>Tromethamine
USG spending using Tromethamine as search key = $6.2Million
Contracts were let by the Dept. of Defense/ Defense Logistics Agency??? hmmm
https://www.usaspending.gov/keyword_search/"Tromethamine"
>retracted
"Nearly a decade ago, headlines highlighted a disturbing trend in science: The number of articles retracted by journals had increased 10-fold during the previous 10 years. Fraud accounted for some 60% of those retractions; one offender, anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt, had racked up almost 90 retractions after investigators concluded he had fabricated data and committed other ethical violations. Boldt may have even harmed patients by encouraging the adoption of an unproven surgical treatment. Science, it seemed, faced a mushrooming crisis.
The alarming news came with some caveats. Although statistics were sketchy, retractions appeared to be relatively rare, involving only about two of every 10,000 papers. Sometimes the reason for the withdrawal was honest error, not deliberate fraud. And whether suspect papers were becoming more common—or journals were just getting better at recognizing and reporting them—wasn't clear."
…
Among the most notable findings:
Although the absolute number of annual retractions has grown, the rate of increase has slowed.
The data confirm that the absolute number of retractions has risen over the past few decades, from fewer than 100 annually before 2000 to nearly 1000 in 2014. But retractions remain relatively rare: Only about four of every 10,000 papers are now retracted. And although the rate roughly doubled from 2003 to 2009, it has remained level since 2012. In part, that trend reflects a rising denominator: The total number of scientific papers published annually more than doubled from 2003 to 2016.
Much of the rise appears to reflect improved oversight at a growing number of journals.
Overall, the number of journals that report retractions has grown. In 1997, just 44 journals reported retracting a paper. By 2016, that number had grown more than 10-fold, to 488. But among journals that have published at least one retraction annually, the average number of retractions per journal has remained largely flat since 1997. Given the simultaneous rise in retractions, that pattern suggests journals are collectively doing more to police papers, says Daniele Fanelli, a lecturer in research methods at the London School of Economics and Political Science who has co-written several studies of retractions. (The number per journal would have increased, he argues, if the growing number of retractions resulted primarily because an increased proportion of papers are flawed.)"
https://www.science.org/content/article/what-massive-database-retracted-papers-reveals-about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty
Retraction Watch Database:
http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx?