retracted the paper last month, noting the ethics approval the authors received “did not include newborn snakes or the use of the ‘soft stepping’ method.” 

Lead author João Miguel Alves-Nunes blamed the retraction on a “communication error” by the ethics committee. The researchers believed they had approval both to step on snakes and to include newborn snakes, Alves-Nunes, a former researcher at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, said in an email to Retraction Watch. 

Continue reading Don’t tread on me: Snake paper retracted for ‘soft-stepping’ technique

His manuscript was rejected. Then he saw it published by other authors

A chemist at a university in Pakistan found a surprise when he opened an alert from ResearchGate on a newly published paper on a topic related to his own work. 

When Muhammad Kashif, a chemist at Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, looked at the paper, he noticed “substantial overlap” with an unpublished review article he had submitted to other journals. On closer inspection, he found it was indeed his paper — published by other authors. 

“I was shocked and deeply concerned,” Kashif told Retraction Watch. “My unpublished work was replicated without attribution, undermining months of effort.” 

Continue reading His manuscript was rejected. Then he saw it published by other authors

Seven years after ‘noncompliance’ finding, whistleblowers push for retractions

VA San Diego

Seven years after investigations uncovered “serious noncompliance” in the collection of biological samples at a California VA hospital, the original whistleblowers say several papers related to the work use these problematic samples and should be retracted. But the principal investigator of the work says there’s no reason to question the findings.

The VA San Diego Health Care System was one of 12 institutions involved in the InTeam Consortium, a research initiative between 2013 and 2019 focused on alcohol-related liver inflammation. In 2016, two whistleblowers — Mario Chojkier and Martina Buck — alleged staff at the VA hadn’t obtained proper consent to perform biopsies on critically ill patients and use the samples for research related to the project. 

Subsequent investigations — including one by VA San Diego’s institutional review board — have confirmed violations of policies, primarily related to a lack of informed consent. Ramon Bataller, the principal investigator of the InTeam Consortium, told local media outlet inewsource in 2019 the samples collected at the VA would be “banished” from any academic papers

Continue reading Seven years after ‘noncompliance’ finding, whistleblowers push for retractions