‘My egregious delay’: Science journal takes more than three years to retract paper after university investigation

The editor of a Science family journal waited three years before beginning the process of retracting a paper after learning that the University of Wisconsin at Madison had found duplication and mislabeling but no misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.

As we reported last November, the paper, “The receptor tyrosine kinase AXL mediates nuclear translocation of the epidermal growth factor receptor,” was published in 2017 in Science Signaling. It was retracted this past November, and the notice referred to a university investigation.

That prompted us to submit a public records request on November 12 for the investigation as well as any correspondence between the university and the journal. In a response on January 12, the university denied our request for the report of the investigation, saying that “There is a review still underway at the federal level regarding this issue.” (That is a good reminder of how long the U.S. Office of Research Integrity can take to review such investigations.)

But the university released correspondence between Deric Wheeler, the corresponding author of the paper, and John Foley, the editor of the journal, which we’ve made available here. The thread begins on July 6, 2021 – just one month shy of three years after Foley learned of an investigation into the research – with an email from Foley in which the editor acknowledged “an egregious delay”:

Continue reading ‘My egregious delay’: Science journal takes more than three years to retract paper after university investigation

How an ivermectin study that didn’t mention COVID-19 fell under scrutiny

Kyle Sheldrick

A PLOS journal has issued an expression of concern for a 2018 paper which claimed that ivermectin could be useful as a way to control dengue fever. 

In fact, the reason the journal re-examined the article was because the hype about the use of ivermectin for Covid-19 led at least one skeptic to take a closer look at the study – and he didn’t like what he saw. 

The article, “Antivirus effectiveness of ivermectin on dengue virus type 2 in Aedes albopictus,” was written by a group in China led by Tie-Long Xu, of the National Institute of Parasitic Diseases at the  Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the study, which appeared on PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases: 

Continue reading How an ivermectin study that didn’t mention COVID-19 fell under scrutiny

Should residents and fellows be encouraged to publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses?

Michelle Ghert

The ‘publish or perish’ culture is no longer reserved for academic faculty and post-doctoral fellows. The paradigm has spilled over (or bled into) medical training,  aided by the digital revolution. The widespread availability of online library catalogs and referencing software has enabled the mass production of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. 

In short, medical research no longer requires original ideas, just access to the internet, which is perhaps why, as one 2018 editorial put it, there is “Replication, Duplication, and Waste in a Quarter Million Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses.”

With all of that in mind, the orthopaedic surgery residents at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, gathered virtually for their annual research day to debate whether they supported or rejected the status quo that residents be encouraged to publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses. At the start of the debate, following an opening Visiting Professor Presentation on trends in retractions by Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky, 58% of the residents opposed the status quo, while 42% supported it. 

Continue reading Should residents and fellows be encouraged to publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses?

Authors admit to stealing parts of a paper from a thesis on an unrelated subject

“Nailed” doctoral theses on a wall in Biomedicum, Campus Solna, in spring 2021. Photo: Katarina Sternudd

The authors of a paper in a cancer journal have retracted it after acknowledging they lifted parts of it from a thesis about an unrelated topic.

Here’s the retraction notice for “Regulation of RUNX3 Expression by DNA Methylation in Prostate Cancer,” originally published in July 2020 in Cancer Management and Research, a Dove title:

Continue reading Authors admit to stealing parts of a paper from a thesis on an unrelated subject

Weekend reads: A White House official’s retraction; ‘bosom peril;’ nonsense with a forged authorship

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 206. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, Papers, and Zotero. 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: A White House official’s retraction; ‘bosom peril;’ nonsense with a forged authorship

Exclusive: How a researcher faked data and gaslit a labmate for years

Ryan Evanoff

Sometime in early 2019, a postdoc in a veterinary microbiology lab at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman came to suspect that a research assistant in her lab was fabricating data.

The postdoc had noticed that the research assistant’s experiments always produced positive results, while hers were always negative. And the experiments she performed with materials from the assistant gave “alarmingly inconsistent” results for no apparent reason, she said in an interview with an investigation committee.

She brought her concerns to a senior researcher, and the research assistant, Ryan Evanoff, was asked to “detail what he had done,” but apparently nothing came of it. 

The supervisor indicated that the postdoc’s initial message outlining her concerns “was not clear enough,” but the postdoc thought she’d been clear and says she’d been “extremely careful” due to the severity of the situation.

Continue reading Exclusive: How a researcher faked data and gaslit a labmate for years

COVID-19 spike protein paper earns an expression of concern

A virology journal has issued an expression of concern about a paper claiming that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can damage DNA after one member of the research team raised reservations about the reported findings. 

The article, “SARS-CoV-2 Spike Impairs DNA Damage Repair and Inhibits V(D)J Recombination In Vitro,” was written by a pair of scientists at institutions in Sweden and published in MDPI’s Viruses (as Vincent Racaniello of TWiV would say, the kind that make you sick).

The paper has received a fair amount of attention – particularly among vaccine skeptics who, as critics noted, used the article to buttress their claims that Covid vaccines are unsafe – generating enough buzz on social media and in the news to make it into the top 5% of all articles tracked by Altmetric. TWiV even devoted part of an episode of the show to the findings. 

According to the journal: 

Continue reading COVID-19 spike protein paper earns an expression of concern

Frontiers retracts a dozen papers, many more expected

The publisher Frontiers has retracted at least a dozen papers in the last month, after announcing an “extensive internal investigation” into “potentially falsified research.”

Here’s an example of a notice, this one from Frontiers in Endocrinology for “Overexpression of microRNA-216a-3p Accelerates the Inflammatory Response in Cardiomyocytes in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus by Targeting IFN-α2,” which was originally published in November 2020:

Continue reading Frontiers retracts a dozen papers, many more expected

Authors to correct PNAS ‘nudge’ paper that cites now-retracted article in the same journal

Tobias Brosch

The authors of a paper on “nudge experiments” published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) plan to correct it following questions about some of its conclusions and citations, Retraction Watch has learned.

Following up on comments by Aaron Charlton and Nick Brown, Columbia University’s Andrew Gelman, who is deeply skeptical of the findings, raised several questions about the paper in a post on January 7. Among them were that the paper cites 11 articles by food marketing researcher Brian Wansink, whom Retraction Watch readers may recall resigned from his post at Cornell following an investigation and has had 17 papers retracted, one of them twice.

Gelman also notes that the paper cites a paper by Dan Ariely and colleagues that was retracted in September. We’ll focus here on the inclusion of that reference.

Co-corresponding author Tobias Brosch, of the University of Geneva, responded within hours of Gelman’s post, writing in part:

Continue reading Authors to correct PNAS ‘nudge’ paper that cites now-retracted article in the same journal

Weekend reads: A museum of scientific misconduct?; authorship misconduct; uproar over renamed phyla

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 206. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, Papers, and Zotero. 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: A museum of scientific misconduct?; authorship misconduct; uproar over renamed phyla