Retraction Count for Anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt Reaches 240 as Journals Continue Purging Fraudulent Papers

More than a decade and a half after the "Boldt debacle" first erupted, journals are still retracting papers by the disgraced German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt (搜索)搜索该词条, whose retraction count has now climbed to 240 — the highest on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard.

The latest removal, occurring this week, involves a 2002 review article published in Drug Safety, a Springer Nature journal. The retraction notice states that three of the paper's references have been retracted and "state, among other things, concerns with ethical approval and data concerns." The article had been cited 10 times, according to Clarivate's Web of Science, including once since 2011 when the scandal was in full public view.

Tim Kersjes, head of Research Integrity, Resolutions at Springer Nature, said: "This paper was recently flagged to us by a reader. The Editor and our research integrity team confirmed concerns that undermined the validity of the review and retracted the paper."

The Drug Safety retraction follows the removal in May of a 2007 review in Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy, which Boldt wrote with occasional coauthor Stephan Suttner. That notice indicated the publisher was made aware that four original articles referenced in the review had since been retracted "due to serious ethical concerns, including data falsification, absence of ethics approval, and unreliable results." The article had been cited eight times, with six of those citations occurring after 2011.

In February, the European Journal of Anaesthesiology (EJA), a Wolters Kluwer title, conducted a bulk removal of eight Boldt papers. Three were solo-authored reviews; one 2006 paper was retracted because "several of the key studies" it cited "have since been retracted by the respective journals owing to serious scientific deficiencies, including data falsification, absence of ethics approval, and non-reproducible results."

The remaining five were clinical trial reports on which Boldt was a coauthor. One 2009 article was retracted because "Klinikum Ludwigshafen's report documents a comprehensive investigation into Joachim Boldt (搜索)搜索该词条's research, and their findings revealed that in most studies, patient documentation could not be found. Where records existed, evidence of scientific fraud was also found." That article alone had been cited 72 times — 62 of those after 2011 and 17 from 2020 onward.

Among the eight EJA papers was a 1987 study published while Boldt was at Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen. The university's institutional investigation "identified many inconsistencies in the data and publications conducted by Joachim Boldt (搜索)搜索该词条" and recommended that "all articles where Joachim Boldt is the responsible author are retracted, even in the absence of explicit falsification." That recommendation was made in 2018.

André Rebelo, a spokesperson for Wolters Kluwer, stated: "[T]he scientific validity of the conclusions in those articles were compromised and they cannot be considered scientifically sound. Any Wolters Kluwer journal that receives inquiries around fraud, misconduct or other ethical issues pertaining to scientific integrity, thoroughly investigates the concern in accordance with COPE guidelines."

Former editor questions timing and rationale

Martin Tramèr (搜索)搜索该词条, who served as editor-in-chief of the EJA during the initial Boldt scandal, expressed bewilderment at the recent developments. He described the story as "sad" and said he was "surprised that, so long after the Boldt debacle, articles still are being retracted again, including eight from his former journal — articles he and his colleagues specifically exempted from retraction 15 years ago."

"What has happened since then? Why were these additional articles retracted after all, albeit very late? It's a mystery," Tramèr said.

He questioned the scope of the retraction effort: "Do we need to clean the literature of any single sentence that Boldt has written during his career? Why retracting a letter to the editor, for instance? And if a narrative review article of Boldt should be retracted because there are some references that cite Boldt himself, why doing it only now, two EICs later? I simply would like to understand the reasoning behind this."

Tramèr also noted the lack of transparency: "It is, of course, a pity that the EJA Editors did not carry out these recent retractions 'lege artis.' In particular, there is no explanation anywhere as to why these articles were retracted. We had, after all, described this retraction procedure in detail years ago. I have no clue what has happened."

A separate scandal unfolds in Turkey

The anesthesiology field is confronting another integrity crisis involving a network of Turkish researchers. John Loadsman (搜索)搜索该词条, editor-in-chief of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care and a scientific sleuth at the University of Sydney, first became suspicious in July 2021 when he received a manuscript from Reyhan Polat (搜索)搜索该词条 of the University of Health Sciences in Ankara and Etlik City Hospital.

"When I looked carefully at the spreadsheet, I could see entire blocks of data that were repeated," Loadsman recalled. "It was obvious that this was cooked." He rejected the manuscript and began scrutinizing Polat's published work.

So far, Loadsman has flagged four papers by Polat, a professor of anesthesiology and vice president of the Anesthesiology and Reanimation Specialists Society. Some articles showed error bars for mean values that did not include the means themselves, while another contained impossible scores on an anxiety scale. All four papers have now been retracted, with the latest retraction notice appearing in June in Elsevier's Journal of Clinical Anesthesia.

Two of the retracted papers were coauthored by Polat's department head, Jülide Ergil (搜索)搜索该词条, also a professor at the University of Health Sciences and president of the Turkish Society of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation. Earlier this year, Ergil was made a fellow of the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care — an honor the organization describes as recognizing "doctors who demonstrate integrity, clinical excellence, and dedication to patient care."

In 2024, Loadsman teamed up with René Aquarius (搜索)搜索该词条, a neurosurgery researcher at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Together they examined publications by the Turkish anesthesiologists and found extensive problems. One 2015 paper with Ergil as first author contained a table with nine standard deviation values that exactly matched data in a 2012 paper by the same group, though the two publications reported on different experiments. A histology image in Ergil's article also showed a repeated pattern suggesting "copy-pasting in the digital file," according to Aquarius.

"As first author, you're probably in the best position to notice that something is wrong or something is incorrect," Aquarius said.

Ergil told Retraction Watch she had not been involved in the "histopathological evaluations" for the 2015 paper and had "relied in good faith on the pathological assessments and images provided by the responsible specialist." She attributed the image duplication to "an inadvertent archival mix-up" during preparation of a separate 2019 article. Regarding data duplication, she said her role on each paper was "limited to reviewing and revising the manuscript, not the experiments or statistical analysis."

The European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care is reviewing the concerns. A spokesperson said the society "takes matters of scientific integrity seriously" and would provide an update by the end of August. An editor at Termedia Publishing House, which publishes Archives of Medical Science, said the company was looking into the 2015 paper.

In total, Loadsman and Aquarius have flagged 30 papers by the same network of Turkish researchers on PubPeer, with Ergil or Polat involved in seven. Aquarius shared a spreadsheet listing the 30 papers with publishers in 2024. "In many cases, nothing has happened," he said.