A timing glitch prompted the temporary removal of a letter to the editor calling out a previously published study for “perpetuating historical harms” through its framing of race and ethnicity. The letter, “Race is not a risk factor: Reframing discourse on racial health inequities in CVD prevention,” appeared online in April in the American Journal … Continue reading Elsevier glitch prompts temporary removal of critique of review on race and heart disease
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. So the saying goes. What about fool me 20 times? In December of last year, Dove Press — a unit of Taylor & Francis — retracted 14 papers by Marty Hinz, a Minnesota physician who has been sanctioned by the U.S. FDA as … Continue reading Publisher retracts 20 of a researcher’s papers — then asks him to peer review
Before we present this week’s Weekend Reads, a question: Do you enjoy our weekly roundup? If so, we could really use your help. Would you consider a tax-deductible donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance. The week at Retraction Watch featured: Drug company withdraws court motion requesting retraction of papers critical … Continue reading Weekend reads: Government interference in research; ‘mega’ reviewers; tobacco funding draws scrutiny
The author of a 2014 review article about the role of vitamin D in Parkinson’s disease has alerted readers to the fact that roughly one-sixth of her references have since been retracted. But she and the journal are not retracting the review itself. The paper, “A review of vitamin D and Parkinson’s disease,” appeared in … Continue reading One in six of the papers you cite in a review has been retracted. What do you do?
An oncology journal has retracted a review article on the hypothetical link between Covid-19 and cancer after determining that the medical writer who authored the work hadn’t done all the writing herself. The paper, “Clinical sequelae of the novel coronavirus: does COVID-19 infection predispose patients to cancer?” appeared in Future Oncology in May and was … Continue reading Medical writer loses COVID-19-cancer paper for plagiarism
The authors of a 2017 paper on resistance to cancer chemotherapy have retracted and replaced the article after learning that it included duplicated material from previously published work by one of the duo. The article, “The evolution and ecology of resistance in cancer therapy,” was written by Robert Gatenby and Joel Brown, of the Moffitt … Continue reading Author blames “multitasking dementia” for duplicated cancer paper
An article claiming that skin pigmentation is related to aggression and sexuality in humans will be retracted, Elsevier announced today. The study, “Do pigmentation and the melanocortin system modulate aggression and sexuality in humans as they do in other animals?” was published online in Personality and Individual Differences, an Elsevier journal, on March 15, 2012. … Continue reading Elsevier journal to retract 2012 paper widely derided as racist
Score one for responsiveness. In mid-May, we reported on the retraction of three review articles by Joachim Boldt, whose papers continue to fall despite his having been exposed as a fraudster a decade ago. At the time, we wondered why another journal, Anesthesia & Analgesia, hadn’t also pulled reviews by Boldt that it had published … Continue reading Slow but steady: Anesthesiology researcher with more than 100 retractions will earn two more
A journal has retracted three review articles by Joachim Boldt, the German anesthetist who currently occupies the second spot on the Retraction Watch leaderboard with 103 retractions. The reviews, which appeared in Intensive Care Medicine, cover articles by Boldt that were published both well before and the same year as his scandal broke in 2010. … Continue reading A ‘very cautious’ process: Journal retracts reviews by anesthesiologist found to have committed fraud a decade ago
We’ve been tracking retractions of papers about COVID-19 as part of our database. Here’s a running list, which will be updated as needed. (For some context on these figures, see this post, our letter in Accountability in Research and the last section of this Nature news article. Also see a note about the terminology regarding … Continue reading Retracted coronavirus (COVID-19) papers