Defamation Suit Demanding Elsevier Retract Paper Heads Closer To Trial (retractionwatch.com) 21
Retraction Watch reports:
A trial date has been set in a $1 billion defamation case against Elsevier that alleges the company published what plaintiffs say was a manipulated study about an air purifying technology over objections from peer reviewers. The case has already cost Elsevier a $10,000 sanction from a judge.
Global Plasma Solutions (GPS), which makes air quality products, sued Elsevier in 2022 after the publisher declined to retract a 2021 paper in Building and Environment about GPS' needlepoint bipolar ionization technology, which it heavily marketed during the COVID-19 pandemic as an air purifier. The complaint claims Elsevier is responsible for the authors' alleged omission of data and misleading conclusions in the paper that fueled "massive" financial losses for the company, its lawyers claim. Elsevier knew the paper "failed peer review" under its "own standards," but moved forward with the article despite this knowledge, according to GPS, which now goes by GPS Air.
The complaint has survived a bid by Elsevier to dismiss the case, and a trial has been set for Dec. 7. In allowing the case to proceed, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler said in a May 2024 opinion that GPS has "plausibly alleged actual malice" by Elsevier defined as "knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth." Chief Judge Martin Reidinger of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina upheld Keesler's recommendation in July 2025...
Citing internal and discovery documents, GPS alleges an assessment of 19 journals revealed Elsevier has published more than 1,200 articles either without any peer review, or against the recommendations of the reviewers.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the article.
Global Plasma Solutions (GPS), which makes air quality products, sued Elsevier in 2022 after the publisher declined to retract a 2021 paper in Building and Environment about GPS' needlepoint bipolar ionization technology, which it heavily marketed during the COVID-19 pandemic as an air purifier. The complaint claims Elsevier is responsible for the authors' alleged omission of data and misleading conclusions in the paper that fueled "massive" financial losses for the company, its lawyers claim. Elsevier knew the paper "failed peer review" under its "own standards," but moved forward with the article despite this knowledge, according to GPS, which now goes by GPS Air.
The complaint has survived a bid by Elsevier to dismiss the case, and a trial has been set for Dec. 7. In allowing the case to proceed, U.S. Magistrate Judge David Keesler said in a May 2024 opinion that GPS has "plausibly alleged actual malice" by Elsevier defined as "knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth." Chief Judge Martin Reidinger of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina upheld Keesler's recommendation in July 2025...
Citing internal and discovery documents, GPS alleges an assessment of 19 journals revealed Elsevier has published more than 1,200 articles either without any peer review, or against the recommendations of the reviewers.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger for sharing the article.
Elsevier (Score:3)
Elsevier is being sued?
The gatekeeper of knowledge from public institutions?
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.
Re: (Score:3)
Elsevier is being sued? The gatekeeper of knowledge from public institutions? Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.
Nods. Sadly, it's probably not enough to bankrupt them even if this company wins, but it's a good start.
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is it's being sued by a snake oil vendor over a publication that exposed their snake oil.
It's sort of like having to decide which side you'd support in a dispute between, say Jeffrey Epstein and Vladimir Putin.
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is it's being sued by a snake oil vendor over a publication that exposed their snake oil.
It's sort of like having to decide which side you'd support in a dispute between, say Jeffrey Epstein and Vladimir Putin.
So, you're saying it's steel cage and popcorn time?
Re: (Score:2)
So... (Score:3)
What Air Purifier should we buy?
Re: (Score:3)
Anything that uses true HEPA quality air filters.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
That depends on the application. That would be correct if you are operating a clean room with laminar air flow. But for other applications, cleaning the air is a battle between contamination rate and purification rate, so if you can't hermetically seal the room, the equilibrium state of the air depends on the volume of moving air times the efficiency of the filter. That makes it usually cheaper to use a non-HEPA filter but a higher air throughput rate. That's why the consumer industry uses a rating called CADR (Clean Air Delivery Rate) rather than particulate efficiency, which is how HEPA filters are rated.
Re: (Score:2)
You make it sound like you can get only one or the other (either a high CADR or a true HEPA filter).
For home use, consumer devices can give both. You can have a high CADR together with a true HEPA filter, matched to your room size.
But I don't have a dog in this fight. If you want go with a not-as-good filter and make up for it in volume, knock yourself out.
Re: (Score:2)
That's why he said "That makes it usually cheaper to use a non-HEPA filter but a higher air throughput rate."
It's a tradeoff, like almost everything in life. Whether his "usually" is correct depends mostly on who wants to buy the system, and only they can tell.
Re: So... (Score:3)
The reason people go for less effective filters is that it takes less force to push air through them, which lets you put more air through it with the same force/noise. The filters have a similar particle profile, they are all very good at stopping tiny particles and very good at stopping larger particles, and comparatively worse at particles between 0.1 and 0.3 microns. It's just that a HEPA grade filter stops 99.7% or more of those hardest particles, whereas a MERV 13 filter (the most common furnace-grade
DIY (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Nowadays, all it does is sit in the corner, gathering dust.
Re: So... (Score:2)
Not anything with "ionization". Ionized air is a cute name for ozone. Ozone causes all the problems to your lungs that you clean air to avoid (well, except COVID infection I guess).
I wouldn't go for UV either since it either produces ozone or is quite bad to get exposed to depending on frequency range.
Get an air filter with high throughput. HEPA is standard, but many people argue that lower grade filters with higher throughput can be more noise efficient.
Hard to have sympathy with Elsevier, but this reeks o
Elsevier? (Score:3)
"needlepoint bipolar ionization technology" (Score:4, Funny)
Aaand now now I'm imagining manic-depressives doing embroidery.
Re: (Score:3)
2 a-holes fighting (Score:4, Informative)
From my minimal web search it appears to me that:
1) the Plaintiff, Global Plasma Solutions appears to make an inferior product and make ridiculous claims for it.
2) The defendant, media company Elsevier published a poor quality review that made ridiculous and unsupported claim about the quality of the review.
In other words, two a-holes fighting.
Retract Paper Heads (Score:3)
Re: Paper Heads! (Score:2)
Where are the reviews? (Score:1)