Search Results for: elsevier

After legal threats from Herbalife, Elsevier journal retracts — and then removes — a paper

Bowing to legal pressure from the supplement maker Herbalife, Elsevier earlier this year retracted — and then removed — a paper which claimed that a young woman in India died of liver failure after using the company’s products. The move has led to more legal threats. In August 2018, a group of researchers in India … Continue reading After legal threats from Herbalife, Elsevier journal retracts — and then removes — a paper

Elsevier looking into “very serious concerns” after student calls out journal for fleet of Star Trek articles, other issues

An undergraduate student in the United Kingdom has taken to task the editors of a purportedly scholarly journal for having published more than 100 papers by a Maltese researcher with a deep affinity for Star Trek. In a Dec. 8, 2020, letter to the editors of Early Human Development (EHD), Hampton Gaddy, a BA student … Continue reading Elsevier looking into “very serious concerns” after student calls out journal for fleet of Star Trek articles, other issues

Journal drops the ball as it tries to juggle an embargo request and Elsevier’s temporary removal policy

So much for author instructions. Researchers who’d submitted a paper to Social Science & Medicine on smoking in public places briefly lost their article after the journal had some confusion about an embargo they’d requested.  The article, “Neighbourhood greenspace and smoking prevalence: Results from a nationally representative survey in England,” has since been republished in … Continue reading Journal drops the ball as it tries to juggle an embargo request and Elsevier’s temporary removal policy

Amulets may prevent COVID-19, says a paper in Elsevier journal. (They don’t.)

Sometimes, we just don’t know what to say. So we’ll let the people of Twitter comment on a paper titled “Can Traditional Chinese Medicine provide insights into controlling the COVID-19 pandemic: Serpentinization-induced lithospheric long-wavelength magnetic anomalies in Proterozoic bedrocks in a weakened geomagnetic field mediate the aberrant transformation of biogenic molecules in COVID-19 via magnetic … Continue reading Amulets may prevent COVID-19, says a paper in Elsevier journal. (They don’t.)

Elsevier journal disavows, but does not retract, paper on intelligent design

An Elsevier journal has disavowed, but not yet retracted, a paper creationists are calling a “a big deal for the mainstreaming” of intelligent design.  The article, “Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems,” appeared in the September issue of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, but has been online since June. … Continue reading Elsevier journal disavows, but does not retract, paper on intelligent design

‘Transparently ridiculous’: Elsevier says journal shares critic’s concerns about bizarre genetics paper

Elsevier says it is investigating how one of its journals managed to publish a paper with patently absurd assertions about the genetic inheritance of personality traits. The paper, “Temperament gene inheritance,” appears this month in Meta Gene and was written by authors in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It states: 

COVID-19 arrived on a meteorite, claims Elsevier book chapter

If bats and pangolins could review scientific papers, they’d definitely have given the following article an “accept without revisions.”  An international group of researchers has proposed that COVID-19 hitched a ride to this planet from space. Same for the fungal infection Candida auris.  We’ve heard plenty of bizarre theories about the novel coronavirus behind the … Continue reading COVID-19 arrived on a meteorite, claims Elsevier book chapter

Elsevier journal to retract 2012 paper widely derided as racist

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

A year after a university asked two Elsevier journals to retract papers, they haven’t

How long should a retraction take? As Retraction Watch readers may recall, that’s a question we ask often. In 2018, for example, we wrote a post noting that nearly two years after the University of Maryland, Baltimore, had requested retractions, the journals had done nothing. Some of the papers have since been retracted. We have … Continue reading A year after a university asked two Elsevier journals to retract papers, they haven’t

Elsevier investigating hydroxychloroquine-COVID-19 paper

Elsevier has weighed in on the handling of a controversial paper about the utility of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 infection, defending the rigor of the peer review process for the article in the face of concerns that the authors included the top editor of the journal that published the work.  On April 3, as we … Continue reading Elsevier investigating hydroxychloroquine-COVID-19 paper