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As Sidebar readers know, Stephen Langendorfer PhD, editor of a peer-reviewed aquatics journal called IJARE and a department head at Ohio's Bowling Green State University, is playing ostrich re: a retraction request filed last year by Ed Castillo who runs Golden State Lifeguards out of Woodland Hills, CA.

As I reported a few weeks ago, Langendorfer "purposefully" refused to respond to Castillo's request that a discredited drowning rescue study published in IJARE be given the heave-ho.

The study, which concluded that abdominal thrusts (the Heimich maneuver) are an effective treatment for drowning, was authored by two non-medical professionals, John Hunsucker PhD and Scott Davison of the National Aquatic Safety Company (NASCO), a Houston-area lifeguard training company which has been the subject of  wide-ranging criticism for promoting the thoroughly-discredited treatment.

In January, after decades of what Aquatics International magazine called "using people as guinea pigs," NASCO finally gave up the ghost.

Since Langendorfer's in hiding, Castillo just took his retraction request upstream to the head of Human Kinetics, the $37 million/year company responsible for publishing the squiffy study.


From: Chief Ed Castillo - Golden State Lifeguards <ecastillo@goldenstatelifeguards.com>
To: Skip Maier<skipm@hkusa.com>
Cc: christinaj@hkusa.com, peter.heimlich@gmail.com, slangen@bgsu.edu
Subject: NASCO Retraction Request
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 08:23:39 -0700

Skip Maier
Chief Executive Officer
Human Kinetics
1607 N. Market St.
Champaign, IL 61820

Dear Mr. Maier,

As you're aware, on September 21, 2015 I submitted a retraction request re: a controversial research study published by your company in the May 2010 issue of the International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education (IJARE). As you're also aware, I sent my request to the journal's editor, Stephen J. Langendorfer PhD. Here's a copy: http://tinyurl.com/hl2x74q

Per this October 20, 2015 to you, Dr. Langendorfer stated that he does not intend to respond to my request http://tinyurl.com/zoqz8ym

Therefore this e-mail is to formally submit my request to you.

Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Ed Castillo

Per the e-mail below, Maier claims that his company follows the retraction guidelines of the Committee on Public Ethics (COPE). Click here for a copy those guidelines.

Courtesy of Castillo's e-mail, presumably we'll learn if he's true to his word or if he'll try to pull a Langendorfer.

Click here for a copy of the NASCO study, a scorching analysis/rebuttal by leading medical and water safety experts, and more.

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About five weeks ago, I reported GAME OVER: After decades of putting swimmers at risk, Houston-area lifeguard company drops "Heimlich for drowning" protocol about how the National Aquatic Safety Company (NASCO) had finally stopped training waterpark lifeguards to perform the Heimlich maneuver to resuscitate drowning victims. (Click here for a compilation of media reports about NASCO's failed, benighted campaign to promote the treatment.)

But there's at least one unfinished chapter to the mess -- the recent attempt by a peer-reviewed journal (based in Bowling Green, OH) and its publisher (Human Kinetics of Champaign, IL) to bury a request to retract a discredited drowning study that was authored by NASCO's founder/president, John Hunsuker PhD, and one of his employees.

Ed Castillo (source)

As I reported last September 22:

I was copied on a retraction request sent yesterday to Stephen J. Langendorfer PhD, editor of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Aquatics Research and Education (IJARE) which in May 2010 published a controversial research study by John Hunsucker PhD and Scott Davison of the Houston-area lifeguard training company, the National Aquatic Safety Company (NASCO).

The request was sent to Dr. Langendorfer, a professor and department head at Ohio's Bowling Green State University by Ed Castillo, President/Chief of Operations of Golden State Lifeguards in Woodland Hills, California.

...Per Castillo's letter, in response to the NASCO study, IJARE published a scathing analysis and rebuttal these prominent medical and water safety experts: Peter Wernicki MD, Peter Chambers DO, Roy Fielding, Terri Lees, David Markenson MD, Francesco Pia PhD, and Linda Quan MD.

Via the rebuttal, here's a summary of the blistering analysis/rebuttal; for a complete copy, e-mail me:

The authors’ two-part goal was to describe a protocol they named “in-water intervention” (IWI) that uses abdominal thrusts (ATs) and to report on its effectiveness at assisting drowning victims in waterparks. We identify serious shortcomings in the paper’s methodology, interpretation and use of the literature, and ethical principles.

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Subsequently I sent inquiries to Dr. Langendorfer asking what IJARE's policy was for processing retraction requests and asked how Mr. Castillo's request would be handled.

Dr. Langendorfer failed to respond to multiple e-mails and voice messages so I brought my questions to Human Kinetics (HK), the prominent publisher of IJARE and other journals.


Here's what came back -- click here to follow the link provided to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):


That's when it started to get oogie.

 Here's the guy in charge at Human Kinetics:

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These are e-mails I received in response to a public records request I filed with Ohio's Bowling Green State University, where Dr. Langendorfer is Director of  the School of Human Movement, Sport, & Leisure Studies:


 
 

Then it got even oogier.

In a February 1st e-mail to Natalie Ridgeway, Executive Officer at the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), I wrote:

Via a public records request, I obtained a recent e-mail exchange in which IJARE editor Stephen Langendorfer PhD informed HK Journal Director Skip Meier that he (Dr. Langendorfer) has no intention of answering Mr. Castillo's letter. Further, there's no indication in the exchange that HK intends to take any action. (Last week Mr. Castillo informed me that he has never received a response from IJARE or HK.)

Here's my question. Does COPE provide an oversight channel to review whether or not publishers comply with your organization's standards and guidelines?

Her reply took me by surprise:


In other words, HK claims to adhere to COPE standards without having to adhere to COPE standards.

Hoping to make sense of this puzzlement, a month ago I sent multiple e-mails to Ms. Johnson at HK and copied Mr. Meier in which I reviewed the situation and then posed this question:

Here's what I'm trying to figure out. Does your company have an internal and/or external review process that adheres to COPE standards? If so, would you please explain that process? If not, what's the basis of the claim in your November 11 e-mail and the e-mail from Mr. Maier? 

I received confirmations of receipt from both, but no further communications.

Today I'm e-mailing this item to Dr. Langendorfer, Skip Maier, and Ed Castillo with an invitation to respond.


This item has been slightly revised for clarity.