Amyloid-Eszett (Aß), a false positive of amyloid-beta (Aβ), in the neurodegenerative disease literature: A bibliometric assessment

One of the most prominent neurodegenerative diseases is Alzheimer’s disease (AD), one cause of which is the extracellular aggregation of amyloid- beta (Aβ). Some literature related to AD has represented the Greek letter β with the German letter Eszett (ß), resulting in the formation of a non-existent compound, amyloid- Eszett (Aß). This study aimed to quantify the AD-related literature in the Web of Science Core Collection carrying a mention of this false positive. A search on November 22, 2022 revealed 134 results. The highest incidence of false positives per year was observed in 2012 (41 cases). The journal with the highest incidence of amyloid-ß was the Journal of Neurochemistry (nine times), most cases (58) were found in Wiley journals, while authors with a US affiliation accounted for most (38) false positives. A Scopus search on the same date revealed 327 false positives, highest in 2020 (50 cases), most in Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (34 times), and most frequently by corresponding authors with a US affiliation (92 times). This erroneous substitution of a Greek letter (in Aβ) by a German one (Aß), despite giving a non-existent compound, will likely not change the underlying scientific conclusions of the affected papers, although errata might be useful to enlighten others, including metadata managers and journal copyeditors, so as not to repeat the same mistake.