Which takes longer to produce: An infant who can sit on his own, or a retraction?

Joe Hilgard (and his son)

Joe Hilgard’s son wasn’t even a twinkle in his father’s sharp eye for bad data when an Elsevier journal notified the social psychologist that it intended to retract a 2015 article he’d flagged on the link between exposure to violent media and aggression in adolescents. 

Well, the journal has finally retracted the paper – but not before Hilgard’s son was born and started speaking (more on that in a moment). 

Hilgard’s ability to spot bad data, and his tenacity at holding journals accountable for their publications, has now led to five retractions. Four of those papers belong to a researcher in China named Qian Zhang, of Southwest University in Chongqin. As readers of this blog might recall, Zhang lost a pair of papers in 2019 after Hilgard and others raised questions about the integrity of the data. 

As Hilgard, who also notified Southwest University about his findings, told us back in 2019 about Zhang’s previously retracted papers: 

Continue reading Which takes longer to produce: An infant who can sit on his own, or a retraction?

Journal retracts a paper it published with a missing table after author fails to provide it

Mark Oniffrey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Can you retract something that never existed in the first place? At least one journal thinks the answer to that conundrum is yes. 

That journal would be Medicine. In September 2020, the Wolters Kluwer journal published a paper titled “Tranexamic acid reduces blood cost in long-segment spinal fusion surgery: A randomized controlled study protocol” by a group in China led by Linyu Yang, of the Department of Orthopedics at the Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, in Sichuan. 

The article promised – but failed to deliver – a “Table 1”, an omission the peer reviewers and journal staff missed during the production process. Five months later, said table still had not materialized, prompting the following notice: 

Continue reading Journal retracts a paper it published with a missing table after author fails to provide it

How to find evidence of paper mills using peer review comments

Adam Day

Finding papers produced by paper mills has become a major headache for many of the world’s largest publishers over the past year, and they’re largely playing catch-up since sleuths began identifying them a few years ago. But there may be a new way: Earlier this month, Adam Day, a data scientist at SAGE Publishing, posted a preprint on arXiv that used a variety of methods to search for duplication in peer review comments, based on the likelihood that paper mills “create fake referee accounts and use them to submit fake peer-review reports.” We asked Day several questions about the approach.

Retraction Watch (RW): Tell us a bit about the methods you used.

Continue reading How to find evidence of paper mills using peer review comments

Weekend reads: Paying for publication?; deeper looks at citation practices; preprints and retractions

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 211. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now 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: Paying for publication?; deeper looks at citation practices; preprints and retractions

‘I needed a publication in order to submit my thesis’: Author admits to stealing a manuscript

Ingeborg Olsdatter Busterud Flagstad

Svein Åge K. Johnsen and Ingeborg Olsdatter Busterud Flagstad, of the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, have been trying to publish a manuscript on the psychology of green entrepreneurship.

In January 2021, they submitted it to the International Small Business Journal, a SAGE publication. The editors rejected it without sending it to peer review. So did The Journal of Entrepreneurship, another SAGE title. So Johnsen and Flagstad submitted it to Cogent Business & Management, a Taylor & Francis title.

And then, on December 25, as perhaps the worst Christmas present ever, they saw the paper published – by someone else.

Continue reading ‘I needed a publication in order to submit my thesis’: Author admits to stealing a manuscript

Science issues expression of concern nine months after one of its reporters uncovers potential misconduct

Danielle Dixson

Science has issued an expression of concern for a 2014 paper on the harmful effects of ocean acidification on fish and coral after the first author of the article was accused of fabricating data in the study and other research.

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 post-doc at the university. Dixson has since moved to the University of Delaware, Lewes, where she runs her own lab studying corals. 

The work – cited 171 times so far, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science – received immediate challenge from other researchers, who questioned the validity of the findings. 

Continue reading Science issues expression of concern nine months after one of its reporters uncovers potential misconduct

Publisher cancels special issue honoring plagiarizing dean following Retraction Watch inquiries

MDPI was about to publish a special issue in one of its journals to fete the career of a retired dean. But after Retraction Watch informed the co-editors of the issue that the researcher, Kishor Wasan, had abruptly retired after being found to have plagiarized a 2019 book review for The Lancet, the publisher evidently decided to cancel the planned celebration. 

The special issue of Pharmaceutics – here’s a Wayback Machine link – was to be “in honour of Professor Kishor M Wasan’s remarkable contributions to the pharmaceutics field.”

But now it is gone, and prompts a 404 error rather than any explanation.

Continue reading Publisher cancels special issue honoring plagiarizing dean following Retraction Watch inquiries

Preprint on discrimination against women reinstated by Elsevier server after removal for legal threats

Ann Lipton

A leading repository of social science which is owned by Elsevier has reposted an article it removed on New Year’s Day after the author was accused of defamation and the site was threatened with legal action if it didn’t remove the paper. 

The article in question was written by Ann Lipton, the associate dean for faculty research at Tulane University Law School and appeared on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). 

Titled “Capital Discrimination,” the paper – which has been accepted by the Houston Law Review – explores:

Continue reading Preprint on discrimination against women reinstated by Elsevier server after removal for legal threats

Journal retracts a paper, then publishes it in an issue 11 months later

The article as it appears at the time of this writing

Yes, you read that headline right.

In January 2021, we reported that The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (JSCR) would soon be retracting two papers because a graduate student had committed misconduct in the work.

The journal – the official research publication of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NCSA) – did retract the papers, according to a notice posted to PubMed and on the title’s site, both dated March 2021.

But that didn’t stop one of the articles – which had first gone online in December 2019 – from appearing in the February 2022 issue of the journal, without any indication it had been retracted, as Universidad Autónoma de Madrid professor Carlos Balsalobre noticed yesterday:

Continue reading Journal retracts a paper, then publishes it in an issue 11 months later

Weekend reads: Weaponizing doubt; pharma’s lawsuit against journal dismissed; ‘misconstrued 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 211. There are now more than 32,000 retractions in our database — which now 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: Weaponizing doubt; pharma’s lawsuit against journal dismissed; ‘misconstrued misinformation’