Employees from BYHEALTH Got Publication without "Author Contributions"
Two employees with the BYHEALTH (汤臣倍健) Institute of Nutrition & Health, Xuguang Zhang and Ruikun He, were listed as co-authors for the article [1], however, their contributions were not disclosed on the Author Contribution section, raising concerns on their authorship to this article.
Another employee with the BYHEALTH (汤臣倍健) Institute of Nutrition & Health, Xiaolei Ze, was listed as the co-first author for the article [1], and his contributions were stated as "designed the research (project conception, development of overall research plan, and study oversight)". On the other hand, the other two co-first authors, Li Huang, and Xia Lv with Tianjin Medical University, "conducted the research (conduct of the experiment and data collection)".
Another concern was raised about the ethics approval for the study, which got involved in animal experiments. The article [1] stated that "approvals for the study were acquired from the Animal Ethical and Welfare Committee of Tianjin Nankai Hospital", however, no author from Tianjin Nankai Hospital was listed on the article.
This study was partly funded by BYHEALTH (汤臣倍健), a dietary supplement manufacturer in China, and three of their employees were listed as authors. Since BYHEALTH (汤臣倍健) provides probiotics products to their customers, cautions should be played when interpreting the outcomes of this study.
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