A professor of aerospace engineering in India who developed a scientific theory critics call “absolute nonsense” said he is suing journal editors and publishers for pulling three papers he claims could help protect “millions of lives.”
The articles, one in Springer Nature’s Scientific Reports and two in Wiley’s Global Challenges, described a highly technical concept eponymously dubbed “Sanal flow choking.” The first was retracted last summer, the other two in March.
“The retractions of our papers are unjustified,” V. R. Sanal Kumar of Amity University in New Delhi told Retraction Watch. “Our legal representatives are actively pursuing a defamation lawsuit against these editors and their illicit agents who were responsible for retracting articles crucial for safeguarding countless lives.”
He and his team “are in the process of filing the petition,” Kumar added.
Disgruntled authors have sued publishers over retractions in the past, as we reported in 2021, but have not been successful.
According to Kumar and his coauthors, their work is “a scientific breakthrough and a paradigm shift” that could help solve “numerous unresolved scientific problems in physical, chemical and biological sciences.” The many claimed applications include cardiovascular and neurological diseases.
But the research has met hefty criticism from peers.
“The elementary blunders are so obvious that someone who reads their works for at least 10-15 mins should realise that all of it is absolute nonsense,” Ganesh Natarajan, of the department of mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad, told Retraction Watch by email.
Natarajan, who alerted Wiley to his concerns about Kumar’s publications in May 2022, added:
The theory of flow of gases through rocket motors simply does not apply to blood flow through human arteries – Sanal and his co-workers completely ignore this aspect citing similarity of geometries between rocket nozzles and stenosed arteries. From here, they blatantly make baseless conclusions on how the ‘Sanal flow choking’ can explain asymptomatic cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, neurological disorders, Moyamoya disease and Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) – all of which makes absolutely no sense.
The identical retraction notices in Global Challenges, published March 25, 2024, state:
Post-publication review by an independent reviewer determined that the article applies the concept of compressible flow to an inherently incompressible flow system. As a result, the article’s hypothesis and following argument do not scientifically support its conclusions. Therefore, the conclusions are considered unreliable.
An investigation by Wiley and the journal’s Editor-in-Chief supported this conclusion.
The June 6, 2023, retraction notice in Scientific Reports offered more details:
Following publication, concerns were raised about the rationale for the approach presented, the assumptions and approximations used and the validity of its application to cardiology. A post-publication review of the Authors’ mathematical arguments revealed a lack of clarity in the terms presented and inferences that are not adequately justified. The main concerns are that the model is based on circular reasoning which makes it non-predictive, that it assumes that blood behaves as an ideal gas, and hypothesizes that quasi-sonic flow velocities exist in the cardiovascular system while all experimental evidence shows that cardiovascular flow velocities are orders of magnitude lower than the speed of sound and do not involve any compressibility effects. The Editors therefore no longer have confidence in the conclusions presented.
Kumar stood by his work, telling us:
It is important to clarify that the retractions and criticisms directed towards our work do not reflect scientific inaccuracies or flaws in the concept of Sanal flow choking. Rather, they appear to be part of a coordinated effort to discredit our research through what I believe to be an international conspiracy.
He added:
Having thoroughly examined the criticisms referenced, including the links to PubPeer and the arXiv article, I maintain that our research methodology is sound and has undergone rigorous peer review.
Furthermore, connected research papers are currently under review by flagship journals.
Kumar also forwarded correspondence with Wiley in which he told the publisher his retracted papers were “instrumental in safeguarding millions of lives.”
Natarajan questioned the quality of the original peer review of Kumar’s papers, but welcomed the results of the post-publication reviews. What is “more worrying,” he said, is that two influential physics journals from AIP Publishing – AIP Advances and Physics of Fluids – “haven’t really bothered to consider the matter despite raising complaints.”
We contacted the editors of these journals and heard back from Wendy Beatty, director of content experience at AIP Publishing:
In light of the retractions in other journals, we will review both your requests and the related material and comments.
Kumar grabbed headlines in India last May after the country’s Supreme Court upheld his dismissal years earlier from the national space agency. According to The Economic Times, the court said Kumar’s former employer “was justified in suspecting his honesty and integrity on account of his unauthorised association with a South Korean institution involved in rocketry research.”
Kumar unsuccessfully challenged the decision and, according to a screenshot he shared with Retraction Watch, in February of this year filed a “curative petition” – a legal last resort – with the court.
In his papers, Kumar continues to claim the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) as his primary affiliation. He told us:
Ongoing legal challenges against ISRO’s actions persist in the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, and should a favorable verdict be delivered, I will be reinstated with retroactive service benefits. Consequently, I will continue to assert my VSSC affiliation in my publications pending the final judgment of the Supreme Court of India.
Natarajan said Kumar’s petition doesn’t stand a chance: “His belief in this case is akin to his belief in his works – and sadly both end up being flawed with him on the wrong side of the situation.”
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I disagree that AIP Advances is an “influential physics journal”. It has always been equivalent to Sci. Rep. — anything and everything will be published there once the author fee is paid.
Phys. Fluids is a sad situation. After decades of being one of the 2 top journals in fluid mechanics, an editorial board change around 2015 led to the journal being run into the ground. As an expert in fluid mechanics myself, I rarely read Phys. Fluids now, I don’t submit or review for it. Most papers in this journal now range from “absolute nonsense” to “low quality.”
I agree with your view on the current status of Physics of Fluids journal.
Either there is a conspiracy against the good professor or we should ask how did he receive his bachelor, master, doctor and post degrees. Please tell me there is a third possibility, please …
There are many unis in our country basically selling degrees. It is noteworthy that he is not working at a govt university or known research institution, but at a not too well reputed private university.
There have also been four corrections issued on the work from the research group of Prof Sanal.
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0150017 is due to verbatim copy of material without due referencing from a standard text book.
The fact that Prof Sanal is no longer associated with ISRO has been reflected in the corrections in the AHA/ASA poster abstract publications. See,
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/RES.0000000000000645
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/RES.0000000000000646
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STR.0000000000000451
The research work from this group this have serious concerns – both technical and otherwise, and one of their studies based on this flawed concept has as much as 43 authors – see http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0040440.