Retraction Watch

Weekend reads: A professor who plagiarized his students; how many postgrads in China think it’s OK to fake data; fighting fraud

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Editor won’t investigate data concerns about paper linking anti-prostitution laws to increased rape
Fired OSU postdoc charged with forgery admitted to faking data, feds say
Exclusive: Researcher has “ceased employment” at university amid investigation and retraction
“Truly devastating”: Four journals won’t get new Impact Factors this year because of citation shenanigans
How can universities and journals better work together on research misconduct?
Science paper marked with expression of concern after readers pointed out data issue
BMJ journal retracts e-cigarette paper after authors disclose tobacco industry funding late in the process

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to more than 300.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):

BMJ journal retracts e-cigarette paper after authors disclose tobacco industry funding late in the process

BMJ Open has retracted a paper describing a study in which people with diabetes will be switched from cigarettes to vaping after the journal learned – late in the process of publication – that the authors were indirectly funded by the tobacco company, Philip Morris International.

The paper, “International randomised controlled trial evaluating metabolic syndrome in type 2 diabetic cigarette smokers following switching to combustion-free nicotine delivery systems: the DIASMOKE protocol,” was originally published on April 1, 2021. Its retraction notice, dated June 20, 2023, reads:

Science paper marked with expression of concern after readers pointed out data issue

A paper published in Science two years ago has been flagged with an expression of concern while the editors give the authors a chance to correct a data issue identified by two different readers.

“Light-induced mobile factors from shoots regulate rhizobium-triggered soybean root nodulation,” was published in September 2021 and has been cited 43 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The notice, published today, states:

How can universities and journals better work together on research misconduct?

When it comes to delays in correcting the scientific record — and less-than-helpful retraction notices — it’s not uncommon to see journals blaming universities for being slow and less than forthcoming, and universities blaming journals for being impatient and not respecting the confidentiality of their processes. So in 2021 and 2022, a group of university research integrity officers, journal editors and others gathered to discuss those issues.

In a new paper in JAMA Network Open, the group recommends specific changes to the status quo to enable effective communication between institutions and journals:”

(1) reconsideration and broadening of the interpretation by institutions of the need-to-know criteria in federal regulations (ie, confidential or sensitive information and data are not disclosed unless there is a need for an individual to know the facts to perform specific jobs or functions), (2) uncoupling the evaluation of the accuracy and validity of research data from the determination of culpability and intent of the individuals involved, and (3) initiating a widespread change for the policies of journals and publishers regarding the timing and appropriateness for contacting institutions, either before or concurrently under certain conditions, when contacting the authors.

We asked Susan Garfinkel, the associate vice president for research compliance at The Ohio State and the corresponding author of the article, some questions.

“Truly devastating”: Four journals won’t get new Impact Factors this year because of citation shenanigans

Clarivate, the company that assigns journals Impact Factors, this year will not give four journals updated versions of the controversial metric used by many institutions and publications as a shorthand for quality.

The journals will remain indexed in Web of Science, but won’t have an Impact Factor for this year in Clarivate’s 2023 Journal Citation Reports.

According to Clarivate, Marketing Theory, a SAGE title, has been suppressed for self-citation. Three other journals have been suppressed for citation stacking, sometimes referred to as “citation cartels” or “citation rings.” The other journals are as follows:

Exclusive: Researcher has “ceased employment” at university amid investigation and retraction

A neurology researcher in Australia is no longer employed at his former university in the midst of a research misconduct investigation, Retraction Watch has learned. And the work of a co-author at another institution also is being assessed for possible research misconduct after sleuths alerted the university to comments on PubPeer about potential data issues in his papers.

The retracted article, “Changes in Cathepsin D and Beclin-1 mRNA and protein expression by the excitotoxin quinolinic acid in human astrocytes and neurons,” was published in Metabolic Brain Disease in 2014 and has been cited 13 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The journal’s editor-in-chief, Gregory Konat, retracted the paper because several of the western blots appeared to be duplicated and he no longer had confidence in the results, according to the retraction notice. The six authors are researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Macquarie University and St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.

Fired OSU postdoc charged with forgery admitted to faking data, feds say

A cancer researcher who was terminated from one postdoc position and resigned another faked data in multiple papers and grant applications, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

ORI found that Yiorgos (Georgios) I. Laliotis “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally and knowingly falsifying and/or fabricating data, methods, results, and conclusions” in three published papers and two applications for grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings were based on Laliotis’ own admissions as well as reports from The Ohio State University and Johns Hopkins University.

As we’ve previously reported, Ohio State terminated Laliotis from his postdoc position in November of 2021, and he apparently resigned from another postdoc position at Johns Hopkins University that same month. Whether both universities employed him at the same time is unclear.

Laliotis has also been charged in Franklin County, Ohio – home to Ohio State – with forgery, identity theft, and telecommunications fraud in connection with allegations he created a fake email address in the name of Philip Tsichlis, his PI at Ohio State, and used it to send letters of recommendation purportedly from Tsichlis to prospective employers. Laliotis has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Editor won’t investigate data concerns about paper linking anti-prostitution laws to increased rape

After reading an economics paper that claimed to document an increase in the rate of rape in European countries following the passage of prostitution bans, a data scientist had questions.

The scientist, who wishes to remain anonymous, sent a detailed email to an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics, which had published the paper last November, outlining concerns about the data and methods the authors used.

Among them: the historical rates of rape recorded in the paper did not match the values in the official sources the authors said they used. In other cases, data that were available from the official sources were missing in the paper, the researchers didn’t incorporate all the data they had collected into their model, and a variable was coded inconsistently, the data scientist wrote. (We’ve made the full critique available here.)

Given the consequences the conclusions of the article could have for people in the sex industry, the data scientist wrote, “I hope that someone takes this very seriously and looks into it the [sic] validity of the analysis and the data they used.”

Weekend reads: A fraudster is sentenced to prison; how another reinvented himself; RFK Jr.’s retraction, redux

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Plagiarism scandal engulfs high-profile academic in Latvia

Two years after it was quietly retracted “due to plagiarism,” a paper by a prominent researcher in Latvia has set the country’s media ablaze, drawing comments from, among others, the minister of education and science and the rector of a leading university.

The plagiarized paper came to public attention in March when the Latvian magazine Ir published serious allegations against Maris Klavins, a professor and former dean at the University of Latvia. The allegations concern “possible fraud” in an EU-funded project headed by Klavins and include not only plagiarism but data falsification, budget irregularities and suspicious cash payments.

According to Ir, the Latvian police have opened a criminal investigation into the case. Klavins told the magazine he has not been charged in the matter.

In an email to Retraction Watch, Klavins called the allegations “lies” and said the “person responsible” for “my defamation and persecution” was his former PhD student Dmitrijs Porsnovs.

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