Monday, December 29, 2025

The Guru Republishes Retracted Paper in Another Exploitable Journal

image from Google Scholar


Remember Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi, the “Enlightened and miraculous being” with 676 publications in scientific journals? His patented form of “Biofield Energy Treatment” is called “The Trivedi Effect®”.

An extraordinary, unprecedented and evidence-based phenomenon that can transform the cellular structure of living organisms, alter atomic structure of non-living materials and revolutionize an individual’s life.  

 

These assertions are indeed extraordinary — they are supernatural, not evidence-based. They have never been scientifically proven. They do not belong in any literature that claims to be scientific.

Trivedi and his colleagues are masterful at abusing a broken publication system. The Guru has a high h-index (62) and 12,969 citations of his work. The h-index is a metric that considers an author's productivity and the citation impact of their publications. However, it is easily manipulated. Most of Trivedi's “impact” is from self-citations in a tangled web of predatory journals that publish questionable papers without proper peer review. 

And like Joe Dispenza, Guruji benefits financially from faith healing under the guise of science.

Guruji’s Blessing has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people globally, and has been validated globally with cutting-edge scientific research.


Except his published science is not valid and has no basis in physical reality. That doesn't stop his organization from offering monthly memberships, ranging from $250 per month for 1 remote blessing to $10,000 per month for the Platinum Path to Enlightenment Membership.

 


Republishing Retracted Nonsense

I have never seen a journal publish a paper that was retracted from another journal. Yet here we are, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is responsible for both cases.
 


 
The authors objected to the retraction from the Journal of General and Family Medicine and issued a Disclaimer Statement in Neuropsychopharmacology Reports. 
The manuscript submitted under ID NPPR-2025-0089 is a corrected, thoroughly revised, and edited version of the previously retracted paper published in J Gen Fam Med, 2023; 24: 154–163. The authors seek to republish it because they disagree with the journal's decision to retract the paper, which was based on objections from a third-party complainant. In the original retraction notice, the authors expressed their disagreement with the retraction. This newly submitted article (NPPR-2025-0089) has been rewritten and corrected for typographical errors. Additionally, it no longer includes data on a few biomarkers that raised concerns in the retracted article due to the high variability observed in these biomarker values.

The revised paper is still quite problematic. My Letter to the Editor and Publisher is reprinted below, formatted for the blog.


-- start of letter --

December 28, 2025      

Dr. Miyakawa and the Editorial Staff of Neuropsychopharmacology Reports,

 I am writing about the legitimacy of an article published in the journal:
Trivedi, M. K., Branton, A., Trivedi, D., Mondal, S., & Jana, S. (2025). Amelioration of Adults' Mental Health Conditions and Symptoms Through Spiritual Energy Therapy: Randomized Controlled Trial. Neuropsychopharmacology Reports, 45(3), e70050.

This paper was retracted from the Journal of General and Family Medicine after an investigation:
“The retraction has been agreed upon following an investigation into concerns raised by a third party, which revealed an inappropriate control group used as the placebo group of the trial, inconsistencies in the Psychological Questionnaire Scoring, highly implausible functional biomarker values that are out of the typical physiological range, and unsupported claims regarding the scientific evidence behind the biofield energy treatment.”

The authors objected to the retraction, edited the manuscript, and submitted it for publication in NPPR. The first author still makes extraordinary and unvalidated claims about his ability to change the mental and physical health of human volunteers via transmission of his thoughts (described as “blessing” throughout the manuscript). A peer-reviewed journal that accepts such declarations without incontrovertible scientific evidence, which was never provided, has compromised its scientific reputation. Furthermore, the study’s design is flawed and much of the data contained in the paper is implausible and inauthentic.

I am an established scientist who runs a research lab, and as I will outline below, it is ethically mandatory for Neuropsychopharmacology Reports to reconsider this paper and for Wiley to retract it from the scientific literature for the following reasons. 

  1. In the abstract, the paper contends that the study was a “single-blind, active-controlled, randomized trial.” This is false.
    2. “Control subjects did not receive any treatment.” (p. 2)

  2. The psychological questionnaire (PQ) used to assess mental health was “…based on a 7-point Likert scale of scoring” with two questions for each of 14 symptoms (see p. 3 and Appendix 1).
    3. “The PQ was made by in-house renowned experienced psychologists based on literature with some modifications, and these PQs were routinely used in various clinical trial projects.”

    There are many standardized psychological instruments that could have been used (e.g., PHQ-9, Beck Depression Inventory, Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index), but the authors chose to use an unvalidated measure (file ‘npr270050-sup-0001-annexures1.docx’) with some unusual questions such as, “How is the quality of your skin?” for sleep disturbances and “Do you have desire to become independent and do something big for your family?” for Lack of inspiration, which would need to be reverse scored. Furthermore, the questions for Emotional Trauma do not measure emotional trauma.

    The authors added Appendix 2 (file ‘npr270050-sup-0002-datas1.xlsx’) to the republished paper, which contains the raw data. However, the Table 2 data contain some irregularities. In the Table 2_PQ_Treatment tab, the scores for ‘Stress from the Spiritual Energy Therapy Group (Day 180)’ are all ‘2’. It is statistically unlikely that 35 people would all endorse the lowest possible score for those two questions. For Sleep Disturbances, 32 out of 35 scored ‘2’ and for Depression, 30 out of 35 scored ‘2’.

  3. Tables 3 and 4 list measurements for the functional biomarkers, which are the clearest evidence for unverifiable data (or error). In the retracted paper, some of these were highly implausible, because their values were out-of-range of typical physiological levels (to an extent beyond what is seen in pathological conditions). Oxytocin and plasma catecholamines (dopamine and norepinephrine) were the most egregious, and they were omitted from the revised paper, which... 
    4. “…no longer includes data on a few biomarkers that raised concerns in the retracted article due to the high variability observed in these biomarker values.”

    The problem wasn’t high variability, it was that the values were physiologically impossible. For the remaining biomarkers, clarifications were made (e.g., 17-β-estradiol was measured only in women and the units were ng/L, not ng/mL). 

In the example below, the units for Klotho (an anti-aging biomarker) were revised from pg/mL to ng/mL, but now the values are much above normal.
 

Group/treatment

Klotho (ng/mL)

Control (N = 42)

Mean of Days 0,  90, and 180

2.25 ± 0.04

 

Spiritual Energy Therapy (N = 35)

Day 90

11.09 ± 0.39

 

Day 180

17.67 ± 0.99

 

normal values α-Klotho (converted to ng/mL)

                    Mean         SD         Ref Interval (2.5–97.5th %ile)
ELISA          0.472        0.136        0.204 to 0.741
(n = 126) 
 

                    Mean          SD        Ref Interval (5–95th %ile)
Age 18–35    0.933        0.576        0.393 to 2.292
(n = 167)

 
The problematic values are magnified in Appendix 2, see the Table 3 & 4_Biomarker_Control tab for ’Spiritual Energy Therapy Group (Day 180)’. In the Klotho column, 28 out of 35 participants have values of 20.00 ng/mL. This is the upper limit of the assay, according to ThermoFisher (https://www.thermofisher.com/elisa/product/Human-Klotho-ELISA-Kit/EEL200). Importantly, 20.00 ng/mL is 8.73 to 27 times above the upper 95th percentile.
 
Other irregularities abound. In a meta-analysis of 12 studies, the normal level of TNF-α was 5.5 pg/mL (Gharamti et al., 2022). At Day 0 for the Treatment Group, 28 out of 35 participants had a value of 0.00, while one person had a value of 218.58 pg/mL, which would be indicative of severe inflammation. At Day 180, 32 of 35 participants had a value of 0.00. Similar improbable findings can be seen for IL-1β.

Finally, the Treatment Group at Day 90 & Day 180 should have been compared to Controls at Day 90 & Day 180, not to the mean of Days 0, 90, and 180 for Controls.


4. The paper presents supernatural phenomena as real (p. 2):
“The Trivedi Effect is one of the scientifically validated and widely reported spiritual energy healing approaches (one form of biofield energy therapy), based on data from preclinical (cell-based and animal-based) and clinical (human) studies [14, 15]. Trivedi healing practitioners can harness the consciousness energy from the universe and transfer it to both living and non-living objects through their unique inherent thought transmission process in a positive way; this phenomenon is called The Trivedi Effect.”

  • The Trivedi Effect® has not been scientifically proven. Citations #14 and #15 provided no data to support this.

And on p. 7:
“Recent studies propose that biofield energy therapies may involve a spiritual aspect that operates at the quantum level through the healer's energy and thoughts, leading to healing through instantaneous communication at the quantum level via quantum entanglement [44]. Quantum entanglement allows for instantaneous connection between separated system elements and can be utilized for signaling across vast distances [47].”

As Dr. Ioana Cristeta stated on PubPeer:
“…unsupported claims remain, including an entire paragraph in the Discussion speculating how quantum entanglement, a construct never before applied to humans (or for that matter any solid object), would explain the effects of spiritual energy therapy. The Discussion is rife with unscientific, never proven or even operationalized constructs, such as energy transmission, remote communication, bioresonance and others.” 

5. On its website, Wiley endorses the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and provides links to the Core Practices for journals and publishers:


As I have demonstrated, the claims in Trivedi et al. (2025) are beyond the realm of empirical science, and a reputable medical journal should not publish them. Wiley, as a supporter of COPE, should subscribe to ethical standards in peer review and follow the official guidelines for considering whether a retraction is appropriate. 


Sincerely,

[my real name]



Links and References

COPE. Retraction guidelines. https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/retraction-guidelines [retrieved on 12/28/2025]

Espuch-Oliver, A., Vázquez-Lorente, H., Jurado-Fasoli, L., de Haro-Muñoz, T., Díaz-Alberola, I., López-Velez, M. D. S., ... & Amaro-Gahete, F. J. (2022). References values of soluble α-klotho serum levels using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in healthy adults aged 18–85 years. Journal of clinical medicine, 11(9), 2415. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101232/

Gharamti, A. A., Samara, O., Monzon, A., Montalbano, G., Scherger, S., DeSanto, K., ... & Shapiro, L. (2022). Proinflammatory cytokines levels in sepsis and healthy volunteers, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha associated sepsis mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Cytokine, 158, 156006. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043466622002150

Invitrogen. Human Klotho ELISA Kit. https://www.thermofisher.com/elisa/product/Human-Klotho-ELISA-Kit/EEL200 [retrieved on 12/28/2025]

Pedersen, L., Pedersen, S. M., Brasen, C. L., & Rasmussen, L. M. (2013). Soluble serum Klotho levels in healthy subjects. Comparison of two different immunoassays. Clinical biochemistry, 46(12), 1079-1083. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23707222/

PubPeer. Ioana A Cristea, Comment #1 on: Amelioration of Adults' Mental Health Conditions and Symptoms Through Spiritual Energy Therapy: Randomized Controlled Trial. https://pubpeer.com/publications/4BDA80E4057E201A7742E9F3B320B1 [retrieved on 12/28/2025]

Wiley Author Services. Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics. https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics-guidelines/index.html [retrieved on 12/28/2025]


-- end of letter --




posted by The Neurocritic @ 10:57 PM   0 comments

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