UPenn prof with four retractions “may no longer be affiliated” with school

William Armstead

A pharmacology researcher with four retractions appears to have left the University of Pennsylvania, where he had worked for at least 30 years and won more than $7 million in NIH grants.

The school’s faculty page for William Armstead, who held ​​a research professorship in Anesthesiology and Critical Care, now bears only the statement that “Dr. Armstead may no longer be affiliated with the Perelman School of Medicine.” Penn Medicine has not responded to our request for comment.  

In May, we reported that Armstead was up to four retractions after the Journal of Neurotrauma had retracted three articles at the researcher’s request. 

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Papers on Alzheimer’s slapped with expressions of concern

A Science journal has issued expressions of concern for two papers on Alzheimer’s disease over concerns about the integrity of the data. 

One involves a 2016 article by a star-studded group of neuroscience researchers over allegations of manipulated data in one of the figures. That paper, “Gain-of-function mutations in protein kinase Cα (PKCα) may promote synaptic defects in Alzheimer’s disease,” appeared in Science Signaling and  came from a team led by Rudolph Tanzi  and Roberto Malinow, of Harvard and UC San Diego, respectively.

Here’s the notice for the paper, which has been cited 64 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science: 

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Weekend reads: Automated peer review; ‘journal editors resign in protest;’ attention to retracted papers

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The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 237. There are more than 34,000 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: Automated peer review; ‘journal editors resign in protest;’ attention to retracted papers

An Elsevier book plagiarizes an abstract published by…Elsevier

Elsevier plans to remove the introduction from a book on mineralogy after investigating allegations of plagiarism, including from another Elsevier publication, according to emails obtained by Retraction Watch. 

Photo Atlas of Mineral Pseudomorphism by J. Theo Kloprogge and Robert Lavinsky, was published in 2017 and still appears to be for sale for $100 for a hardcover and ebook bundle. (The usual price is $200, but there is a sale on at the time of this writing.) Its listing on ScienceDirect includes the introduction with no note about removal.   

As we’ve previously reported, Elsevier last year retracted an entire book by Kloprogge, an adjunct professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas and honorary senior fellow at the University of Queensland, that plagiarized heavily from Wikipedia.  

According to the emails we obtained, Gloria Staebler, of mineralogical publisher Lithographie, Ltd., noticed the plagiarism in the book in May while preparing to formally publish a manuscript   by Si and Ann Frazier that had been circulated in a mineral club newsletter in 2005. In a May 31st email to an editor at Elsevier, Staebler laid out her evidence: 

Continue reading An Elsevier book plagiarizes an abstract published by…Elsevier

Extensive correction adds to five flagged papers for UPenn professor

Erle Robertson

A UPenn professor now has six papers with a correction, expression of concern, or retraction in two PLOS journals after one published an extensive correction to a 2018 paper. 

The correction adds to two retractions and three expressions of concern for papers in PLOS Pathogens and PLOS ONE with Erle Robertson, a microbiology professor and vice chair of research for the department of otorhinolaryngology at the University of Pennsylvania, as a senior author. The actions on each paper happened after commenters on PubPeer pointed out issues. 

The correction to “STAT6 degradation and ubiquitylated TRIML2 are essential for activation of human oncogenic herpesvirus” states: 

Continue reading Extensive correction adds to five flagged papers for UPenn professor

Journal run by new AMA president-elect caught in special issue scam

Jesse Ehrenfeld

A med-tech journal whose editor-in-chief is the president-in-waiting of the American Medical Association has retracted six papers for compromised peer review and related problems.  

The Journal of Medical Systems, led by Jesse Ehrenfeld – an anesthesiologist in Wisconsin who this week became president-elect of the AMA –  said the articles were part of a special issue that ran in 2018 titled “Advancements in Internet of Medical Things for Healthcare System.”

Here’s the retraction notice for “LSTM Model for Prediction of Heart Failure in Big Data”:

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‘This has been a nightmare’: One paper was retracted. The other still lingers.

Philip Tsichlis

On a Saturday last November, Philip Tsichlis of The Ohio State University received an email no researcher wants to get. 

Another scientist had tried to replicate a finding in a recent paper of his, and couldn’t. “We believe that our results should lead to some revision of the model you propose,” stated the email, which was released to us by OSU following a public records request. 

It turned out that was an understatement. The email eventually led Tsichlis to discover data fabrication in that paper and a related article. Within a week, he requested the retraction of both papers, one in Communications Biology and the other in Nature Communications, both Springer Nature journals. One was retracted in December, but not the other.

In an email to a Nature Communications editor on November 22nd, Tsichlis wrote: 

This has been a nightmare and I blame myself for not having detected it earlier. However, we cannot go back. I hope that we will retract this paper as soon as possible. 

Seven months later, it remains unflagged. 

Continue reading ‘This has been a nightmare’: One paper was retracted. The other still lingers.

Retraction leads to review change at SAGE journal

A cancer journal has retracted a 2016 paper by a group in China after deciding – more than five years after publication – it couldn’t stand behind the work. 

The article, “The preoperative platelet–lymphocyte ratio versus neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio: which is better as a prognostic factor in oral squamous cell carcinoma?”, appeared in Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology, a SAGE title. The authors were led by Shan Chen, of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. 

The notice reads: 

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Weekend reads: ‘Foul play’ among protective scholars; how to increase rigor; science and a ‘culture of misinformation’

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 236. There are more than 34,000 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: ‘Foul play’ among protective scholars; how to increase rigor; science and a ‘culture of misinformation’

Researcher attacks journal for retracting his paper on COVID-19 drug

Flavio Cadegiani

A journal has retracted a paper reporting the results of a clinical trial in which a drug cut COVID-19 hospitalization for men by 90%. 

The research group’s other work has attracted a lot of attention in Brazil – including praise from  president Jair Bolsonaro and criticism from research regulators – for their dramatic results. In a Twitter thread, one of the authors claimed, without evidence, that the journal “may have received bribery to persecute us and retract our study.”

The article, “Proxalutamide Reduces the Rate of Hospitalization for COVID-19 Male Outpatients: A Randomized Double-Blinded Placebo-Controlled Trial,” was published in Frontiers in Medicine last July and has been cited 15 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

The study quickly attracted criticism, according to the retraction notice: 

Continue reading Researcher attacks journal for retracting his paper on COVID-19 drug