fantastic
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, journals have retracted more than 200 COVID-19-related papers, most of which occurred in 2021. In contrast, the "Retraction Observation Database" has included more than 3,000 retracted articles this year. Following its annual practice, The Scientist website takes stock of the top ten high-profile retractions in the life sciences community in 2021.
From Star Trek to ivermectin, the topics of papers that have been retracted in the past year are wide-ranging. Most of the retracted articles have been drowned in the dust of history, but some of them have become interesting stories for researchers.
1
As a pediatric cardiologist in the Republic of Malta, Victor Grech, like many others, was unusually obsessed with Star Trek. But the problem was that he single-handedly turned Elsevier's Early Human Development magazine into Star Trek Science Fan Magazine.
In late 2020, Hampton Gaddy, an undergraduate student at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, wrote to the editor of early human development, saying that Grech had published at least 113 articles in the journal, 19 of which were "unprofessional articles." These "medical papers", which are 18,000 miles away from the main theme of the magazine, talk about the analysis of the role of the nurse in Star Trek, the discussion of the banal evil in Star Trek, the analysis of the role of the doctor in Star Trek...
In the end, Grech "lost" 26 articles.
Figure 1 Retracted from the observation website report. Early Human Development is a comprehensive interdisciplinary journal that publishes original research and clinical papers on early human growth and development, with a particular focus on the continuity of the fetal and perinatal periods, the influence of early events on postnatal growth, and how to safeguard the quality of human life. Articles published in this journal cover human embryology, perinatal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, epidemiology, behavioral science, brain science, developmental psychology, and many other disciplines. | Source: retractionwatch.com
2
Back in 2015, the University of Colorado at Denver issued a notice that their former faculty member Hari Koul needed to revise or retract nine papers containing problematic images. However, 6 years later, the vast majority of articles are still unscathed, and many of the journals involved even claim to have never heard of the Investigation into Kuhl.
Figure 2 On June 3, 2021, the Retraction Watch website reported that Curry had not withdrawn the paper. | Source: retractionwatch.com
In June, retraction Watch reported on the situation, and the Journal of Urology quickly withdrew three of Kuhl's articles. By this time, Kuhl had long since left Denver for the Health Science Center (LSU HSC) at Louisiana State University, where he eventually took up a position at the university's New Orleans campus. After the local media broke the news, LSU HSC announced that they were investigating the matter, and Kur was forced to resign as department chair.
3
In June, a paper published in the journal Vaccine claimed that "for three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination," provoking outrage in the scientific community. Two editors of Vaccine magazine even protested with their resignations. Author Harald Walach describes the Wikipedia page as a "parapsychologist" and "champion of alternative medicine" (see Figure 3 for details).
Figure 3 Wikipedia shows that Valek was a "parapsychologist" who supported "alternative medicine." Parapsychology is studied by parapsychology, which is supernatural phenomena such as hyperperceptuality, telepathy, clairvoyance, foreknowledge, etc., and is considered pseudoscience because it cannot provide convincing evidence. Alternative medicine refers to all medical practices that claim to produce medical effects but fail to collect evidence using scientific methods, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, faith therapy, etc., and whose effects are often proved ineffective or cannot be proven at all. 丨Source: Wikipedia.org
Vaccine magazine responded quickly and immediately retracted the article. Meanwhile, Walek's Polish institution, the Potsnan Medical University, responded by firing him. But Valek himself insists that while his paper data isn't perfect, the analysis was correct.
Shortly thereafter, another Valek article published in jama Pediatrics was also retracted two weeks after publication. The article said that children wearing masks can lead to excessive concentrations of carbon dioxide inhalation, but the research methods and conclusions are untenable.
4
Jonathan Pruitt of McMaster University in Canada is a prominent behavioral ecologist whose field research on spiders is the foundation of many papers. However, in 2020, the validity of his paper data began to be widely questioned. First, the ecology magazine The American Naturalist retracted a 2016 paper (suspected of data duplication) published by Pruitt last January, and then the Proceedings of the Royal Society B also withdrew an article. Since then, scientists have mobilized to review nearly 150 journal papers published by Pruet. Within a year, 12 papers in Pruitt had been "taken off the shelves."
On November 12, 2021, the University of Tennessee in the United States revoked Pruet's doctoral dissertation. On November 16, McMaster University ended its investigation into Pruit and forced him to take paid leave. On December 1, the prestigious Canada 150 Research Chairs project removed Pruit from the list.
5
In 2018, Indian gastroenterologist Cyriac Abby Philips published a paper in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hepatology reporting that a 24-year-old young woman died of acute liver failure after taking herbal supplements from Herbalife. At that time, he never imagined that three years later he would consider suing the journal for defamation.
After the case study was published, several researchers with an interest in Herbalife asked for the journal to retract on the grounds of "lack of evidence." At the request of the editor-in-chief, Phillips responded to the questions raised by these experts one by one. Eventually, under pressure from Herbalife's multiple legal letters, the editor-in-chief proposed to re-examine the paper in accordance with guidelines from the International Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) to ensure its academic integrity. The results of the re-examination showed that the paper had neither data fraud nor plagiarism, and was a "clean" paper.
In January 2021, Elsevier informed Phillips that the journal would retract the paper for "for legal reasons." However, since then, the reason for the publication of the retraction statement has become "the scientific research methods, data analysis and interpretation of the article are insufficient", and the statement also declared the article "unreliable".
Figure 5 The retracted statement states that neither the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hepatology (JCEH) nor the National Association for the Study of the Liver of India (INASL) support the content and conclusions of this article[1].
In June 2021, Phillips declared the retracted statement grossly defamatory and "contrary to professional ethics and natural justice," warning that it would sue publishers and magazines for damages of up to $1.35 million. Elsevier immediately revised the statement again, changing it back to "removing the paper for legal reasons", and the article could no longer be seen on PubMed.
But that's not all– Phillips has filed an arbitration with the International Committee on Publishing Ethics, accusing the president of india's National Association for the Study of the Liver (INASL) of violating the committee's guidelines by manipulating the editor-in-chief of the journal to retract the paper without the full consent of the editorial board. Phillips asked the Publication Ethics Committee to come forward and reinstate the 2018 paper, or they could take legal action.
6
In general, the withdrawal of a paper usually occurs years later, but there is a "short-lived" paper that hangs just after the full moon. In mid-November 2021, a research group at New York University in Abu Dhabi published a paper in the journal Nature Communication saying that "women scientists perform better under the guidance of male mentors," which was strongly condemned as soon as it went live, and Nature Communications had to choose to withdraw the manuscript in a flood of criticism.
One statistician commented on Twitter: "This paper doesn't tell us much about gender affecting the quality of mentoring, but it clearly tells us that the statistical community needs to put a little more thought into teaching scientists what is relevant, what is causal, and what is a mixture of factors." ”
The authors endorsed the magazine's decision to withdraw, saying that "the article caused pain at the individual level and triggered a strong reaction from the scientific research community", which they "deeply regret".
7
Pierre Kory, a principal associate professor at the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and Public Health, has recently been thrust into the ivermectin controversy.
In May 2020, Corey testified to the U.S. Senate that MATH+ therapy reduces the risk of death from COVID-19 by 75% compared to other therapies. MATH+ is an intensive care regimen that uses a combination of drugs such as methylprednisolone, vitamin C, vitamin B1, and heparin.
In December 2020, Corey published his findings on MATH+ in the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine, but added the controversial drug ivermectin to the program, prompting other experts in the field to question whether the effectiveness of MATH+ therapy was exaggerated. In the midst of skepticism, in November, the journal retracted Corey's paper because of "inaccurate data."
In addition, in March, a paper on ivermectin was retracted from Frontiers in Pharmacology.
8
In late 2020, the journal Eurosurveillance announced that in response to an international "petition," they would scrutinize a paper published in January that year about the effective detection of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (then known as 2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR (real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) technology. The paper was received on January 21 and accepted on January 22, so the speed is rare. By the beginning of December 2020, the number of citations had exceeded 800.
The corresponding author of the article, Christian Drosten, is a renowned virologist at the University Hospital of Schallet in Berlin. Like Anthony Fauci in the United States and Wenhong Zhang in China, Deston played an important role in the fight against the virus in the early days of the new crown epidemic in Germany, but it has also become a target for conservatives to concentrate on attacking. Conservatives argue that RT-PCR testing is not enough to detect the virus, so a positive result is meaningless and should not be used to guide public policy – especially by proposing measures like lockdown that hinder economic development.
On November 27, 2020, 22 independent researchers from Europe, the United States and Asia submitted their review results of the Deston paper to the Journal of European Monitoring, calling the paper "flawed in the scientific method" (ten are listed), requesting that the journal publish their review results and retract the Deston paper. The review was then published on a website called Global Research (globalresearch.ca). [2]
The announcement in the European Monitor magazine has fueled the arrogance of opponents of virus detection. Two months later, however, on February 4, 2021, the magazine's editors responded with a statement saying the paper would be retained, or more precisely, "not meeting the criteria for retraction."
Figure 7 Bobby Rajesh Malhotra, the second author of the petition, sent 124 tweets exposing Deston's "nasty conspiracy." 丨Source: twitter.com
9
Ivermectin is a therapeutic drug extracted from avermectin by organic chemist Tomoshi Omura and biochemist William Campbell, which is effective against a variety of parasites. The two inventors thus shared half of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
In April 2020, a team of researchers from Monash University in Australia published an article in the journal Antiviral Research[3] saying that ivermectin can inhibit the growth of the new crown virus on cells within 48 hours. This conclusion was later taken out of context by Online rumors that "ivermectin can kill the new crown virus". Since then, the saying that ivermectin can effectively treat COVID-19 has spread widely. Although there is little evidence, the proponents of ivermectin are convinced.
In May 2021, a study that boiled ivermectin fans came out and was published in the journal Viruses. The randomized controlled trial claimed that a single dose (based on body weight) of ivermectin was sufficient to "reduce symptoms in patients, reduce viral load, and reduce hospitalization rates in patients." Everything looks perfect – it's just that the data isn't real.
On 6 October, BBC News reported that the study "copied and pasted details of 11 patients, indicating that many of the so-called 'patients' in the trial were not real" [4]. On October 26, Virus retracted the paper. [5] In response, the author, Ali Samaha of the School of Public Health of the Lebanese University, admitted that they had confused some of the data files, but insisted that "a re-analysis of the correct data shows that the original conclusions are still valid".
Ironically, the study was previously included in a meta-analysis of the advantages of ivermectin in treating COVID-19[6], and the results are still "strong" and reliable.
10
The last thing that comes is the "most exciting of the year" in our hearts.
After readers pointed out that some of the papers were complete nonsense, as of November 4, 2021, the Arabian Journal of Geosciences, the official journal of the Saudi Geological Society, was forced to withdraw 44 articles for "special reasons."
How did witty readers find out what was going on? The titles of such papers allegedly read like a drunken crossword puzzle played by a group of graduate students: "Neural network–based urban rainfall trend estimation and adolescent anxiety management" (Jiujiang College), Distribution of earthquake activity in mountain area based on embedded system and physical fitness detection of basketball"..." (Jinan University)... Most of these papers are logically confused, far-fetched, and patchwork together terminology from different fields, and it is difficult to understand how the articles will be accepted.
Regrettably, most of the 44 articles involved Chinese researchers, some even from 985 universities. At one point, a guest editor of the magazine claimed that the inexplicable articles appeared because emails had been hacked (a reason that no one seems unfamiliar to). In fact, these 44 articles reveal only the tip of the iceberg of Springer Nature Publishing. The 220 papers the company published, and about 400 else's, have similar problems.