Scientists Retract Study on Medicinal Plant Biarum bovei After Image Duplication Concerns

A study that once offered laboratory evidence for the medicinal promise of Biarum bovei, a traditional food and herbal remedy known in parts of the Middle East as Kardeh, has been formally retracted by the editors of BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. The retraction note, published in the journal as volume 26, article number 302, states that the editors no longer have confidence in the data and conclusions of the original paper, which had reported on the plant’s phytochemistry, antioxidant activity, anticancer effects, and acute toxicity. The decision marks the end of a publication that had been part of a growing body of literature exploring whether traditional medicinal foods might hold measurable pharmacological value, and it underscores how image-level scrutiny is reshaping the credibility of natural product research.

The original article, published on 9 August 2023 under the title Phytochemistry, antioxidant, anticancer, and acute toxicity of traditional medicinal food Biarum bovei (Kardeh), appeared in the same journal as article number 283 in volume 23. It attracted attention because Biarum bovei is consumed as a traditional food in some regional cuisines and has been used in folk medicine, making claims about its antioxidant and anticancer properties potentially relevant to both nutrition science and drug discovery. Studies of this kind typically involve extracting chemical compounds from the plant, testing those extracts in laboratory assays for their ability to neutralize reactive oxygen species, exposing cancer cell lines to the extracts to measure cytotoxic effects, and dosing experimental animals to assess acute toxicity. The retracted paper reported results across all of these domains, which is why the concerns identified by the editors strike at the core of its findings.

The retraction note details three specific sets of similarities that triggered the editors’ decision. First, all six panels of Figure 7 in the retracted article were found to be similar to all six panels of Figure 1 in a separate study, a chemoprevention paper on Onosma mutabilis published in Current Issues in Molecular Biology in 2023 by Ahmed A.j. Jabbar, Ibrahim Abdel Aziz Ibrahim, and colleagues. That earlier work examined the effects of Onosma mutabilis against azoxymethane-induced colon cancer in rats, focusing on the modulation of Bax/Bcl-2 and NF-κB signaling pathways. Second, the upper-right portion of panel 7E in the retracted article was found to be similar to the lower-left portion of Figure 2B, a kidney image, in a second study on anise, Pimpinella anisum L., published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research in 2024. That anise paper, led by G. Almaimani with overlapping co-authors, reported that anise attenuated azoxymethane-induced colorectal cancer in rats through antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-apoptotic pathways. Third, the left part of Figure 7B in the retracted article was found to be similar to the right part of Figure 7D within the same paper, meaning that images presented as representing different experimental conditions appeared to overlap with one another.

These findings matter because of what Figure 7 was presumably meant to demonstrate. In pharmacological and toxicological studies of medicinal plants, histological figures typically show stained tissue sections from experimental animals, allowing researchers to visually compare organ health across treatment groups. If the same or substantially similar images appear across different papers, or within different panels of the same figure that are supposed to represent different experimental conditions, the reliability of the underlying histological evidence is called into question. The similarity between a figure in the Biarum bovei paper and a kidney image in the anise paper is particularly troubling, since the two studies concerned different plants, different experimental designs, and, in principle, different animals. Image duplication of this kind can arise from various causes, including laboratory record-keeping failures, image processing errors, or deliberate fabrication, and the retraction note does not specify which explanation applies.

According to the retraction notice, the authors were unable to address the concerns raised about the data. The editors therefore concluded that they had lost confidence in both the data and the conclusions of the article. Compounding the situation, the authors did not respond to any correspondence from the publisher about the retraction itself. This silence is significant in scholarly publishing practice: when authors engage with a retraction process, they may provide original raw data, explain apparent duplications, or agree to corrected republication. When authors do not respond, editors have little choice but to proceed on the basis of the documented concerns, and the resulting retraction stands as the record’s final word unless new evidence emerges.

The author list of the retracted paper was extensive, spanning institutions in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Bassam Ali Abed Wahab of the University of Kufa’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Iraq was listed first, followed by Zaenah Zuhair Alamri and Rahaf Frehan Alharthi of the University of Jeddah, and Ahmed A.j. Jabbar of Erbil Polytechnic University, who was also the corresponding author. Additional co-authors came from Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah, Taibah University in Madinah, and Jazan University in Jizan. Notably, several of the same researchers, including Jabbar and Ibrahim, appear in the author lists of the two papers whose figures were found to overlap with the retracted article, a pattern that investigators of research integrity often examine when duplicated images surface across multiple publications from overlapping teams.

The retraction also illustrates the increasingly systematic way in which post-publication scrutiny operates. Journals in the BMC and Springer Nature portfolio, which publish open access research under Creative Commons licenses, rely on editorial review processes that now routinely include checks for image manipulation and duplication, sometimes aided by software that detects overlapping regions within and across published figures. Once concerns are raised, editors typically contact the authors and, where relevant, their institutions, seeking an explanation or the underlying raw data. In this case, the concerns could not be resolved, and the formal retraction notice now accompanies the article’s record, with the notice itself carrying a distinct digital object identifier, 10.1186/s12906-026-05643-5, separate from the original paper’s identifier of 10.1186/s12906-023-04080-y.

For the broader field of complementary medicine research, the episode carries lessons about the evidentiary standards required before traditional remedies are promoted as therapeutic agents. Biarum bovei belongs to a family of plants that are toxic in their raw state and require careful preparation before consumption, which makes rigorous toxicity data especially important. Claims about anticancer activity in cell culture or animal models are early-stage findings at best, and they depend entirely on the integrity of the microscopy, assay results, and statistical analyses behind them. When histological evidence is compromised, downstream conclusions about safety and efficacy lose their foundation, and clinicians, herbal practitioners, and the public who might encounter such findings online are left without a reliable basis for decisions. Retraction notices serve as the scientific community’s mechanism for flagging exactly this kind of unreliability, ensuring that the paper is no longer cited as valid evidence.

The retraction is also a reminder of how interconnected the recent literature on plant-based chemoprevention has become, and how overlapping authorship across multiple papers can amplify the impact of a single integrity problem. The two related studies identified in the retraction note, on Onosma mutabilis and on anise, remain in the literature as far as the notice indicates, but the documented image overlaps now form part of the public record associated with them. Researchers, reviewers, and readers who encounter work from this research cluster are likely to approach it with heightened caution, and indexing databases will link the retraction notice to the original article so that future citations can be flagged. As open access publishing expands the global reach of natural product research, the infrastructure for detecting and correcting flawed science is expanding alongside it, and the case of the Kardeh plant study shows that even a paper on a humble traditional food is subject to the same exacting standards as any other claim in biomedical science.

Subject of Research: Retraction of a study on the phytochemistry, antioxidant, anticancer, and acute toxicity of the traditional medicinal plant Biarum bovei due to duplicated image data

Article Title: Retraction Note: Phytochemistry, antioxidant, anticancer, and acute toxicity of traditional medicinal food Biarum bovei (Kardeh)

Article References: Retraction Note: Phytochemistry, antioxidant, anticancer, and acute toxicity of traditional medicinal food Biarum bovei (Kardeh). (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-026-05643-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12906-026-05643-5

Keywords: Biarum bovei, retraction, research integrity, image duplication, phytochemistry, antioxidant, anticancer, acute toxicity, BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, traditional medicine, histology, open access