Paper cited by article at center of lawsuit for criticizing Splenda earns an expression of concern

Susan Schiffman

A journal has issued an expression of concern for a 2008 paper suggesting artificial sweetener Splenda could disrupt the gut microbiome and cause other havoc with the gastrointestinal system – and which is cited by a paper at the center of a lawsuit against one of its authors by the maker of the sugar substitute.

The article, “Splenda Alters Gut Microflora and Increases Intestinal P-Glycoprotein and Cytochrome P-450 in Male Rats,” appeared in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, a Taylor & Francis title. The journal has a Part B, too, which also is part of this story.

The paper, which has been cited more than 200 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, caught the attention of Elisabeth Bik, who last year commented on the article on PubPeer, noting potential problems with four of the figures, including Western blots and missing error bars. 

Susan Schiffman, the last author of the paper and a psychologist then at Duke University in Durham, N.C., but who has since moved to North Carolina State University in Raleigh, responded to Bik’s post. She said a researcher named in the acknowledgements of the paper had been asked to perform the Western blots “because she is highly skilled and very accurate,” and some of the others figures had included error bars but they made the figure “too busy.” She said she did not have access to the original data. 

According to the expression of concern

After publication of this article, questions about the scientific integrity of the article were brought to the Editor’s and Publisher’s attention. We contacted the authors, but have not yet received the required data or supporting materials necessary to complete the investigation. As this investigation may take some time to resolve, we advise readers to interpret the information presented in the article with due caution. The authors have been notified about this Expression of Concern.

Last May, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B published a review by Schiffman and several of her colleagues that argued sucralose is “genotoxic” and its presence in the food supply should be the focus of “a regulatory status review.” It also cites the paper that is now subject to an expression of concern.

The May 2023 paper – which has been cited four times – did not please TC Heartland, the maker of Splenda, which has sued Schiffman for defamation. Heartland, which brought the case in the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, claims Schiffman:

chose to chase headlines rather than tell the truth. Dr. Schiffman spread falsehoods about Splenda, and in doing so she harmed Heartland and the millions of consumers who rely on Splenda as an important part of achieving their health goals. 

The paper, the company claims, is “dishonest and deeply flawed for numerous reasons,” and “Schiffman’s subsequent claims about Splenda on her press tour were plainly false: Her paper expressly confirms that the sucralose Schiffman claimed to have studied for it was not the sucralose used in Splenda.”

Schiffman and Duke did not respond to requests for comment. 

One more note: The lead author of the article was Mohamed B Abou-Donia,  of Duke. That name might be familiar to readers of Retraction Watch from this 2021 post about an investigation at the institution involving three papers on which he was the second of two authors. Abou-Donia died in 2023 of complications of COVID-19, according to Schiffman’s comments on PubPeer. 

Those articles have all since been retracted with the same notice:

Following an institutional investigation, the journal is retracting this article. The institution determined there is insufficient source documentation to verify either the reliability of the published results or the origins of the samples used. The institution also determined that the first co-author should not have been named as co-author of the article.

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Controversial pyramid paper retracted when authors turn out to have radiocarbon-dated nearby dirt

A journal has retracted, over the objections of the authors, a controversial 2023 paper claiming a dig site in Indonesia is home to the largest pyramid built by humans. 

The work was led by the Indonesian archeologist Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, of the Research Center for Natural Disasters in Bandung.

Hilman has been working at the site in Java for many years in his quest to prove it contains the ruins of a massive pyramid built by an advanced culture between 9,000 and 27,000 years ago. Hilman has also tried to link the site to the lost city of Atlantis

But the notion that Gunung Padang is the mother of all pyramids – and, according to Hilman, the world’s oldest building – has been dismissed by some as “pseudoarchaeology,”

The paper, “Geo-Archaeological prospecting of Gunung Padang buried prehistoric pyramid in West Java, Indonesia”, attracted mounds of critical attention when it appeared last October in  Archaeological Prospection, a Wiley title. Among the skeptics was Flint Dibble, an archeologist who reviewed the research on his YouTube channel in February. 

According to the abstract of the article:

Radiocarbon dating of organic soils from the structures uncovered multiple construction stages dating back thousands of years BCE, with the initial phase dating to the Palaeolithic era. These findings offer valuable insights into the construction history of Gunung Padang, shedding light on the engineering capabilities of ancient civilizations during the Palaeolithic era.

As the retraction notice states, the dating appears to have been fatally flawed:

Following publication of this article, concerns were raised by third parties with expertise in geophysics, archaeology, and radiocarbon dating, about the conclusions drawn by the authors based on the evidence reported. The publisher and the Co-Editors-in-Chief have investigated these concerns and have concluded that the article contains a major error. This error, which was not identified during peer review, is that the radiocarbon dating was applied to soil samples that were not associated with any artifacts or features that could be reliably interpreted as anthropogenic or “man-made.” Therefore, the interpretation that the site is an ancient pyramid built 9000 or more years ago is incorrect, and the article must be retracted. Danny Hilman Natawidjaja responded on behalf of the authors, all of whom disagree with the retraction.

Hilman, who posted a response to the retraction on Facebook – along with a Dropbox folder with materials he believes supports the validity of the work – told us he and his colleagues “are baffled” by the journal’s decision: 

we disagree because they (the Wiley Team) did not even care to give us sufficient evidence and scientific rationale to support the alleged major error. 

On Facebook, the researchers wrote: 

Was the decision to retract our paper a severe form of censorship, blatantly disregarding the fundamental principles of scientific inquiry, transparency, and fairness in academic discourse?

We urge the academic community, scientific organizations, and concerned individuals to stand with us in challenging this decision and upholding the principles of integrity, transparency, and fairness in scientific research and publishing.

We caught up with Dibble in Greece. He told us the conclusion in particular doesn’t “really match any of the actual evidence presented in the body of the paper.” He also speculated that the peer reviewers may have been focused on their own areas of interest and not able to see the larger picture: 

A wide range of methods were presented in the paper, so there wouldn’t really be many people who were familiar with all those methods in addition to the local archaeological context. It does seem likely that none of the reviewers were familiar with that archaeological context at all. And, that’s an issue for sure.

Dibble noted that he could think of only one similar retraction in the field of archeology, a 2022 article about an ancient airburst: 

I’m guessing these two papers were retracted because the journal editors felt embarrassed for having published pieces whose conclusions were sorely lacking in evidence. But, that’s just a guess? It’s so uncommon. In both cases, authors on these teams were associated with more prominent pseudoarchaeological ideas. So, that might also have something to do with it.

On X, in a thread worth reading, Dibble also expressed annoyance at the journal (and the media coverage of the article and its aftermath) for focusing on what isn’t as opposed to what is known about Gunung Padang – knowledge generated by other archeologists: 

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Do some IQ data need a ‘public health warning?’ A paper based on a controversial psychologist’s data is retracted

Richard Lynn

A journal has retracted a controversial 2010 article on intelligence and infections that was based on data gathered decades ago by a now-deceased researcher who lost his emeritus status in 2018 after students said his work was racist and sexist.

The article, “Parasite prevalence and the worldwide distribution of cognitive ability’, was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, by a group at the University of New Mexico. Their claim, according to the abstract

The worldwide distribution of cognitive ability is determined in part by variation in the intensity of infectious diseases. From an energetics standpoint, a developing human will have difficulty building a brain and fighting off infectious diseases at the same time, as both are very metabolically costly tasks.

Overlaying average national IQ with parasitic stress, they found “robust worldwide” correlations in five of six regions of the globe: 

Infectious disease remains the most powerful predictor of average national IQ when temperature, distance from Africa, gross domestic product per capita and several measures of education are controlled for. These findings suggest that the Flynn effect [which posits that average national IQs increase over time] may be caused in part by the decrease in the intensity of infectious diseases as nations develop.

The study – and a related paper by a different group of authors – caught the attention of the popular science media. The Washington Post covered the research (pointing out some shortcomings), as did Science, and the lead author, Christopher Eppig, wrote about it for Scientific American. In that article, Eppig wrote: 

In our 2010 study, we not only found a very strong relationship between levels of infectious disease and IQ, but controlling for the effects of education, national wealth, temperature, and distance from sub-Saharan Africa, infectious disease emerged as the best predictor of the bunch. A recent study by Christopher Hassall and Thomas Sherratt repeated our analysis using more sophisticated statistical methods, and concluded that infectious disease may be the only really important predictor of average national IQ.

But as the journal notes in the retraction, Eppig and his colleagues based their study on an analysis of data published in 2004 by Tatu Vanhanen and Richard Lynn, who died in 2023: 

Following the publication of this article, Proceedings B was recently made aware of potential problems with the underpinning datasets used in the analyses, which were drawn from published sources [1,2]. The editors’ attention was drawn to the fact that the datasets on between-country variation in IQ had been the subject of several critiques claiming that they contain substantial inaccuracies and biases that throw substantial doubt on inferences made from them, and that these problems had not been resolved in revised versions of the dataset used by Eppig and colleagues. Upon detailed scrutiny, the editors found these claims to be convincing and asked Eppig and colleagues for their response. While the authors acknowledged at least some of the claimed flaws, they maintained that the inferences from the data were nevertheless reliable.

Proceedings B publishes research of outstanding scientific excellence and importance, conforming to recognized standards of scientific procedure in terms of methodology and ethical standards. Journal policy stipulates retraction where editors have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable (and may invalidate the conclusions of the paper). After carefully considering the dataset, the critiques, the authors’ response and the potential harms created by using a dataset that appears to portray human populations in some geographical regions as of below normal intelligence on average, the editors concluded that the manifest problems in the data warranted retraction in order to uphold these standards.

Lynn’s career, and views, have been highly visible for many years in the United States in the United Kingdom, where he worked. In 2018, Ulster University, where he was a professor emeritus, agreed to demands from students that the school revoke his academic status – news covered by the BBC among other outlets (including this one).

We emailed the chief editor of the journal, and received a reply from a spokesperson for the Royal Society, who told us: 

In July 2023, the editorial team was made aware of criticism about the dataset used by Eppig et al. in a 2010 paper in Proceedings B. After considering a wide array of evidence, including the original data set, subsequent critiques and the authors’ response, the editors concluded problems with the study were sufficient to call its conclusions into question and warrant retraction.

The decision to retract was made in January 2024, and the authors were informed at that time, the spokesperson added.

Randy Thornill, the last author of the paper, did not respond to our request for comment.

So what about the other paper that used Vanhanen and Lynn’s data? Hassall and Sherratt told us that in light of the retraction, they would ask Intelligence, where they published their paper in 2011, to revisit the research. Hassall, of the University of Leeds, in England, told us: 

Our paper was really focused on statistical issues when looking at spatial patterns in anything, but with IQ data as a case study (prompted by the fact that Eppig et al (and many others) were doing these kinds of analyses). As a result, I’d be hesitant to retract the whole thing as it has value as (and was always intended as) a methodological contribution. 

However, both researchers agreed the journal ought to do something to indicate the work was potentially fraught. Hassall said: 

researchers are clearly using our work to support the idea of an IQ-disease link.

Taken together, it’s a complicated picture:

  1. The point of our paper is the method and the method is sound and important, independent of data
  2. Our analysis yields quantitatively the same conclusions whether based on a problematic dataset (IQ) or on a robust dataset (PISA) that is measuring something similar
  3. Researchers cite our work sometimes for the methods and sometimes for the (potentially questionable) results.

Sherratt, of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, added: 

While our paper does a service by educating researchers on why autocorrelation matters and how to address it, at very least there needs to be a “public health warning” on the data set on which our methods paper is based. We should insist on this. A corrigendum might do the trick if it is seen whenever a reader views our paper … The fear is that if we don’t do anything then, now that Epigg et al. (2010) has been taken out of circulation, our paper can still be used to provide general support for the relationship!

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Cancer paper earns expression of concern nearly two years after investigation report is revealed

Carlo Croce

A Springer Nature journal has issued an expression of concern for a 16-year-old paper by Carlo Croce, the cancer researcher – and noted art collector – at The Ohio State University three years after the publication had received a correction for problematic images and roughly 20 months after the news division at Nature reported on a pair of institutional investigations into problems with Croce’s work. 

As we and others have reported, those investigations concluded Croce had not committed misconduct but had overlooked the misdeeds of others in his lab. 

Here’s the notice for the paper, “MicroRNA signatures of TRAIL resistance in human non-small cell lung cancer,” which Oncogene published in 2008:

The Editors-in-Chief would like to alert the readers that following the Correction [1] of this article [2] to address the concerns raised regarding the western blot loading controls presented in Figs. 4c and 7a, further issues have been noted:

The western blot loading controls presented in Figs. 4d and 7c appear highly similar.

The U6 panel of Fig. 3b appears highly similar to the U6 panel of Fig. 4c of another article from the same author group that was submitted and published within a similar time frame [3].

The western blot loading controls presented in Fig. 5b and the originally published version of Fig. 7a appear highly similar to the control lanes 1 and 2 (flipped horizontally) of Fig. 3a of [4], which as also submitted and published within a similar time frame.

The authors have stated that the images used in the other articles [3, 4] are incorrect, and are issuing Corrections to replace them with the appropriate data. However, due to the number of concerns raised, readers are advised to interpret the presented data with caution.

M. Garofalo has stated on behalf of all authors that they do not agree to this editorial expression of concern.

The article has been cited 229 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, of which 20 have come since the correction (which itself has received two citations). 

David Sanders, a data sleuth and biologist at Purdue University who raised issues about the papers – and who successfully defended himself in a defamation suit Croce launched against him – told us last week he first notified Oncogene about the problematic articles in 2016. 

When the correction appeared in January 2021, Sanders contacted the journal again with concerns about the statement, including: 

Why is there no indication that there had been image duplication in the correction?  How do you know that Figures 5b and 6a are correct? 

Five months later, he raised still more questions about the article – but never heard back: 

In violation of COPE rules, they have never contacted me about the resolution of this issue.

Sanders also pointed to evidence of plagiarism in the article, which OSU documents in one of its reports. 

We asked Springer Nature to explain the lag – and why the journal felt an expression of concern was more appropriate than retraction in this case. The response from a spokesperson: 

After a careful and thorough investigation, the Editors concluded that publishing an Editorial Expression of Concern was the most appropriate editorial action to take.

Oncogene has issued a double correction for another of Croce’s papers, “Fhit modulation of the Akt-survivin pathway in lung cancer cells: Fhit-tyrosine 114 (Y114) is essential,” originally published in 2006.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly updatefollow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Medical society takes millions from company that sued it for defamation – and lost

When the American Society of Anesthesiologists last October announced the receipt of a $2.5 million donation from a drug company – “to advance education and innovation for our members”  – the news could have been dismissed with a shrug. After all, such gifts from industry to medical societies are commonplace. 

What makes this case noteworthy is that until the donation, the ASA and the drug maker, Pacira BioSciences, were better known as adversaries embroiled in a bitter lawsuit over three articles about the company’s flagship product the society had published in 2021 in its main scientific journal. 

The papers, which questioned the effectiveness of Exparel, an anesthetic intended for the treatment of patients undergoing orthopedic surgery and other procedures. As we reported in May 2021, as part of a larger suit against the ASA, Pacira demanded in legal filings that the ASA and its journal, Anesthesiology, retract the papers, which it considered libelous. 

The company didn’t hold that stance long, however. We wrote then: 

The company asked the court for a preliminary injunction to retract two papers and an editorial about Exparel that Anesthesiology published in February. But on May 7,  Pacira withdrew the motion, about a week after the ASA filed its own motion calling for a quick hearing on the merits of the company’s motion.

We also noted at the time ASA was taking a hard line against Pacira. The society said then: 

Although Pacira started this lawsuit, ASA will not shy away from refuting Pacira’s claims and from exposing the important issues with Pacira’s controversial drug.

Pacira may have backed down from its demands for retraction, but it didn’t quit the case – even after the the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled in February 2022 the drug maker “fail[ed] to state a claim for trade libel against any defendant.” 

Pacira appealed that decision. And lost again, in March 2023. 

Praising the appellate court’s ruling, the ASA issued a statement quoting its then-president, Michael Champeau: 

This affirmation of the district court’s dismissal is an important victory for ASA as well as for the scientific process and free speech. … This decision makes clear that pharmaceutical companies are not free to intimidate the scientific process by filing meritless lawsuits.

What a difference seven months makes. 

In October 2023, the ASA posted a press release highlighting Pacira’s beneficence. The statement reads, in part: 

As an Industry Supporter, Pacira is helping to establish a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with the anesthesiology community, strengthen collaboration between physician anesthesiologists and industry, and add to the value the Society provides to patients and the public, while providing invaluable year-round support of ASA programs and priorities related to non-opioid alternatives and postsurgical care.

The release does not mention the lawsuit. 

Evan Kharasch, the top editor of Anesthesiology when the Exparel case began and a named defendant in Pacira’s initial suit, told us he had “no knowledge other than the ASA press releases” of the circumstances around Pacira’s donation to ASA and would not speak to its propriety. However, he said: 

I’m pleased and grateful that the ASA chose to defend the journal and the authors in this case. 

Kharasch, who wrote an article for the Mayo Clinic Proceedings this month about the lawsuit’s implication for academic freedom, added the fact the company lost its suit “speaks to the fact that courtrooms are not the place to debate science.” 
Pacira did not respond to a request for an interview. But a joint press release with ASA, dated Oct. 12, 2023, quotes Dave Stack, the CEO and board chair of the company, saying: 

Pacira is pleased to support ASA and we look forward to collaborating in our efforts to improve patient outcomes through opioid-minimizing strategies. … Our organizations share a common interest in advancing education and innovation for the anesthesia community and the patients we serve. We believe that working together, Pacira and the ASA can effect significant change in the best interest of patients.

The release notes Pacira’s grant puts it in rarified company: 

Launched in 2010, ASA’s Industry Supporter Program is limited to 10 organizations at any time. Participation is intended for companies who want to stand apart by showcasing high-level commitment to the education of physician anesthesiologists, the anesthesia care team and advancement of the specialty.

ASA president Ronald L. Harter told Retraction Watch that “the grant is not related to the lawsuit, which concluded long before the grant was ever discussed.”  (The lawsuit concluded at the end of March 2023. The grant was announced in October 2023.)

Harter continued:

We have moved forward and are pleased with the grant from Pacira to advance the medical specialty of anesthesiology and the perioperative, pain medicine and critical care our members provide; facilitate best-in-class clinician education; and improve patient care. 

Harter declined to say exactly how much the legal fees totaled, but said they “were substantially in excess of the grant amount. As noted, the two are unrelated.”

James Eisenach, the top editor at Anesthesiology when it published the Exparel papers, and a named defendant in the Pacira suit, declined to comment on the donation. However, Eisenach praised ASA for paying for the legal defenses of himself and the other defendants, and called the outcome of the case: 

a resounding success for science. … I was really pleased; I think it’s precedent-setting.

But word of the donation has displeased some anesthesiologists, who did not want to be identified because of their connections with the ASA. One person familiar with Pacira’s gift called the payment “blood money,” adding: “I question the ethics” of the arrangement. 

Another leading anesthesiologist told us: 

The larger academic community was appalled by the implications of the Pacira legal maneuvers that challenged academic freedom of journals and societies, not to mention individual authors.  So the strong defense by ASA and the fact that ASA prevailed was a major win.  I was not happy to see this current bit of news. If it had been up to me,  I would have told them exactly where to deposit their donation! 

Asked about these concerns, Harter said: 

We recognize that it’s possible there are varying opinions across our membership of 57,000, but we believe that in general our members are looking forward to the progress that can be made through this support and understand the importance of working together with industry to achieve critical goals such as enhancing care and optimizing patient outcomes.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly updatefollow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Paper claiming ‘extensive’ harms of COVID-19 vaccines to be retracted

A journal is retracting a paper on the purported harms of vaccines against COVID-19 written in part by authors who have had similar work retracted before.

The article, “COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign,” appeared late last month in Cureus, which used to be a stand-alone journal but is now owned by Springer Nature. (It has appeared frequently in these pages.)

Graham Parker, Director of Publishing and Customer Success at Cureus, told Retraction Watch:

I can confirm we will be retracting it by the end of the week, as we have provided the authors with a deadline to reply and indicate whether they agree or disagree with the retraction.

The senior author on the work was Peter McCullough, a cardiologist at the Institute of Pure and Applied Knowledge who lost his board certification after the American Board of Internal Medicine found he had “provided false or inaccurate medical information to the public.”

Indeed, McCullough had already lost one paper, in Current Problems in Cardiology, from Elsevier, when he and his colleagues submitted their latest opus to Cureus. And SSRN, which hosts preprints for The Lancet, another Elsevier journal, had removed work by him and colleagues claiming large numbers of deaths from COVID-19 vaccines.  

A few days after the paper appeared, we asked John Adler Jr., the editor in chief of Cureus, if the track record of the authors concerned him. His response seemed to admit to the risk, but he also defended the journal’s vetting of the paper: 

Yes I am aware that many of these authors are skeptical zealots when it comes to the dangers of vaccines. Our editorial response was extra vigilance during the peer review process with 8 different reviewers weighing in on publication or not, including a few with strong statistics knowledge. Therefore, a credible peer review process was followed and the chips fell where they may. That is all I can say. If you or other readers were to note fatal flaws in this article now that it is published, i.e. failure to accurately report financial COIs [conflicts of interest], totally erroneous statistical analysis, fake data etc. we will of course re-evaluate at any time.

Adler then took a jab at other journals:  

The decision process Cureus made, contrasts sharply with Elsevier’s seeming editorial decision to just censor the article using ad hominem concerns.

In a Feb. 9, 2024 letter to the journal and the publisher, John P. Moore, a microbiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health, in New Haven, Conn., expressed their “serious concerns” about the article. Among their objections: 

The authors utterly lack relevant professional qualifications that would enable them to assess the scientific publications they draw on and/or attempt to criticize. The authors self-describe their affiliations under the rubric of “Independent Research”, or list private foundations, or in one case report an academic discipline unrelated to biology. In short, the authors cannot draw on years of training in biological science, but appear to be self-taught via the “University of Google”.

They continue:

The point here is that the Cureus review merely regurgitates claims about mRNA vaccines that have circulated on the internet and been debunked over and over again, including by fact-checking organizations (e.g., Factcheck.org, and the USA Today and Politico factcheck teams).

They conclude: 

By bringing this highly problematic review to your attention, we hope that you will conduct a thorough review of how it was accepted for publication in Cureus under the Springer Nature imprimatur. How appropriate was the peer review process? How did the editor act? Is the acceptance of this review symptomatic of a wider problem at the journal? Finally, if you share our views that this review is so flawed as to be dangerous to public health, you may well decide that it should be retracted.

Springer Nature had apparently been looking into the case already, and ended up agreeing with Moore, Gonsalves and other critics of the article. 

Steve Kirsch, a co-author of the paper, announced the retraction on his Substack over the weekend:

The paper I co-authored with 6 other authors will be retracted by the journal because the publisher won’t allow any paper that is counter-narrative to be published.

According to Kirsch’s post, Springer Nature’s inquiry found: 

a significant number of concerns with your article that in our view can’t be remedied with a correction. The concerns include, but are not limited to: 

  1. We find that the article is misrepresenting all-cause mortality data
  2. We find that the article appears to be misrepresenting VAERs data
  3. The article states that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine saved two lives and caused 27 deaths per 100,000 vaccinations, and the Moderna vaccine saved 3.9 lives and caused 10.8 deaths per 100,000 vaccinations, though there does not appear to be convincing evidence for this claim. 
  4. Incorrect claim: Vaccines are gene therapy products.
  5. The article states that vaccines are contaminated with high levels of DNA. Upon review we found that the cited references are not sufficient to support these claims. 
  6. The article states that SV40 promoter can cause cancer because SV40 virus can cause cancer in some organisms and inconclusively in humans. However, we find that this is misrepresenting the cited study (Li, S., MacLaughlin, F., Fewell, J. et al. Muscle-specific enhancement of gene expression by incorporation of SV40 enhancer in the expression plasmid. Gene Ther 8, 494–497 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.gt.3301419 
  7. The article states that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines did not undergo adequate safety and efficacy testing, which the journal considers to be incorrect
  8. The article incorrectly states that spike proteins produced by COVID-19 vaccination linger in the body and cause adverse effects.

Waving the white flag, a bowed but unbroken Kirsch wrote: 

It doesn’t do any good to show them these reasons are all bogus. The laundry list of items is simply a placeholder to make it look like the journal is following the science.

Nothing we can say on appeal will make any difference.

The decision was made to retract the paper and facts don’t matter. It’s about supporting the narrative. When they write “in our view can’t be remedied with a correction” it means “don’t even bother arguing with us, your paper is retracted.”

For his part, Moore said:

The journal and publisher responded courteously and professionally to our letter, and I was pleased by the final outcome. They did what needed to be done.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly updatefollow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Springer Nature journal pulls nearly three dozen papers from special issues

A Springer Nature journal retracted 34 papers earlier this month, including, ironically enough, one on how to detect fake news, which appeared in special guest-edited issues hacked by publication cheats.

Special issues have emerged over the past few years as particularly vulnerable to paper mills. Last March, we reported that Wiley was taking a $9 million write-down after its Hindawi subsidiary paused publication of such issues because they were badly hacked by paper mills.

“Hybrid deep learning model for automatic fake news detection,” from a group in Turkey led by Othman A. Hanshal, was published last February in Applied Nanoscience. The retraction notice reads

The Publisher has retracted this article in agreement with the Editor-in-Chief. The article was submitted to be part of a guest-edited issue. An investigation by the publisher found a number of articles, including this one, with a number of concerns, including but not limited to compromised editorial handling and peer review process, inappropriate or irrelevant references or not being in scope of the journal or guest-edited issue. Based on the investigation’s findings the publisher, in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions of this article.

The authors have not responded to correspondence regarding this retraction.

A second paper in the journal, “Enhancement of voltage profile and generation of cost function by hybrid power flow controller using genetic algorithm,” also appeared last February from a group of researchers in Chennai, India. 

According to the retraction notice

The Publisher has retracted this article in agreement with the Editor-in-Chief. The article was submitted to be part of a guest-edited issue. An investigation by the publisher found a number of articles, including this one, with a number of concerns, including but not limited to compromised editorial handling and peer review process, inappropriate or irrelevant references or not being in scope of the journal or guest-edited issue. Based on the investigation’s findings the publisher, in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions of this article.

Author A. Murugan has not stated whether they agree or disagree with this retraction. Author V. Ramakrishnan has not responded to correspondence regarding this retraction.

A spokesperson for Springer Nature told us: 

These papers were identified as part of our ongoing commitment to identifying and acting on papers of concern. When we become aware of such concerns, we investigate them carefully following an established process and in line with best-practice COPE guidelines. We are currently in the process of retracting 34 papers as a result of this investigation, which should be completed imminently.

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‘Nonsensical content’: Springer Nature journal breaks up with a paper on a love story

Majnun in the wilderness (credit)

You can love math, but can you math love? 

Scientific Reports has retracted a 2023 paper that tried to do just that by imposing a numerical model onto an ancient Persian love story that may have influenced Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. 

The paper, “A fractional order nonlinear model of the love story of Layla and Majnun,” was written by Zulqurnain Sabir and Salem Ben Said, both mathematicians at United Arab Emirates University. The article has been cited three times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

According to the abstract: 

In this study, a fractional order mathematical model using the romantic relations of the Layla and Majnun is numerically simulated by the Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation neural networks. The fractional order derivatives provide more realistic solutions as compared to integer order derivatives of the mathematical model based on the romantic relationship of the Layla and Majnun.

As Gram Parsons might have said, love hurts – causing headaches for Scientific Reports, which appears to have been on autoplay for this one.

According to the retraction notice:

The Editors have retracted this Article because of concerns regarding the originality and scientific validity of this work.

An investigation conducted after its publication confirmed that it contains material that substantially overlaps with1. Furthermore, concerns were raised about nonsensical content. The Editors therefore no longer have confidence in the research presented in this work.

Both Authors disagree with the retraction.

In other words, not only was the paper duplicative – a fact that could easily have been detected with some screening – it’s gobbledygook – a fact that also could easily have been detected with some peer review. 

Said, the corresponding author, did not respond to a request for comment.

As it happens, attempts by researchers to mathematize love, including that between Layla and Majnun – are more common than one might expect, especially if one expected that number to approach zero. 

One of those scholars is Clint Sprott, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The retracted article cites several of Sprott’s papers on romantic modeling, including a 2016 work in Nonlinear Dynamics titled “Layla and Majnun: a complex love story”.

Sprott told us he’d been unaware of the article and retraction: 

The mathematical modeling of romantic relationships has an interesting history.

Originally Steve Strogatz used a simple toy model of love to motivate his students to learn about differential equations, and he included the model in his popular textbook on Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos. Various people (including me) were intrigued by the idea and extended it in various ways to capture common behaviors such as chaos without taking the results too seriously. 

Every year or so someone publishes a new extension, each getting a bit more silly than the previous. The subject is fun to think about, and the papers do get a fair bit of attention, but I don’t think they have contributed much to the advance of social psychology. At best, the application of the mathematics to romance is whimsical and metaphorical.

Rafal Marszalek, the chief editor of Scientific Reports, told us, through a spokesperson for Springer Nature, which publishes the journal: 

We became aware of concerns with this paper in September 2023 and began an investigation looking into them carefully following our established processes. This included seeking expert advice from our Editorial Board.

Marszalek added the journal runs plagiarism checks on all submissions: 

However, the paper with substantial material overlap cited in the retraction notice was published after the retracted paper was submitted to the journal, which will have reduced the effectiveness of the tools used for detecting duplicated content.

Our submission policies outline our expectations for authors regrading duplicated material, and given the investigation concluded that this paper substantially overlapped with another paper, retraction was the appropriate course of action.

The investigation also highlighted elements of nonsensical material in the paper, which added to the decision to retract.

Could peer reviewers – or editors, for that matter – have caught that nonsense prior to publication? Marszalek demurred: 

I’m afraid we cannot comment on the specifics of the peer review process for this or any other paper.

But in a 2022 interview, Marszalek tipped readers to the possibility that his journal was unafraid to operate at the edges of perspicuity:

we have the ability to put the weirdest and yet most wonderful piece of knowledge in the hands of a curious child somewhere out there, and to inspire them to do something that will change the world one day.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Publisher error claims joke paper, April Fools’ tradition – three years later

A journal says a content management mishap led to the publication, and subsequent retraction, of a gag essay not intended for wide distribution. 

Why the retraction happened three and a half years after the paper’s publication remains murky.

This story belongs to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, back when Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics, a Wiley title, used to gather spoof papers for its annual April Fools edition.  

As Kristofer Barr, an assistant research integrity auditor at Wiley, told us: 

The “April Fools” series was a longstanding tradition promoted on Proteins’ homepage, which included humorous editorials written by members of the research community. The intention of these editorials was to present a humorous take on an important topic in the field. Each article went through a process by which they were made into PDFs and these PDFs were promoted on a separate page on the journal’s website apart from other content published in Early View or in-issue. The editorials were never intended to be published alongside research content nor indexed in PubMed.

But one such manuscript, “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” managed somehow to jump from house organ to the real journal, spoiling the fun for everyone. The title of the cheeky paper refers to the motto for the Olympic games – “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” 

The piece was written by Joanna Lange and Gert Vriend, of Radboud University Medical Centre in The Netherlands (Vriend also appears to be affiliated with the Baco Institute of Protein Science , in the Philippines.) 

The episode reminds us a bit of one of our earliest posts, back in 2010, about the retraction of a paper from a virology journal which speculated – with tongue in cheek –  that Jesus had healed a febrile woman of her bout of flu. 

We found the abstract for the spoof, which reads: 

2020 is a leap year. That means that we have one day extra and, if the Olympic games had survived the corona crisis, we would all be watching television and ask the eternal question whether Olympic records will for ever be broken and broken again, or that there are limits to human biology1 . In this article we ask the same question, but rather than discussing aspects of Citius, Altius, and Fortius of athletes we will discuss them for macromolecules. It is remarkable how many parallels can be found between Olympic records in these two seemingly different worlds. People involved in structure validation and re-refinement try to make us believe that most aspects of macromolecular structures can be caught by a number that has some constant value with little variation around it. We will show here that the PDB2 databank proves this idea to be wrong. In the protein structure world, it holds for many that “participating is more important than winning”, but some, fortunately, still go for the record books.

It continues: 

Cheating is a favourite pass-time for many, especially when feeling that we can get away with it  (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_returns_of_Donald_Trump). But cheating happens  everywhere else too; like in the Olympics (https://www.britannica.com/list/8-olympic-cheating- scandals) and, amazingly, even in crystallography13-16. The Olympic games have been marred by a large number of doping abuse cases, and the number of athletes caught increase from games to games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Olympic_Games). The systematic country-wide doping abuse of East-Germany, though, remained undetected too long to be backed up by physical evidence. Something similar is going on in crystallography. In pre-history, structures were built by hand (see e.g. Figure 1) and cheating was difficult because one could always check the conclusions by travelling to the lab that built the model, and remeasure everything.

Protein models as they were built in the good old days; before computers came around to spoil the fun. These metal models had one big problem, all residues of a certain type always had the same bond lengths and bond angles. (Figure courtesy A Finkelstein)  At some moment, though, computers became available, and from then on crystallographers could cheat much more eloquently by using refinement software with restraints and constraints, and parameter sets like those of Engh and Huber. Fortunately, not all crystallographers do this …

Unless you’re a protein scientist, the humor here is likely to fall a bit flat. The funniest part of the piece, as far as we can tell, is the disclosure statement: 

These authors contributed equally little to this work.

We were surprised to find the paper has been cited (just once), according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. The reference seems not to indicate the authors knew the article was a lark.

Wiley didn’t catch the rogue publication until this year, during an internal audit. Per Barr: 

In late 2023, a team member noticed the erroneous publication of one of these editorials, which was likely the result of a miscommunication within our production staff. Our integrity group, following COPE guidelines, advised that it was necessary to retract the article.  The Editor-in-Chief of Proteins and both authors agreed that the mistakenly-published editorial would receive a retraction, and we thank them for their quick action to help correct the record.

Nikolay Dokholyan, the editor-in-chief of Proteins, lamented the joke gone wrong: 

The story of this article is just a set of unfortunate events. Wiley published it accidentally. We had a tradition of April’s fool articles, which are not for publication. Wiley made a mistake and published it. Upon revealing the mistake, they fixed it. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with the science. Wiley has a problem mixing humor and science since it may make erroneous perceptions.

In fact, the retraction notice appears to suggest blame for the error lies with the editors:

The above article, published online on 12 June 2020 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal’s Editor-in-Chief Dr. Nikolay Dokholyan, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The above article is a humorous editorial contribution surrounding a specialized topic, and was not intended for full online publication as part of the journal’s scholarly content. Due to an editorial mistake, the above article was published online in Early View. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. takes full responsibility for the erroneous publication of this article.

Regardless, Dokholyan confirmed April is no longer a month of mirth at his journal – no more jokes about misfolded proteins in its pages:  

we stopped this tradition.

Barr added: 

Upon agreement with the Editor-in-Chief and the lead author of this series, we have taken steps to move previous “April Fools Day” editorials to a separate platform, which will ensure the articles are presented in context and will not be mistaken as genuine scholarly content. Before this incident, the journal had already intended to retire the April Fools series.

Vriend told us he had been submitting the joke pieces for a decade before the one that went awry: 

I will indeed miss it a bit. But, to be honest, I was/am running out of ideas. This year I had still something nice, there is a relation (not correlation, and hopefully nothing causal) between the style of the american president and the length and spread in the length of bond-lengths in amino acid side-chains…   But the world will never learn about this amazing fact…

Larks may be carefree, but science may be deaf to their songs.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

Copy and euphemize: When ‘an honor mistake’ means plagiarism

via James Kroll

Readers who have been with us for the long haul may remember we used to collect a catalog of our favorite euphemisms for plagiarism. That list died with the demise of Lab Times, for which we used to write a regular column (although we did write this piece a bit later) – but the magazine’s passing did not mark the end of journals that speak with mealy mouths. 

The latest such euphemism to catch our eye comes from the Journal of STEPS for Humanities and Social Sciences, which in 2022 published a piece by a pair of authors in Iraq about trauma fiction. 

Trauma Reverberations: A Study of Selected Novels,” appeared in 2022, and was written by Intisar Rashid Khaleel and Raed Idrees Mahmood, both of Tikrit University.  

According to the retraction notice

This article has been retracted at the request of the authors.

Dr. Ikram Masmoudi from the University of Delaware has raised a conflict of interest concern regarding the article “Trauma Reverberations: A Study of Selected Novels“. Upon discussion with the corresponding author, Dr. Intisar Khaleel, she confirmed the occurrence of an honor mistake. After a meeting between the two authors, it has been decided that the article will be retracted to maintain the integrity and credibility of our publication. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation in this matter.

But Masmoudi in an email told us the case was a matter of “flagrant plagiarism” – no mistake about it:

The authors literally cut and past[ed] chunks from my 2010 article published in the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies titled “Portraits of Iraqi women

I was alerted by a fellow academic who identified the plagiarism and emailed me about it.

Khaleel – who appears to be a member of the editorial board of the journal – did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did Patryk Kot, the chief editor of the publication.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, subscribe to our free daily digest or paid weekly update, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or add us to your RSS reader. If you find a retraction that’s not in The Retraction Watch Database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.