- A 2023 paper linking vape use with lung disease in the US has been retracted by the Journal of Investigative Medicine.
- The journal said concerns were raised about the accuracy of data derived from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, known as NHANES.
- It also flagged unresolved concerns about authorship contribution and the number of people listed on the byline.
- The retraction follows the withdrawal of a separate NHANES-based vaping and stroke paper involving Urvish Patel, making it the second retracted vaping-related NHANES paper involving the author.
A second vaping-related NHANES paper involving Urvish Patel has been retracted, intensifying scrutiny of research used to suggest serious health risks from vapes.
The Journal of Investigative Medicine has pulled a 2023 paper titled ‘E-cigarette use and prevalence of lung diseases among the U.S. population: a NHANES survey,’ after concerns were raised about the accuracy of the data behind it.
The paper had examined links between vape use and lung disease using the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a major public health dataset often used by researchers to study health trends across the American population.
But in a retraction notice published on 27 May, Sage and the journal editor said the article could no longer stand.
“Sage was contacted by a reader who raised concerns about the accuracy of the data the article derived from the NHANES survey results,” the notice said.
The journal said its internal investigation also identified concerns around authorship contribution and the number of people on the byline. “The author’s response to our queries did not resolve the concerns we discovered during this investigation,” the retraction notice said.
It added: “Due to our inability to verify the author contributions on the byline and the unresolved concerns we have of the accuracy of this study’s data, this article has been retracted.”
“The authors did not respond when notified of this retraction,” it said.
Second vaping retraction involving Patel
The retracted lung disease paper was authored by Sudha Dirisanala, Srishti Laller, Naga Ganti and others, with Urvish Patel also listed among the authors.
It follows the retraction of another vaping-related NHANES paper involving Patel: Effect Comparison of E-Cigarette and Traditional Smoking and Association with Stroke – A Cross-Sectional Study of NHANES, published in Neurology International in 2022.
That paper had reported that vape users had a higher risk of early stroke than traditional tobacco users. It was later cited in media coverage, featured in an anti-vaping campaign and included in a contested meta-analysis, according to Retraction Watch.
MDPI retracted the stroke paper in December 2025 after concerns were raised about major errors in the data analysis.
“Following publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the publisher regarding several major errors in the data analysis, raising concerns about the validity of the findings,” the retraction notice said.
The journal said the authors were unable to provide satisfactory explanations or supporting material to resolve the issues identified.
“As a result, the Editorial Board and Editor-in-Chief have lost confidence in the reliability of the findings and have decided to retract this article,” the notice said. The authors did not agree to that retraction.
Why the NHANES issue matters
NHANES is a valuable research tool, but it is not magic. It can show associations between survey answers and health outcomes, but it cannot automatically prove that one thing caused another.
That is important in vaping research because many adult vapers are current or former smokers. If a study does not properly account for smoking history, timing and other health risks, it can easily blur the line between harm caused by cigarettes and harm attributed to vapes.
This is not a technical footnote. Research papers that appear to link vaping with stroke, COPD or other serious conditions can quickly move from journals into headlines, campaigns and policy arguments.
When those papers are later found to have unresolved data problems, the damage may already have been done.
The newly retracted lung disease paper was first published online in April 2023 and appeared in the August 2023 issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine. It has now been formally retracted after the journal said it could not verify key aspects of the study.
The earlier stroke paper was published in 2022 and retracted more than three years later.
Sleuthing behind the stroke paper
The stroke paper was challenged by Gal Cohen and Floe Foxon, who submitted concerns to Neurology International in March 2024. Retraction Watch reported that the pair raised multiple issues, including a glaring error in the reported sample size, too few stroke observations and a lack of information on whether strokes happened before or after vaping began.
Both Cohen and Foxon work for companies with commercial ties to Juul Labs, a transparency point Retraction Watch noted in its coverage. Foxon welcomed the eventual retraction of the stroke paper, but questioned how it had been published.
“It’s reassuring to see the journal take necessary action on such flawed research, and they do deserve some credit for that,” he told Retraction Watch.
“Of course, there is the fundamental question of how this article was published in the first place,” he added. “It seems there are so many errors that anyone remotely familiar with this dataset and these methods should have spotted the issues a country mile away.”
A warning for policymakers
The latest retraction should ring alarm bells far beyond one journal. The public debate about vaping is already clouded by fear, politics and confusion over relative risk. Smoking remains far more dangerous than vaping, yet public understanding of that difference has been weakening in several countries.
Poor-quality studies make that problem worse. They can give campaigners and policymakers alarming claims that sound scientific, even when the underlying analysis cannot withstand scrutiny.
Retractions are an important part of scientific correction. But they are also a reminder that peer review is not a guarantee of reliability, especially when complex public health datasets are used to make bold claims about cause and risk.
