Journal retracts letter about pager explosion injuries in Lebanon

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The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery has retracted a letter it published about a purportedly novel injury observed during the two deadly waves of pager explosions in Lebanon and Syria in 2024, reportedly linked to Israeli intelligence services. 

The original letter, “‘Pager’s trauma’ as a new and destructive type of blast injuries,” published Dec. 26, 2024, had not been indexed by Clarivate’s Web of Science. It focused on the September 2024 attacks in Lebanon and Syria, which led to dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries among Hezbollah fighters and some civilians. The attacks were carried out by boobytrapping walkie-talkies and pagers with explosives and are widely believed to have been carried at the direction of Israeli authorities. 

The new letter argued such injuries are novel, dubbing them “Pager’s trauma.” 

The letter read: 

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Weekend reads: Inside mass resignations; Ukraine’s “stolen institutions”; federal U.S. cuts hit journal subscriptions

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Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500.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: Inside mass resignations; Ukraine’s “stolen institutions”; federal U.S. cuts hit journal subscriptions

Dental researchers fabricated data in two articles, university investigation found

Two former professors and a former graduate student at Osaka Dental University in Japan reused images between three published articles, according to the findings of an institutional investigation. 

The school released the findings of its investigation in January, with a full report in Japanese. The university has not responded to our request for comment. 

According to a machine translation of the report, the university found former graduate student Helin Xing, former assistant professor Isao Yamawaki, and former associate professor Yoichiro Taguchi were involved in misconduct. A recent paper of Taguchi’s lists his affiliation as Matsumoto Dental University in Nagano, Japan. He and Xing have not responded to our requests for comment. We were not able to find a current affiliation or email address for Yamawaki. 

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Cureus paper by dean and medical student retracted for mislabeled ECG 

The ECG from the retracted paper, which the journal said was mislabeled.

A paper by a medical student and an associate professor in Florida has been retracted for errors with the central finding of the study, an electrocardiogram whose labeling “does not actually represent any of the characteristics” of the tracing. 

The paper, “Silent Myocardial Infarction: A Case Report,” was published in Cureus in August 2023 and has been cited once, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retraction notice dated January 28 details issues with the tracing:

Continue reading Cureus paper by dean and medical student retracted for mislabeled ECG 

Why do nearly 45,000 scholarly papers cite themselves?

While thousands of papers cite themselves, the percentage that do so is relatively low.
Haunschild & Bornmann/arXiv.org

While using bibliometric techniques to measure how disruptive research papers are to their field of study, Robin Haunschild and Lutz Bornmann stumbled across a strange phenomenon. 

Just under 45,000 academic papers contained citations to themselves, they found. Haunschild and Bornmann — both information scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany — found these “paper self-citations” in journals indexed by Clarivate’s Web of Science since 1980. 

Some 7,943 different journals had at least one self-citing paper, the researchers report in their study, posted on arXiv.org earlier this month. Eight journals alone covered 10% of the sample papers, and 129 publications covered the top third. More than 31,000 of the papers appeared under the ‘article’ category in Web of Science, followed by just over 6,000 listed as ‘corrections’ and just under 2,500 as ‘reviews.’

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Kidney researcher debarred from federal U.S. funding for image manipulation

Liping Zhang
Source: ResearchGate

A former Baylor College of Medicine researcher has been debarred from federal funding for two years after a review by the Office of Research Integrity found evidence of misconduct.

Liping Zhang, a former assistant professor in the school’s nephrology section, “engaged in research misconduct in research supported by U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) funds,” according to a notice scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on March 19. 

ORI based its findings on a Baylor College of Medicine investigation as well as evidence gathered during its oversight review, the notice states. It continues:  

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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. 

Continue reading Editorial board resigns after journal cancels special issue on Palestine