Retraction Watch

6 days ago | retractionwatch.com | Ellie Kincaid

Thirty-four medical professional societies have called for The BMJ to retract a recently published guideline recommending against the use of interventional procedures, such as steroid or anaesthetic injections, to treat chronic back pain. The journal published the guideline in February as part of its Rapid Recommendations program alongside a meta-analysis and systematic review of published research on the procedures, which the guideline panel used to inform its recommendations.

2 weeks ago | retractionwatch.com | Brendan Borrell

A Bangladesh-based organization focused on development economics and its founder have been churning out papers filled with misstatements, inconsistencies, ethical lapses and “statistically improbable data,” according to researchers involved in an ongoing effort to replicate the work. One journal has already retracted a paper for falsely claiming to describe a randomized, controlled trial and data collection that failed to adhere to the journal’s ethical guidelines.

2 weeks ago | retractionwatch.com | Kate Travis

The Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences in India has been on our radar for a while. So when we got word the university’s channel on an open access journal platform disappeared, we were curious what might be going on. Just this year, we reported Saveetha was among 14 universities with “questionable publication practices,” defined as unusually fast growth in research output, as measured by published journal articles.

2 weeks ago | retractionwatch.com | Ellie Kincaid

The managing editors and entire editorial board of Mathematical Logic Quarterly, a Wiley title, have resigned, citing “unilateral decisions” by the publisher “that affected the editorial process.” “We do not believe that Wiley is currently providing an environment that allows the editors to do their editorial work according to the standards of the academic community and free from the negative influence of commercial and profit-oriented interests,” the editors wrote in their resignation letter.

2 weeks ago | retractionwatch.com | Lori Youmshajekian

A prominent Italian pharmacologist under investigation for embezzlement and rigging university contracts has garnered a dozen and a half retractions in the last year for image alterations and duplications. But Salvatore Cuzzocrea, the former rector of the University of Messina, told us he did not agree with the retractions because they were decided “without clear communication,” and that none of the papers had problems that he wasn’t able to reply to.