Dr. Dirk Elston, the journal’s editor, said in an email that he replaced the article with a notice of “temporary removal” after receiving multiple calls and emails “expressing concerns about the accuracy of a few parts” of the article.

On Wednesday, nearly two weeks after removing the article, Dr. Elston told the authors they had a choice: They could correct “factual errors” or retract the paper.

The authors maintain that the article does not contain any factual errors and that several of the corrections requested had to do with protecting the reputation of the specialty and the leaders of the American Academy of Dermatology, the association that publishes the journal. Later on Wednesday, they submitted some revisions.

The article had gone through the standard editorial process of academic journals, undergoing multiple revisions based on feedback from peer-reviewers selected by the journal, before being accepted for publication. It presents data to support a conclusion that private equity firms acquire “outlier” practices — that is, practices that perform an unusually high number of well-reimbursed procedures and bill high amounts to Medicare.

“It was interesting when we ran the numbers and we were counting how many practices with billing outliers were being acquired by private equity,” said Dr. Joseph Francis, a dermatologist in Florida who is a co-author on the paper. “With every revision of the paper, that number kept increasing. So it didn’t seem like an anomaly.”