Weekend reads: Academania; redaction bias; a Harvard star falls; top retractions of 2021

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:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 204. 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: Academania; redaction bias; a Harvard star falls; top retractions of 2021

‘Why did this take over five years?’ Reflecting on two new retractions

Frits Rosendaal

In September 2015, after a lengthy investigation, the Committee on Scientific Integrity (CSI) of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) advised the LUMC Board of Directors to ask for retraction of two publications because of major data manipulation in images. The case involved Maria Fousteri, who by then had left LUMC.

In the Netherlands it is possible to ask a second opinion, as a non-binding but influential appeal procedure, from the national LOWI (Landelijk Orgaan Wetenschappelijke Integriteit). Fousteri did so. In May 2016, after careful deliberations and a hearing of individuals directly involved, the LOWI fully supported the conclusion of the CSI.

This led the Board to inform several parties, including the defendant’s current employer, and agencies that had provided grants based on the fraudulent work, and to formally ask the journal Molecular Cell to retract two publications. They would not do so for more than five years, with retraction notices published only this month that list data manipulations in several figures.

Continue reading ‘Why did this take over five years?’ Reflecting on two new retractions

Harvard journal retracts paper on Black advocacy in elections

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review has retracted an article which claimed – or misclaimed, as the case may be – that an African American advocacy movement discouraged Blacks from voting for Democratic politicians and suppressed news about the Covid-19 pandemic.

The article, “Disinformation creep: ADOS and the strategic weaponization of breaking news,” appeared in the Special Issue on Disinformation in the 2020 Elections published in January by the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy.

ADOS is short for American Descendants of Slavery, an online movement that calls for reparations for slavery in the United States. The movement – which uses the hashtag #ADOS on social media – was founded by Yvette Carnell and Antonio Moore.

The article was written by Mutale Nkonde, the founding CEO of AI For the People, and co-authors including several affiliated with MoveOn, a progressive  political organization. 

According to the abstract of the paper, which is no longer available online: 

Continue reading Harvard journal retracts paper on Black advocacy in elections

AHA journal tones down abstract linking COVID-19 vaccines to risk of heart problems

The American Heart Association has published a corrected version of a controversial meeting abstract which claimed to show that Covid-19 vaccinations “dramatically” increased a person’s risk for serious heart problems. 

The study was the work of Stephen Gundry, a cardiac surgeon who now sells dietary supplements of questionable efficacy on his website. Gundry also sees patients at the Center for Restorative Medicine and International Heart & Lung Institute in California and offers advice on YouTube.  

Gundry submitted the abstract, titled “Mrna COVID Vaccines Dramatically Increase Endothelial Inflammatory Markers and ACS Risk as Measured by the PULS Cardiac Test: a Warning,” to the AHA’s 2021 scientific meeting, which apparently accepted it without much, if any, review. 

At the end of November, after fielding complaints about the study, the AHA issued an expression of concern for the abstract, which was riddled with spelling errors – including calling the PULS test the “PLUS” test in the first sentence, where any reader could immediately spot the mistake – and other problems: 

Continue reading AHA journal tones down abstract linking COVID-19 vaccines to risk of heart problems

Court tosses $50 billion suit by ‘prince of panspermia’ against Springer Nature

A neuroscientist once called the “prince of panspermia” has lost a lawsuit against Springer Nature stemming from a 2019 paper of his that a journal retracted.

Here’s the summary from United States District Judge John P. Cronan, who heard the original case:

Continue reading Court tosses $50 billion suit by ‘prince of panspermia’ against Springer Nature

Researchers ‘devastated’ after finding manipulated data in study of pediatric brain tumors

Robert Wechsler-Reya

An international group of cancer researchers has lost an influential 2020 paper in Nature Neuroscience after finding problems with the data that triggered an institutional investigation.

The article, “Tumor necrosis factor overcomes immune evasion in p53-mutant medulloblastoma,” represented a potentially major advance in the treatment of pediatric brain tumors, according to Robert Wechsler-Reya, the director of the Tumor Initiation & Maintenance Program at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, in La Jolla, Calif., and the senior author of the paper, which has been cited 17 times, per Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science:

Continue reading Researchers ‘devastated’ after finding manipulated data in study of pediatric brain tumors

Two expressions of concern arrive for papers linked to beleaguered biotech Cassava

The Journal of Neuroscience has slapped expressions of concern on a pair of papers linked to the maker of a controversial drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease. 

As we and others have reported, Cassava Sciences has been under intense scrutiny lately. In August, the law firm Labaton Sucharow – who is representing Cassava short sellers – submitted a “citizen’s petition” to the FDA regarding a regulatory filing from the company for its drug simulfilam and called on the agency to halt trials of the experimental medication because it had: 

Continue reading Two expressions of concern arrive for papers linked to beleaguered biotech Cassava

Revealed: The inner workings of a paper mill

A company in Russia hawks its wares

In 2019, Retraction Watch ran an exclusive story of a Russian paper mill operating under the business name “International Publisher LLC”.  Since then, Retraction Watch and  other scientific news and blogging sites have continued to report on the activities of research paper mills, including International Publisher  and its primary website, 123mi.ru.  These mills provide an array of fraudulent services to researchers and academics seeking to publish articles in peer-reviewed journals.  The services they provide include ghostwriting, brokering authorship positions on papers accepted for publication, and falsifying data.

Our project  augments this stream of reports about paper mills as we focus on the activities of International Publisher and the papers brokered through 123mi.ru.  As part of this project we are curating  a database of all the papers and authorship positions that have been advertised on this website.  Our database consists of roughly 2,353 unique article titles with 8,928 authorship positions.  While the majority of the known paper mill activity has been in the biomedical sciences, our work on just this one paper mill demonstrates that paper mill products have infiltrated multiple scientific disciplines in which career advancement is heavily reliant on academic publications. 

So far, we have identified nearly 200 published articles that may have been brokered through this paper mill and which cross disciplines including (but not limited to) humanities, social sciences, nursing, and education.  We also observe numerous papers on COVID-19 that have been or currently are advertised for sale.  

Our project is far from complete, but we thought it important to report on our methods and preliminary findings via Retraction Watch.  In doing so, we hope to raise awareness of a serious and potentially widespread problem, along with strategies to help detect and possibly prevent fraudulent activities.  

Continue reading Revealed: The inner workings of a paper mill

Elsevier subjects entire special issue of journal on COVID-19 to an expression of concern

Ronald Kostoff

Elsevier has subjected an entire special issue of a journal — including a paper claiming COVID-19 vaccines kill five times more people over 65 than they save — to an expression of concern.

The special issue of Toxicology Reports contained eight articles, including the vaccines paper co-authored by Ronald Kostoff.

Here’s the expression of concern, which is only linked from Kostoff et al’s vaccine paper:

Continue reading Elsevier subjects entire special issue of journal on COVID-19 to an expression of concern

Weekend reads: ‘Fraudulent and faulty research;’ a $275K settlement — but resignation — for a professor; ‘COVID-19, ivermectin, and beyond’

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:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 203. There are now more than 31,000 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: ‘Fraudulent and faulty research;’ a $275K settlement — but resignation — for a professor; ‘COVID-19, ivermectin, and beyond’