Retraction Watch

How citation cartels give ‘strategic scholars’ an advantage: A simple model

Sincere scholars work to expand society’s knowledge and understanding. They cite all the relevant research, even that produced by those they disagree with or personally dislike. They encourage debate. For the sincere scholar, a citation is a responsibility, and proper and thorough citations demonstrate research quality.

For the strategic scholar, a citation is an asset to be used career-advantageously. As a certain former governor of the State of Illinois once said about his responsibility to fill an open US senate position, “I’ve got this thing and it’s (expletive) golden. I’m not just giving it up for (expletive) nothing.”

Strategic scholars cite the work of their friends, working colleagues, those they agree with, and those who reference them. Indeed, the most successful career-strategic scholars operate in groups of like-minded colleagues in which they promote each other’s careers together—citation cartels. They draw attention to that other work which supports their own and their careers.

Journal retracts paper listed on authorship for sale site following Retraction Watch report

An Elsevier journal has retracted a paper that was listed by a firm claiming to sell authorships months after we reported on the site.

On Sept. 7, 2021, we published a story about the company, Teziran. On Sept. 14, pseudonymous sleuth Artemisia Stricta wrote to Ioannis Ieropoulos, the editor of Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, which had published one of eight papers listed by Teziran as “ready for acceptance”:

Weekend reads: Why was a paper’s acceptance rescinded?; kinder peer review; plagiarism in a plagiarism atonement essay

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Journal retracts C-section paper with ‘impossible’ data
‘A terrifying experience’: A team of researchers does the right thing when they find an error
Another ivermectin-COVID-19 paper is retracted
A college that doesn’t exist. An email address that goes dark. Who wrote this paper?
‘Conclusions related to vaccine safety are not validated’: COVID-19 spike protein paper retracted

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 226. There are more than 33,000 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):

‘Conclusions related to vaccine safety are not validated’: COVID-19 spike protein paper retracted

It took about five months, but a virology journal has retracted a paper on the microbe that causes COVID-19 after tagging it with an expression of concern back in December.

As we reported then, the paper, “SARS–CoV–2 Spike Impairs DNA Damage Repair and Inhibits V(D)J Recombination In Vitro,” was a hit with vaccine skeptics who used the article to buttress their claims that Covid vaccines are unsafe.

The paper, which appeared in MDPI’s Viruses, generated enough buzz on social media and in the news to make it into the top 5% of all articles tracked by Altmetric. This Week in Virology, a podcast on, well, virology, devoted part of an episode of the show to deconstructing the findings.

But as the journal noted last year:

A college that doesn’t exist. An email address that goes dark. Who wrote this paper?

Alexander Templeton works at the math library of Glen Liberty Community College in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

At least that’s what a paper, “A bibliometric analysis of Atangana-Baleanu operators in fractional calculus,” Templeton appears to have published in the Alexandria Engineering Journal claims. But no Glen Liberty Community College appears to exist in Scottsbluff – or anywhere – and the Gmail address Templeton used as contact information no longer works. (There is a Western Nebraska Community College in Scottsbluff, but no Glen Liberty.)

Another ivermectin-COVID-19 paper is retracted

A paper on the potential use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19 has been retracted for a litany of flaws, joining at least 10 other articles on the therapy some liked to promote without evidence to fall.

The article was part of a special issue of Toxicology Reports on Covid-19 that has received an expression of concern; six of the eight articles still have EoCs. Two, including one “Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?,” have now been retracted.

The newly retracted article, “Use of ivermectin in the treatment of Covid-19: A pilot trial,” was written by a group from Brazil and the United States and appeared in March 2021.

According to the retraction notice:

‘A terrifying experience’: A team of researchers does the right thing when they find an error

Mitch Brown was preparing last August to launch a follow-up study to a 2021 paper on coalitions when he found something in his computer coding that sent his stomach to his shoes.

As Brown, an experimental psychologist at the University of Arkansas, recalled for us:

Journal retracts C-section paper with ‘impossible’ data

An ob-gyn journal has retracted a clinically influential 2016 paper on the use of steroids in women undergoing cesarean delivery, citing questions about the data.

The article, “Antenatal corticosteroid administration before elective caesarean section at term to prevent neonatal respiratory morbidity: a randomized controlled trial,” appeared in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology (EJOG), and was written by a group at Cairo University in Egypt led by Adel Nada.

The study purported to involve nearly 1,300 women – making it the largest analysis of women receiving steroids for the indication in the trial. But Ben Mol, an ob-gyn researcher and data sleuth at Monash Medical Centre in Australia, noted that the paper – which has been cited 32 times, per Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science – was based on a thesis by the second author, M.M. Shafeek. Something in the two articles caught Mol’s eye, he told Retraction Watch:

Weekend reads: ‘The science crisis’; Peru president plagiarism probe; does a Nature cover help or hurt citations?

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

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Elsevier retracts papers when it realizes one of the authors hid fact he was guest editor of issue
UPenn prof retracts three papers for ‘substantive questions’

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 223. There are more than 33,000 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):

UPenn prof retracts three papers for ‘substantive questions’

A pharmacology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania is up to four retractions for problems with the data in his articles after a neurology journal pulled three papers late last month.

According to the Journal of Neurotrauma, a Mary Ann Liebert title, William Armstead – who holds a research professorship in Anesthesiology and Critical Care at Penn [please see an update on this post] – requested the retraction of three articles while informing that, in his words:

substantive questions have arisen regarding the findings, presentation and conclusions reported in the paper that could not be answered with available source data.

But beyond that, Armstead – who has not responded to a request for comment from Retraction Watch – left things a bit of a mystery.

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