Dr. Hosalkar’s Retractions from Orthopedic Journals

Our friends at Retraction Watch (RW) reported on November 11, 2013, that a third orthopedic medical journal has retracted a paper submitted by San Diego-based orthopedic surgeon, Harish Hosalkar, M.D.

Orthopedic Reviews Retraction

The Journal, Orthopedic Reviews issued the following notice:

“The authors have retracted their paper “Open reduction and internal fixation of displaced clavicle fractures in adolescents.” Specifically, upon further review, the authors have noted some errata in the data collection. The authors’ clinical experience does not lead them to change the main conclusions of the paper, but due to the observed mistakes, they decided to retract the previously published article.”

RW calls this a “nifty construction. Our data don’t support our beliefs. But our beliefs are right, so we can ignore the date. Where have we heard that before?”

Journal of Children’s Orthopaedics Retraction

Back in July, RW reported that Dr. Hosalkar became embroiled in a messy affair after problems surfaced in data he had published while at Rady Children’s Hospital — a facility he left under a cloud of recriminations. One of the retracted papers, titled “Clinical effectiveness of continuous passive motion (CPM) following femoroacetabular impingement surgery in adolescents, ” appeared last year in the Journal of Children’s Orthopaedics (the official journal of the European Paediatric Orthopaedic Society). Dr. Hosalkar wrote the article with James Bomar, a researcher who had done an internship at Rady Children’s

Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research Retraction

The second paper, “Does Incisional Wound VAC after Major Hip Surgery in Obese Pediatric Patients Reduce Wound Infection and Scar Formation? A Pilot Study, ” appeared in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, also in 2012.

The retraction notice read that Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research “has been made aware of concerns about the integrity of the dataset” in the paper.

RW also found this erratum, in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, referring to the Orthopedic Reviews article:

“On page 503, the second full paragraph in the second column, which cites reference 36 (Hosalkar HS, Parikh G, Bomar JD, Bittersohl B: Open reduction and internal fixation of displaced clavicle fractures in adolescents. Orthop Rev [Pavia] 2012:4[1]:e1), should be disregarded. There may have been inaccuracies in the collection of data published in the paper cited as reference 36.

“The Journal regrets the error.”

RW reported that, according to Bomar who had been looking for help finding a research project, Dr. Hosalkar sent him data that the physician had collected from an earlier study of adolescents who had undergone lower limb surgery. Dr. Hosalkar, however, suggested that Bomar was to blame, and that his sins were of omission.

Dr. Hosalkar said he was clearly responsible for negligent supervision. “But at the end of the day I had to go down to the ultimate rule, that the PI (Principle Investigator) is responsible.”

Alleged Racism

Dr. Hosalkar told RW that in the wake of the revelations about the bad data he was asked to leave his positions at Children’s Specialists of San Diego and at Redy Children’s. He attributed his ouster to racism.

“I was the only non-Caucasian physician in the group. … They wanted to use this to get me out of the practice. They said, ‘You are contaminating the kind of research’ that the institutions wanted to publish, ” alleges Dr. Hosalkar.

Bomar told RW that the hospital conducted a six-month investigation into the affair and flatly denied that he had made mistakes. “It is an important thing that has been investigated thoroughly … It was not my data. It was Dr. Hosalkar’s data.”

Lawsuits Settled

Bomar also told RW that two lawsuits were initiated in the matter, which the parties settled for no monetary damages. RW spoke with attorneys for both Dr. Hosalkar and his former colleagues, neither of whom had much to say about the matter.

Here is what the Scripps Health San Diego website says about Dr. Hosalkar:

“Throughout his career, Dr. Hosalkar has been featured in several peer reviewed publications and he has book chapters to his credit. He has also received multiple awards for his work.”

Scripps also provided a link to Dr. Hosalkar’s published papers on PubMed.

To read the full Retraction Watch article, click here.