Verdict
🟡 Questionable. The paper shows strong signs of being a template-based SEER data-mining study with serious methodological inconsistencies, a failed covariate-balancing procedure that is glossed over, and an implausibly rapid revision-to-acceptance window. The cumulative pattern warrants editorial scrutiny, although the authors have not been formally proven guilty of misconduct.
Key findings
- Anachronistic software version (Section 2.5, Statistical analysis, Page 2218): The Methods state that analyses were performed using *SPSS 11.0*. SPSS 11.0 was released by SPSS Inc. around 2001–2002. For a manuscript submitted in late 2021, citing a ~20-year-old software version is highly implausible and is a typical fingerprint of a copy-pasted Methods section from an earlier publication.
- Abnormally rapid peer review (Page 2216):
- Received: 21 November 2021
- Revised: 22 December 2021
- Accepted: 23 December 2021
- Revision-to-acceptance gap: 1 day. This is inconsistent with normal peer-review workflows, which require re-review or at least editorial scrutiny over days to weeks. Either the revised manuscript was accepted without re-review or the dates were back-filled.
- Failed propensity-score matching (Table 2, Page 2220; Results, Page 2219): Although the authors claim PSM was performed to balance baseline characteristics between carcinosarcoma (CS) and transitional cell carcinoma (TCC), Table 2 post-PSM still shows:
- Grade: p < 0.001
- SEER stage: p < 0.001 Both of these are among the most important prognostic variables in bladder cancer. A non-significant balance check would be expected; instead, the matching completely failed to balance these covariates, yet the authors proceeded with Cox regression and survival analyses as if matching had succeeded.
- No image-manipulation evidence (full text): No Western blots, gels, or microscopy images are present; the article is a pure SEER database ('dry-lab') study with only software-generated Kaplan–Meier curves and forest plots. Image-based fraud checks are therefore inapplicable, which lowers the cost and detectability of fabrication.
- Quantitative evidence preserved from the source:
- p < 0.001 for Grade after PSM (Table 2)
- p < 0.001 for SEER stage after PSM (Table 2)
- Revision date: 22 December 2021
- Acceptance date: 23 December 2021 (Δ = 1 day)
- Software declared: SPSS 11.0 (released ~2001–2002)
- DOI: 10.1002/cam4.4611
- The SPSS 11.0 finding alone could in principle be a typographical mistake rather than deliberate copy-paste, but combined with the failed PSM and the one-day acceptance, it forms a coherent pattern of low-rigor, template-based production.
- The failed PSM is not necessarily intentional fraud; it could reflect author incompetence in interpreting matching diagnostics. However, reporting 'PSM balanced the cohorts' when p < 0.001 persists for the central prognostic variables is a substantive methodological error that materially affects the validity of downstream hazard-ratio estimates.
- The 1-day revision-to-acceptance gap is best characterized as an editorial-process anomaly rather than proven misconduct; it requires confirmation from the journal's editorial records.
- No findings in this report constitute definitive proof of data fabrication. All conclusions should be treated as concerns that warrant investigation by the editorial office and, if needed, the authors' institution.
- Suggested follow-ups: request raw analysis code from the authors, post a PubPeer comment focused on the PSM failure, and notify the journal of the timeline and software-version inconsistencies.