Weekend reads: More allegations at Harvard; plagiarism euphemisms; citation cartels in math

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to nearly 400. There are more than 46,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 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? Or The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

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: More allegations at Harvard; plagiarism euphemisms; citation cartels in math

Book retraction surfaces long-standing feud between South African academics

Kgothatso Shai

In October, a South African political scientist published a book on how scholars in Africa can improve their standing in the larger academic world. Three months later, after heated emails from several sources alleging ethics breaches, the publisher retracted the book.

The retraction notice, posted Jan. 12, 2024, states that UJ Press retracted and removed the book from its catalog “due to concerns arising from the publication.” Publisher Wilkus van Zyl told us the press had asked the peer reviewers of the manuscript to re-examine the volume with an additional set of questions after they received emails questioning the work’s legitimacy. The reviewers determined the book lacked scholarly rigor and contained “inappropriate criticisms that appear to be based on personal grievances rather than legitimate scholarly discourse.” 

The retraction is the latest bout in a years-long quarrel between two feuding academics. Kgothatso Shai is a professor at the University of Limpopo, who writes about African politics and international relations. Several chapters of his book, “An Afrocentric Idea on Contested Knowledge: Selected Cases,” critiqued Facebook posts from Shepherd Mpofu, a media studies professor at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. Over the last few years, Mpofu has routinely criticized Shai’s works as “pathetic scholarship” in Facebook posts seen by Retraction Watch.

Continue reading Book retraction surfaces long-standing feud between South African academics

Paper about clergy sexual abuses in South Korean churches retracted over ‘citation irregularities’

A year after writing an article about a movement in South Korea to hold clergymembers accountable for sexual abuse, a theology professor has asked for the paper to be retracted after acknowledging “citation irregularities” in the work. The specific problems remain unclear. 

The paper’s retraction notice, dated December 21, 2023, states that the editors of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics supported the request to pull the article. Asked for more details about which “irregularities” or other factors might have contributed to the retraction, Maria Teresa Dávila, one of the journal’s editors and an associate professor of religious studies at Merrimack College, in North Andover, Massachusetts, confirmed the retraction and referenced the society’s publishing guidelines and ethics statement, but did not highlight specific passages that would pertain to this specific case. She also refused to answer further questions about the retraction. 

Continue reading Paper about clergy sexual abuses in South Korean churches retracted over ‘citation irregularities’

Journal retracts 80 papers ID’d as paper mill products following sleuth’s report, Undark-Retraction Watch investigation

Nearly two years after being warned one of its journals appeared to be the target of a paper mill operation, Taylor & Francis has retracted 80 articles that appeared in that journal.

Last June, Undark and Retraction Watch reported on the efforts of a sleuth using the name Aishwarya Swaminathan to alert Taylor & Francis and other publishers starting in April 2022 that a data scientist named Gunasekaran Manogaran allegedly runs “a research paper publishing scam” that targets special issues. Such issues appear to be particularly vulnerable to paper mills.

Another sleuth, Nick Wise, also worked to suss out the problems, and El Pais reported on the links between Manogaran and a professor in Spain in October.

Now, Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B — Soil & Plant Science has retracted 80 papers, all with a notice that specifies the name of the relevant special issue:

Continue reading Journal retracts 80 papers ID’d as paper mill products following sleuth’s report, Undark-Retraction Watch investigation

Journal takes 3 years to pull papers by researcher who committed misconduct

Samson Jacob

Nearly three years after a university investigation committee recommended retracting several papers by a cancer researcher found guilty of research misconduct, the journal Cancer Research has pulled three of the offending articles.

The journal also retracted a fourth paper by the researcher, Samson Jacob, a former emeritus professor at The Ohio State University, which had been flagged on PubPeer.

In 2021, the OSU committee reviewed dozens of allegations against Jacob’s work, and found 14 of them met at least one of two evidence standards for research misconduct, as we reported in 2022. The allegations mainly centered on figures that appeared to be spliced together from different experimental runs, which was not acknowledged in the studies – a concern the new retraction notices also mention. 

Continue reading Journal takes 3 years to pull papers by researcher who committed misconduct

Weekend reads: ‘Unethical studies on China minority groups;’ an editorial board signs off; the sleuth who uncovered Dana Farber paper problems

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work?

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to nearly 400. There are more than 46,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains well over 200 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? Or The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List?

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: ‘Unethical studies on China minority groups;’ an editorial board signs off; the sleuth who uncovered Dana Farber paper problems

Journal retracts more than 50 studies from Saudi Arabia for faked authorship

The journal Cureus has retracted 56 papers nearly two years after it first began to suspect the works were of dubious lineage.

Cureus – an open access journal founded in 2009 and acquired by Springer Nature in 2022 – slapped 55 of the papers with expressions of concern in April 2022. At that time, at least one author said they didn’t know anything about the work and Cureus noted the “articles were submitted and subsequently published purportedly as an effort coordinated by Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University to ensure all medical interns publish at least one peer-reviewed article in order to qualify for enrollment in a postgraduate residency program as stipulated by The Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS).”

At the time, Cureus’ founding editor in chief John Adler told us “The investigation has been frustratingly slow due to the relative unresponsiveness of Saudi gov officials.” Apparently, that remained the case. This week, the journal retracted 56 studies. All of the retraction notices read the same way:

Continue reading Journal retracts more than 50 studies from Saudi Arabia for faked authorship

Springer Nature journal pulls nearly three dozen papers from special issues

A Springer Nature journal retracted 34 papers earlier this month, including, ironically enough, one on how to detect fake news, which appeared in special guest-edited issues hacked by publication cheats.

Special issues have emerged over the past few years as particularly vulnerable to paper mills. Last March, we reported that Wiley was taking a $9 million write-down after its Hindawi subsidiary paused publication of such issues because they were badly hacked by paper mills.

“Hybrid deep learning model for automatic fake news detection,” from a group in Turkey led by Othman A. Hanshal, was published last February in Applied Nanoscience. The retraction notice reads: 

Continue reading Springer Nature journal pulls nearly three dozen papers from special issues

Journal pulls papers following Retraction Watch investigation

A journal quietly retracted two papers after a six-month Retraction Watch investigation linked them, and two of the journal’s editors, to the Indian paper mill iTrilon.

Based in Chennai, iTrilon hawks authorship of “readymade” publications to scientists “struggling to write and publish papers in PubMed and Scopus-Indexed Journals.” The company, whose website disappeared following our exposé in Science, claims to have connections at journals that allow it to guarantee acceptance of many of its papers. 

The two retracted papers – “Evaluation of the neuroprotective activity of citral nanoemulsion on Alzheimer’s disease-type dementia in a preclinical model: The assessment of cognitive and neurobiochemical responses” and “Therapeutic effects of quercetin-loaded phytosome nanoparticles in a preclinical model of Parkinson’s disease: The modulation by antioxidant pathways and BDNF expression” – had both been put up for sale by iTrilon before they appeared last year in the non-indexed journal Life Neuroscience. 

We published the matching ads last week in a companion piece to the Science article that linked a professor and dean at a university in Spain to several iTrilon papers. The dean, Dionisio Lorenzo Lorenzo Villegas of Universidad Fernando Pessoa-Canarias, in Las Palmas, acknowledged paying the paper mill, but said he thought the money was meant to cover article-processing charges. He has since taken down his LinkedIn profile.

Continue reading Journal pulls papers following Retraction Watch investigation

Exclusive: Elsevier journal COPE threatened with sanctions will retract four more articles

Andrew Grey

The journal a publication ethics watchdog threatened with sanctions for taking years to retract articles will pull four more related papers, Retraction Watch has learned. 

Last July, the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) sent a warning letter to Elsevier regarding 10 papers by Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto, who hold positions four and six on our leaderboard of retractions, that the publisher had said it would retract three and a half years ago. 

As we reported previously, seven of the papers were retracted from Journal of the Neurological Sciences in December 2023. 

Following our reporting on COPE’s letter to Elsevier, the publisher has decided to retract the remaining three articles, plus a letter regarding one of the retracted papers, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch. 

Continue reading Exclusive: Elsevier journal COPE threatened with sanctions will retract four more articles