Retraction Watch

Nobel prize-winner tallies two more retractions, bringing total to 13

A Nobel prize-winning genetics researcher has retracted two more papers, bringing his total to 13.

Gregg Semenza, a professor of genetic medicine and director of the vascular program at Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering in Baltimore, shared the 2019 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for “discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”

Since pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis and others began using PubPeer to point out potential duplicated or manipulated images in Semenza’s work in 2019, the researcher has retracted 12 papers. A previous retraction from 2011 for a paper co-authored with Naoki Mori – who with 31 retractions sits at No. 25 on our leaderboard – brings the total to 13.

‘Stealth corrections’: when journals quietly fix papers

Last March, René Aquarius noticed some overlapping patterns in a figure about a 2016 study on the blood-brain barrier. So he took to PubPeer, an online site where scientists often discuss papers, to raise his concerns.

An author of the study published in Neuroscience Letters responded saying they are checking the original data to figure out the problem. A month later, when Aquarius, a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Netherlands, revisited the paper, the figure had been replaced without any note that the publisher had fixed the issue.

Aquarius once again took to PubPeer to express his concerns. “I don’t see any notification when looking at the landing site for the paper: no erratum, corrigendum or a simple log-entry that something has been changed,” he wrote, noting that he had informed Elsevier, the journal’s publisher about the issue. In July, the journal issued a corrigendum for the paper.

“I was quite a bit upset about it,” Aquarius told Retraction Watch. “It takes away one of the key elements for any reader to be critical, namely that you know what has happened.”

Penn State prof earns second retraction, faces third following university probe

A professor of biomedical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University today lost a government-funded study in Science Advances, marking her second retraction.

The researcher, Deborah Kelly, is also facing retraction of a paper in Current Opinion in Structural Biology after a review undertaken by her institution found “serious data integrity concerns” in the work, according to emails obtained by Retraction Watch. Kelly has hired a lawyer to fight the retraction, apparently without success. (Update on Sept. 12: The paper has now been retracted.)

Today’s retraction of “Structural analysis of BRCA1 reveals modification hotspot” cites “unresolved concerns in the integrity of the data presented,” including what appears to be alterations of cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) maps using an “eraser tool.” The study was funded in part through a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for US$353,386 to Kelly.

In a statement to Retraction Watch sent via her legal counsel, Kelly stood by her work.

Former Harvard cancer researcher plagiarized data, federal watchdog says

A former research fellow at Harvard Medical School faked data and used images from another scientist without attribution in a published paper and two grant applications, according to findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

The researcher, Arunoday K. Bhan, was also a former staff scientist at City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, Calif., and first author on “Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived platelets loaded with lapatinib effectively target HER2+ breast cancer metastasis to the brain,” which appeared in Scientific Reports in October 2021. The article has been cited eight times.

The paper was retracted in March. The retraction note cited an investigation by City of Hope and detailed “discrepancies in the data” that match ORI’s findings.

Pakistan university’s pharmacy department chair notches two retractions

Kashif Barkat, who heads the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Lahore in Punjab, Pakistan, has had two of his studies retracted and two more corrected, all for issues related to images in the papers. Several more of his studies are flagged on PubPeer for similar reasons.

According to the retraction notice for one of the retracted articles, which appeared in Polymer Bulletin in 2020, Barkat does not agree with the journal’s decision to pull the paper.

The paper, “Understanding mechanical characteristics of pH-responsive PEG 4000-based polymeric network for colorectal carcinoma: its acute oral toxicity study,” has been cited three times so far, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The retraction note, issued in June, reads:

Weekend reads: A plethora of misdeeds; big slowdown at several publishers; hydroxychloroquine paper retraction draws scrutiny

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 400. There are more than 50,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 250 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? What about The Retraction Watch Mass Resignations List — or our list of nearly 100 papers with evidence they were written by ChatGPT?

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

Swiss medical association accused of forcing publishing subsidiary into insolvency

A Swiss medical publisher has ceased operations, including shuttering nationally prominent journals, after its parent organization, the Swiss Medical Association FMH, allegedly forced it into bankruptcy.

According to information on the website of EMH Swiss Medical Publishers, the Swiss Medical Association FMH holds a 55% stake in the firm. But on Aug. 22, 2024, the FMH’s board terminated its collaboration with the publishing house, including licensing for the association’s journal Schweizerische Ärztezeitung (Swiss Medical Journal), with immediate effect.

“In doing so, [the association] deprived its own company of its livelihood. EMH filed its balance sheet today and thus opened bankruptcy proceedings,” the publisher said in a notice posted on its website on September 4, 2024.

‘The PubPeer conundrum:’ One view of how universities can grapple with a ‘waterfall of data integrity concerns’

As Retraction Watch readers no doubt know, PubPeer has played a key role in a growing number of cases of misconduct, allowing sleuths to publicly shine light in shadowy corners and prompting action by many universities. (Disclosure: Our Ivan Oransky is a volunteer member of the PubPeer Foundation’s board of directors.) But that has also meant that universities can feel overwhelmed by a deluge of PubPeer comments.

In a new article, three attorneys from Ropes & Gray in Boston who advise universities on such cases, along with Barbara Bierer, a researcher and former research integrity officer at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, also in Boston, examine “the origins of PubPeer and its central role in the modern era of online-based scouring of scientific publications for potential problems and outlines the challenges that institutions must manage in addressing issues identified on PubPeer.” Attorneys Mark Barnes, Minal Caron and Carolyn Lye, and the Brigham’s Barbara Bierer, also recommend ways federal regulations could change to make the investigation process more efficient. We asked them to answer some questions about the article.

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Faked data prompts retraction of Nature journal study claiming creation of a new form of carbon

The journal Nature Synthesis has pulled a high-profile article describing the creation of a new type of carbon after a university investigation found some data were made up.

“The authors of the original paper claimed to have created an entirely new form or carbon, graphyne, which is fundamentally different common diamond or graphite,” said Valentin Rodionov, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, whose team has been investigating the now-retracted work for the past two years.

“If true, this would have been a groundbreaking discovery,” Rodionov told Retraction Watch. His team described its findings in a commentary published on September 2 in the journal.

Exclusive: Editor resigns after he says publisher blocked criticism of decision to retract paper on gender dysphoria

A Springer Nature journal has rescinded the acceptance of a paper criticizing the publishing giant’s controversial retraction last year of an article that surveyed parents of children with gender dysphoria, leading an associate editor to resign, Retraction Watch has learned.

According to emails we obtained, the blocked paper was slated to appear as a commentary in a special issue of Springer Nature’s Current Psychology that aimed “to stimulate discussion of all aspects of the ‘unpublication’ of scientific articles.”

“This is the only time I’ve had an accepted paper overruled in 4 years” as an associate editor at this journal, Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University in Florida, one of two guest editors of the special issue, told us by email.

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