The dentist José Luis Calvo Guirado enters the world's top 20 scientists with the most retired studies

The dentist José Luis Calvo Guirado, professor at the Catholic University of Murcia until 2021, has entered the top 20 scientists in the world with the most studies withdrawn due to irregularities, according to the count of the American organization Retraction Watch.

A dozen magazines have already retracted 34 of his works, plagued by anomalies, such as reusing the same images over and over again in different experiments with dogs or rabbits.

Calvo Guirado, one of the most cited scientists in the world according to the classification of Stanford University (USA), maintains that he has not done “any cheating” in his life.

The researcher's website says that he was born “in a modest neighborhood” in the Argentine city of San Juan.

“It was very clear to him, from a young age, that his dream was to prosper and achieve great achievements in order to become like the other boys around him,” states his brief official biography.

Calvo Guirado, according to his story, was in the Argentine Army for a few years, studied Dentistry and opened his own dental clinic in Murcia.

“José Luis is a serious, honest, responsible, hard-working, fearless, fun, healthy, athletic and great strategist individual.

[...] That is why he is where he is, based on his daily work and effort,” says his website.

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A scientist who publishes a study every two days shows the darker side of science

Alarms about his work went off in 2018. The journal

Clinical Oral Implants Research

, from the American publisher Wiley, retracted 18 studies by Calvo Guirado in just six months.

One of these investigations, on experimental dental implants in Beagle laboratory dogs, included photographs used to illustrate different studies.

The same thing happened in similar work with Foxhound dogs.

The dentist then assured EL PAÍS that everything was “a matter of envy” and involuntary mistakes.

“I wonder if the magazine was waiting for us to make a mistake to discredit us,” he said.

The trickle of retractions has continued and there are now 10 specialized journals, from five different publishers, that have withdrawn 34 studies by Calvo Guirado, but the dentist maintains his version of the great conspiracy against him.

“This is something that came to me out of the blue, they have started to go after me, like when they find a scapegoat and start hitting them,” he says by phone.

The dentist assures that he has hired “an international law firm” to defend himself on a case-by-case basis.

“I have put it in the hands of international justice.

They have all been reported, I am waiting for the resolution,” he says, without offering more details.

Calvo Guirado's thirty-fourth retraction came a month ago.

The journal

Clinical Oral Investigations

, from the American publisher Springer, eliminated a study on experimental dental implants carried out in the tibias of live rabbits, after detecting images that were apparently repeated and manipulated through rotations.

The same publication withdrew another work from 2013 two years ago. The retraction note is devastating.

Those responsible for the magazine denounced that a dozen medical images from that study appear in other works illustrating experiments that have nothing to do with it.

One of them, a microscope photograph of a rabbit bone, was published in five different investigations.

The main author along with Calvo Guirado is Piedad Ramírez Fernández, then at the University of Murcia and now a professor at the Catholic University of Murcia.

She is co-author of 14 of the retracted investigations.

Two images of rabbit bones allegedly reused to illustrate different experiments.Clinical Oral Investigations

The Catholic University of Murcia, a private center created in 1996 and supported by the Vatican, has more than 21,000 students.

When it was founded, the rector of the city's public university stated that it was “a beach bar.”

The private institution has since made efforts to improve its research profile, recruiting scientists from highly cited lists, such as Juan Carlos Izpisua, who in 2017 created embryos with pig and human cells in Murcia, with the ultimate goal of generating organs. humans in pigs, for transplants.

Calvo Guirado was a professor at the Catholic university between 2015 and 2021, a period in which he signed 11 of the studies that are now retracted.

The institution boasted that his professor was “ranked fifteenth in the world in research on dental implantology.”

A spokesperson for the university now limits itself to pointing out that the dentist "no longer has any connection" with the Murcian organization, without giving further explanations.

According to Calvo Guirado, he reached an agreement not to renew his contract.

The other 23 studies already retracted by him were published between 2009 and 2015, when he was a professor at the University of Murcia.

A team from the University of Trieste (Italy) analyzed the phenomenon of scientific fraud in dentistry a little over a year ago.

“Calvo Guirado is the protagonist of the worst scandal in history in the field of dental research,” proclaimed the authors, led by surgeon Claudio Stacchi, in the book

Integrity of Scientific Research

(Springer publishing house).

The analysis highlighted that some collaborators of Calvo Guirado share with him a multitude of retracted studies, such as the Colombian Rafael Delgado Ruiz (about twenty retracted works), the aforementioned Piedad Ramírez (14) and José Eduardo Maté (8), also a professor at the Catholic University of Murcia.

EL PAÍS has asked Ramírez and Maté for their version of the events, without receiving a response for the moment.

“The fact that a well-known and respected researcher like José Luis Calvo Guirado has been involved in such a scandal should deeply worry the scientific community,” says Stacchi, president-elect of the Italian Society of Oral Surgery.

The expert attributes the irregularities to the current methods of evaluating science, which reward scientists – with salary increases, promotions, prestige in rankings

and

greater funding – based on their production measured by weight, not by their quality.

“This cannot be a justification, but it is absurd to hide that what has happened to Calvo Guirado is just the tip of an iceberg that we are not yet able to see in its entirety, but we know that it exists and is enormous,” reflects the Italian.

What has happened to Calvo Guirado is just the tip of an iceberg that we are not yet able to see in its entirety.

Claudio Stacchi, elected president of the Italian Society of Oral Surgery

Stacchi recalls that the current scientific system faces “the proliferation of predatory or semi-predatory journals,” which publish any insubstantial study as long as the authors pay the corresponding fees.

The surgeon urges strengthening computer systems to immediately detect repeated images or plagiarized texts.

In Spain, the university quality guardian entity, the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA), is modifying the evaluation criteria for researchers, with the aim of stopping judging their publications by weight.

Rafael Delgado Ruiz worked at the University of Murcia until 2012 and is co-author of twenty retracted works by Calvo Guirado.

“I collaborated with the articles in the editing and grammar part in English,” he says.

“I believe there was a component of over-enthusiasm, ignorance of specific copyright issues, and mixing of image files, which resulted in similar images being submitted.

Unfortunately, retractions remain with us like an indelible stain and one retraction weighs more than hundreds of published articles,” says the Colombian, who has been a professor for a decade at Stony Brook University in New York.

The Argentine dentist was also a volunteer, unpaid professor at this American institution, but a spokesperson confirms that the university ended this relationship in 2022.

Dentist Lisa Heitz-Mayfield, from the University of Western Australia, was the editor-in-chief of the journal

Clinical Oral Implants Research

when this publication retracted Calvo Guirado's first 18 studies in 2018. “Neither I nor anyone on my team of associate editors "We are trying to persecute any researcher," he says in response to the Argentine dentist's insinuations that there is an international conspiracy against him.

Heitz-Mayfield continues to run the magazine.

“The decision to retract a study is not made lightly or by a single person.

When it is shown that the science is unreliable and the author cannot adequately clarify the doubts, the retraction is executed,” she emphasizes.

The dentist from Murcia emphasizes that he continues to investigate on his own and publish his studies.

He is even an editor in several specialized magazines.

The Portuguese researcher Jaime Teixeira da Silva and his Vietnamese colleague Quan-Hoang Vuong also analyzed the case of Calvo Guirado last year, in an academic work on scientists with a multitude of retractions who, however, continue to act as editors, with the power to judge the studies of others.

The document highlighted that in the dentist's 240-page resume there is not a single mention of the dozens of retracted investigations of his.

“What signal does this send to Calvo Guirado's colleagues and to the academic community in general?” asked Teixeira da Silva and Vuong.

Calvo Guirado is a member of the editorial board of the journals

Indian Journal of Dental Sciences

,

Dentistry and Oral Research

and

AIMS Bioengineering

, in addition to having been editor of special issues for the publishing giant MDPI, a Swiss company accused of earning millions of euros by publishing thousands of insubstantial studies.

“Rewarding editors who have multiple retractions and a history of malpractice [...] sends a signal that it is acceptable to assume a leadership position despite lacking the qualities that define a competent and ethical leader.” ”, lament Teixeira da Silva and Vuong, from Phenikaa University, in Vietnam.

The Argentine dentist occupies the last place in the world top 20 compiled by Retraction Watch.

In first place is the German anesthetist Joachim Boldt, from the Ludwigshafen Hospital, who has accumulated 194 retracted studies.

In second and third position are two other anesthetists, the Japanese Yoshitaka Fujii (172 retired works) and Hironobu Ueshima (124).

They are massive frauds that incredibly occurred for decades for the entire world to see.

Despite his dozens of retractions, José Luis Calvo Guirado continues to share on his social networks that he is “among the best researchers in the world.”

The website of his Murcian clinic proclaims: “José Luis is the same child who more than 50 years ago played in the streets of the modest neighborhood of La Virgen de Los Desamparados in San Juan in Argentina.

He has not changed the way he is and behaves, being the same fun and happy child as he was then.

José Luis keeps alive the link with

Josito

, as they called him in Argentina, being faithful to his principles.”

Do you have more information about this case or other similar ones?

You can write to us at

mansede@elpais.es

.

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