Weekend reads: Underage sex comic study removed following outrage; postdoc claims retaliation; plagiarism in COVID-19 papers

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 254. There are more than 35,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, 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: Underage sex comic study removed following outrage; postdoc claims retaliation; plagiarism in COVID-19 papers

Doing the right thing: Harvard researchers retract Cell paper after work contradicts finding

Corresponding author Thomas Look

The authors of a 2020 paper in Cell are earning plaudits after they retracted the study following the publication of an article last year that contradicted their earlier findings.

The paper, “Allosteric Activators of Protein Phosphatase 2A Display Broad Antitumor Activity Mediated by Dephosphorylation of MYBL2,” purported to show that a particular compound could be useful in animal studies because it did not have some of the off-target activity of other compounds. It has been cited 45 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

But as the retraction notice says, a paper published last year in The EMBO Journal by Jakob Nilsson and Gianmatteo Vit of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues found that wasn’t true:

Continue reading Doing the right thing: Harvard researchers retract Cell paper after work contradicts finding

Science retracts coral reef recovery paper more than a year after a report on allegations in its own pages

Danielle Dixson

Fifteen months after its news division published an investigation into work on coral reef recovery, Science has retracted a 2014 paper on the subject.

The article, “Chemically mediated behavior of recruiting corals and fishes: A tipping point that may limit reef recovery,” was written by a group at Georgia Institute of Technology led by Danielle Dixson, then a postdoc at the university. Science issued an expression of concern in February of this year, as we reported then.

According to the retraction notice, signed by Science editor in chief Holden Thorp, the University of Delaware, Lewes, where Dixson has been running her own lab, “no longer [has] confidence in the validity of the data”:

Continue reading Science retracts coral reef recovery paper more than a year after a report on allegations in its own pages

‘A significant departure’: Former Kentucky researcher faked 28 figures in grant applications and papers, say Feds

Stuart Jarrett

A former researcher at the University of Kentucky committed misconduct in both published papers and grant applications, according to a federal watchdog.

The finding from the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) comes two years after the University of Kentucky announced that it had concluded that the scientist, Stuart Jarrett, had committed misconduct on four papers and two federal grant applications – and demoted his supervisor.

Jarrett, a Wales native who left the school in September 2019, faked data in studies of melanoma and reported it in 28 figures in four papers, one funded NIH grant, and two unfunded NIH grants, according to ORI. “[T]hese acts constitute a significant departure from accepted practices of the relevant research community,” ORI said. 

Continue reading ‘A significant departure’: Former Kentucky researcher faked 28 figures in grant applications and papers, say Feds

Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag

Paul Sanberg

A journal has issued an expression of concern for a federally-funded paper on Alzheimer’s disease after a sleuth on PubPeer noted potentially duplicated figures in the article. 

We shouldn’t forget to mention, as the paper did, that one of the authors – a prominent scientist who happens also to be a co-editor in chief of the journal – has financial ties to a company with interest in the work. That author said the fault lies with the corresponding author.   

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, it seems, when it comes to neurofibrillary tangles. And we’ve seen at least one other case of a paper failing to disclose conflicts of interest in a paper he’d published in his own journal. (This is a subject that has been taken up elsewhere.)

The article in this case, “Human Umbilical Cord Blood-Derived Monocytes Improve Cognitive Deficits and Reduce Amyloid-β Pathology in PSAPP Mice,” appeared in Cell Transplantation, a SAGE title, in November 2015. 

Continue reading Company’s Alzheimer’s treatment study earns a flag

Weekend reads: Are papers retracted often enough?; ‘What makes an undercover science sleuth tick?’; journals dominate prestige rankings

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 253. There are more than 35,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, 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: Are papers retracted often enough?; ‘What makes an undercover science sleuth tick?’; journals dominate prestige rankings

UCLA veteran researcher faked data in 11 grant applications, per Feds

UCLA

A 10-year veteran of the University of California, Los Angeles “engaged in research misconduct by knowingly and recklessly” faking data in 11 different grant applications, according to a U.S. federal watchdog.

[Please see an update on this post; UCLA now says one of the 11 grant applications did not include faked data.]

Janina Jiang, who joined UCLA’s pathology and laboratory medicine department in 2010, faked “flow cytometry data to represent interferon-γ (IFN-γ) expression in immune cells of mice administered with human recombinant vaults such that the represented data were incompatible with the raw experimental data,” the Office of Research Integrity said in its findings earlier this week.

Jiang, who appears to work at a lab at UCLA affiliate hospital Cedars Sinai, agreed to three years of supervision for any federally funded work. She has not responded to a request for comment from Retraction Watch.

Continue reading UCLA veteran researcher faked data in 11 grant applications, per Feds

More than a year ago, an editor agreed a paper should be retracted. It hasn’t been.

Eighteen months after the editor in chief of a Springer Nature journal received allegations of plagiarism – and more than a year after the editor apparently decided to retract it – the article remains intact and the journal’s investigation has not yet concluded. 

The paper, “Robotic Standard Development Life Cycle in Action,” was published in the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems in November 2019. It has been cited 13 times, according to Clarivate Analytics, five of those since the journal received the allegations. 

Its abstract states: 

Continue reading More than a year ago, an editor agreed a paper should be retracted. It hasn’t been.

Doctor faces apparent retaliation after alleging data manipulation in published trial

Fouad Fayad

A rheumatologist was suspended from a professional society and his license to practice medicine was threatened after he raised concerns about data manipulation in a published study for which he recruited patients, according to documents seen by Retraction Watch. 

The study, “Added Value of Anti-CD74 Autoantibodies in Axial SpondyloArthritis in a Population With Low HLA-B27 Prevalence,” was published in Frontiers in Immunology in 2019 and has been cited 13 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. In its acknowledgements, it listed Fouad Fayad, a rheumatologist at the University of Saint Joseph and Hotel-Dieu de France University Medical Center in Beirut, as one of the researchers who recruited patients for the trial. 

Fayad alleged that the researchers tested patient samples multiple times and used a mix of old and new values in their analysis. After he reported his concerns to the journal and then the university, which both concluded that they could not confirm or refute his allegations, he has faced apparent retaliation, including the suspension of his membership in the Lebanese Society of Rheumatology. 

In comments to Retraction Watch, the corresponding author for the study noted that the two investigations did not find data manipulation, and said the issue was “based on a background of personal and professional conflicts.” 

Continue reading Doctor faces apparent retaliation after alleging data manipulation in published trial

Leading primate researcher admits to faking data in NIH grant applications, paper

Deepak Kaushal

The director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio faked data 10 different times in federal grant applications and a now-retracted paper, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

The Texas primate center has garnered some attention during the pandemic for taking part in tests of a COVID-19 vaccine and treatment unrelated to the faked data.

Deepak Kaushal, according to his bio, “oversees the SNPRC operations, a more than $40 million NIH-funded national resource for primate research” and “is principal investigator on 15 NIH-funded grants and is co-investigator of 9 other NIH grants.” He “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, and/or recklessly falsifying and fabricating the experimental methodology to demonstrate results obtained under different experimental conditions,” the ORI found.

Continue reading Leading primate researcher admits to faking data in NIH grant applications, paper