Retraction Watch

Award-winning nursing researcher’s paper retracted for ‘failure to acknowledge the contribution of other researchers and the funding source’

A nursing journal has retracted a 2019 paper by a researcher in Scotland after learning that she’d taken a wee bit more credit for the article than she deserved.

The paper was titled “Co-designing technology with people with dementia and their carers: Exploring user perspectives when co-creating a mobile health application” and was written by Siobhan O’Connor. The article, which appeared in the International Journal of Older People Nursing (IJOPN), has been cited seven times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

O’Connor had been a doctoral student at the University of Glasgow before moving to the University of Edinburgh, from which she received the Florence Nightingale Scholarship, a year-long fellowship award for nursing researchers. While at Edinburgh, she wrote and published the paper in question, using data that she’d had access to in Glasgow.

‘Tortured phrases’, lost in translation: Sleuths find even more problems at journal that just flagged 400 papers

What do subterranean insect provinces and motion to clamor have to do with microprocessors and microsystems?

That’s an excellent question. Read on, dear reader.

Weekend reads: Ivermectin study retracted; Sci-Hub and citations; animal welfare violations at chinchilla lab supplier

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:

Elsevier says “integrity and rigor” of peer review for 400 papers fell “beneath the high standards expected”
‘In hindsight the mistake was quite stupid’: Authors retract paper on stroke
Researcher committed misconduct while at NIH, say institutes — but is allowed to publish a revised version of a paper
Paper from company claiming phototherapy could treat COVID-19 is retracted
‘Please don’t be afraid to talk about your errors and to correct them.’
JAMA journal retracts paper on masks for children

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 144.

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

JAMA journal retracts paper on masks for children

JAMA Pediatrics has retracted a paper claiming that children’s masks trap too-high concentrations of carbon dioxide a little more than two weeks after publishing it.

The paper, by Harald Walach and colleagues, came under fire immediately after it was published on June 30, and quickly earned an editor’s note. Walach had another paper — which claimed that COVID-19 vaccines caused two deaths for every three deaths they prevented — retracted just a few days later. He also lost an affiliation with a university in Poland.

Walach and his colleagues responded to critics of the JAMA Pediatrics paper earlier this month, as we reported. But the journals apparently found that response wanting, according to the retraction notice:

‘Please don’t be afraid to talk about your errors and to correct them.’

A “systematic error” in a mental health database has led to the retraction of a 2017 paper on how people with psychosis process facial expressions.

Joana Grave, a PhD student at the University of Aveiro, in Portugal, and her colleagues published their article, “The effects of perceptual load in processing emotional facial expression in psychotic disorders,” in Psychiatry Research, an Elsevier title.

According to the abstract of the paper:

Paper from company claiming phototherapy could treat COVID-19 is retracted

A study that touted phototherapy as a way to combat the COVID-19 pandemic has been retracted after Elisabeth Bik noted a litany of concerns about the article, from duplications in the figures to the authors’ failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

The article, “Methylene blue photochemical treatment as a reliable SARS-CoV-2 plasma virus inactivation method for blood safety and convalescent plasma therapy for COVID-19,” appeared in mid-April in BMC Infectious Diseases, a Springer Nature title. Unlike many papers rushed into publication during the pandemic, it had been in peer review since the previous April. The authors listed affiliations with various institutions in China, including a company called Boxin (Beijing) Biotechnology Development LTD, which helped fund the study — more on that in a moment.

According to the paper, methylene blue (a versatile medical product that serves as a drug and a dye) when used with something called the “BX-1 AIDS treatment instrument,” could be a wonder therapy for the SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The authors describe BX-1 as:

Researcher committed misconduct while at NIH, say institutes — but is allowed to publish a revised version of a paper

An investigation by the National Institutes of Health has led to the retraction of a 2016 paper in PLOS Biology for manipulation of the data in the article. But the journal has republished a revised version of the paper — minus the bad data — on which the researcher found to have committed the misconduct remains the first author.

The original article, “Exosomes Mediate LTB4 Release during Neutrophil Chemotaxis,” came from the laboratory of Carole Parent, who was a cancer researcher at the NIH at the time it was published and is now at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. It has been cited 93 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

According to the notice:

‘In hindsight the mistake was quite stupid’: Authors retract paper on stroke

File this under “doing the right thing:” A group of stroke researchers in Germany have retracted a paper they published earlier this year after finding an error in their work shortly after publication that doomed the findings.

Julian Klingbeil, of the Department of Neurology at the University of Leipzig Medical Center, and his colleagues had been looking at how the location of lesions in the brain left behind by cerebral strokes were associated with the onset of depression after the attacks. According to the study, “Association of Lesion Location and Depressive Symptoms Poststroke”:

Elsevier says “integrity and rigor” of peer review for 400 papers fell “beneath the high standards expected”

Elsevier says it is reassessing its procedures for special issues after one of its journals issued expressions of concern for six such publications, involving as many as 400 articles, over worries that the peer review process was compromised.

The journal, Microprocessors & Microsystems, published the special issues using guest editors.

The EoCs vary slightly, but the journal has issued the following blanket statement for these six issues:

Weekend reads: How many scientists commit misconduct?; science ‘moved beyond peer review during the pandemic’; Juul pays for entire journal issue

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

‘They seem to mean business’: Cardiology journal flags papers cited hundreds of times
Authors of widely panned study of masks in children respond to critics
Researchers forfeit $10,000 award when paper’s findings can’t be replicated
Critique topples Nature paper on belief in gods
University terminates affiliation with researcher who had paper on COVID-19 vaccines retracted as mask study comes under scrutiny
Nature corrects a correction on conflicts of interest in fish farming paper
Publisher won’t retract most papers by chemist editor-in-chief who left university post under a cloud

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 139.

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

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