Weekend reads: 17 retractions from a closed clinic; J&J sues researchers; Retraction Watch in Le Monde

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300. There are now 41,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in Edifix, EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains 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?

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: 17 retractions from a closed clinic; J&J sues researchers; Retraction Watch in Le Monde

University finds former lecturer with two retractions plagiarized in seven publications

A former lecturer in the modern languages department of the University of St Andrews in Scotland committed plagiarism in seven papers published between 2014 and 2022, according to the results of an institutional investigation. 

The university posted a statement on its website about the outcome of the investigation that did not name the researcher, who Retraction Watch has learned is Ros Holmes. 

Holmes has two retractions in our database, both for plagiarism. 

Continue reading University finds former lecturer with two retractions plagiarized in seven publications

University cuts anesthesiology researcher’s funding amid four retractions

An anesthesiologist who had his funding revoked for fabricating data has earned a fourth retraction for publishing the same data in two Springer Nature journals. 

Wen-fei Tan, an anesthesiologist at The First Hospital of China Medical University in Shenyang, is the first author of the recently retracted paper “Changes in the first postoperative night bispectral index of patients after thyroidectomy with different types of primary anesthetic management: a randomized controlled trial,” published in the Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing (JCMC), a Springer Nature journal, in 2017. It has been cited four times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

The retraction notice states: 

Continue reading University cuts anesthesiology researcher’s funding amid four retractions

The new retraction record holder is a German anesthesiologist, with 184

Ludwigshafen Hospital, via Wikimedia

The German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt has lost 20 more papers since January 2023, earning him the top spot in our leaderboard, with 184 retractions. 

Boldt, readers may recall, was once one of the leading international figures in perioperative medicine. His work, particularly studies involving the use of fluid management during surgery, helped inform clinical guidelines that, thanks to his misdeeds, some experts believe may have put patients at risk for serious harm and even death.

Boldt has vaulted over another anesthesiologist, Yoshitaka Fujii, to take the crown (more on that in a moment) – although one might fairly ask: Why did it take so long?

Continue reading The new retraction record holder is a German anesthesiologist, with 184

Editorial board member dropped from journal site after Retraction Watch-Undark report links him to paper mill

Masoud Afrand

The journal Scientific Reports removed a scientist linked to paper mill activity from its editorial board last year, but didn’t take his name off the web page until last month, after a Retraction Watch-Undark story pointed out his association. 

The former editorial board member, Masoud Afrand, is an assistant professor of engineering at the Islamic Azad University in Iran. 

In our story, Alexander Magazinov, a scientific sleuth and software engineer based in Kazakhstan, cited Afrand as an example of researchers seemingly associated with paper mills who manage to get editorial positions at reputable journals. Afrand, he said: 

Continue reading Editorial board member dropped from journal site after Retraction Watch-Undark report links him to paper mill

‘Shocked and flabbergasted’: Journal updates duplicate article it had said was “sufficiently” different from original

Ralf Engels

A journal for conference proceedings which published a duplicate article has updated the later version, after originally telling the researcher who noticed the duplication that the articles were different enough to warrant publishing both.  

The article, titled “Production and storage of polarized H2, D2, and HD molecules,” was published twice in the journal Proceedings of Science, in 2018 and in 2019. The first version represented proceedings from a talk given at the 2017 XVII International Workshop on Polarized Sources, Targets & Polarimetry in Kaist, South Korea; the second was from the 23rd International Spin Physics Symposium in Ferrara, Italy, held in 2018. 

The later version has minor differences from the first, including more technical details about the study’s methods.

PoS, which is run by the International School for Advanced Studies based in Trieste, Italy, functions as a repository for various conference proceedings. It is run by a small staff, and each submission is reviewed by an individual conference’s editorial board.

A researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, contacted PoS after coming across the two nearly identical versions of “Production and storage of polarized H2, D2, and HD molecules.” A journal representative first told the researcher that the journal would investigate the situation, then that “the contributions differ sufficiently in order to warrant both their publication,” according to an email seen by Retraction Watch.

Continue reading ‘Shocked and flabbergasted’: Journal updates duplicate article it had said was “sufficiently” different from original

Weekend reads: NIH defunds Colombian monkey facility; Carlo Croce loses another court battle; ‘peer review is porous’

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 more than 300. There are now 41,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains 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?

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: NIH defunds Colombian monkey facility; Carlo Croce loses another court battle; ‘peer review is porous’

Publisher blacklists authors after preprint cites made-up studies

Henrik Enghoff

Last month, a millipede expert in Denmark received an email notifying him that one of his publications had been mentioned in a new manuscript on Preprints.org. But when the researcher, Henrik Enghoff, downloaded the paper, he learned that it cited his work for something off-topic.

Stranger still, the authors of the now-withdrawn preprint, a group of researchers in China and Africa, also referenced two papers by Enghoff that he knew he hadn’t written. It turned out they didn’t exist.

“I’ve never had anything like this happen before,” Enghoff, a professor at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, in Copenhagen, told Retraction Watch.

Continue reading Publisher blacklists authors after preprint cites made-up studies

Editors of public health journal resign over differences with publisher

Lindsay McLaren
Lindsay McLaren

The co-editors in chief and most editorial board members of the journal Critical Public Health have resigned their roles to start a new, independent journal, citing differences with their publisher, Taylor & Francis. 

“While there are inevitable tensions for a critically oriented scholarly journal that is also a commodity marketed by a commercial publisher, over the last year or so it has become increasingly difficult to hold together these two different versions of the journal,” co-editors Judith Green of the University of Exeter in the UK and Lindsay McLaren of the University of Calgary in Canada said in a press release announcing the mass resignation. 

“It is simply a relationship that hasn’t worked out and we need to find other ways to continue the spirit of the community,” McLaren told us. 

Continue reading Editors of public health journal resign over differences with publisher

Scientist sues publisher to block expression of concern

Soudamani Singh

A gastroenterology researcher has sued a scientific journal to stop it from publishing an expression of concern for one of her papers. 

Soudamani Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Translational Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W. Va., is the middle author of “Cyclooxygenase pathway mediates the inhibition of Na-glutamine co-transporter B0AT1 in rabbit villus cells during chronic intestinal inflammation,” published in PLOS ONE in September 2018. The article has been cited nine times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

We previously reported that the corresponding author of the paper, Uma Sundaram, vice dean of research and graduate education at the Edwards School and chair of its department of clinical and translational science, told us he had contacted PLOS to request a correction to the article. 

Continue reading Scientist sues publisher to block expression of concern