Last week, we brought you the story of Thong Duc Le and his colleagues, physicists who were forced to retract four papers, including one that cited, as we noted “their own study that had already been retracted for plagiarism.”
The team has now retracted three more papers:
- “Strong limit on Δα/α from the analysis of feII absorp-tion line multiplets,” from Natural Science
- “New test for cosmological time variation of thefine-structure constant from the analysis of quasarspectra,” also from Natural Science
- “Studying Cosmological Time Variability of the Fine-Structure Constant from the Analysis of Quasar Spectra,” from Journal of Modern Physics
The notices all read the same way, with the last sentence changed to refer to the study in question:
The article has been retracted due to the investigation of complaints received against it. The substantial portions of the text came from Le Duc Thong’s former article, “New method of searching for cos-mological time variation of the fine-structure constant”, which has also been retraced by Prog. Theor. Phys. because of plagiarism. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and we treat all unethical behavior such as plagiarism seriously. This paper published in Vol.2 No.6 533-537, 2011, has been removed from this site.
That brings the total to seven, which our math-0riented physicist readers probably worked out on their own.
The last paper of this group, “Constraining the cosmological time variation of the fine – structure constant” [http://www.springerlink.com/content/nl43886421333u17/], is still alive.
It’s quite surprising to see this publisher retract a paper. It is, after all, on Beall’s List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers [ http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~jbeall/Beall's%20List%20of%20Predatory,%20Open-Access%20Publishers%202012.pdf ]. Perhaps both of these facts could be reconciled through an author fee for publishing a retraction?
Please check editorial boards of these journals. Some in these boards are well-known scientists. How amazing !
Maybe someone should check if these well-known scientists ever agreed to be on these boards? 🙂
This scandal is currently hot in the Vietnam media. For example, you can read news in two of popular newspapers of Vietnam:
1) Vietnamese researcher plagiarizes 7 papers
[ http://tuoitrenews.vn/cmlink/tuoitrenews/education/education-news/vietnamese-researcher-plagiarizes-7-papers-1.74000 ]
2) Vietnamese physicist accused of plagiarism
[ http://english.vietnamnet.vn/en/education/22958/vietnamese-physicist-accused-of-plagiarism.html ]
3) Vietnamese physicist hauled up again for plagiarism
[ http://talkvietnam.com/2012/05/vietnamese-physicist-hauled-up-again-for-plagiarism/ ]
Thanks Retraction Watch !
This is like Inception for plagiarism: I plagiarized a plagiarized paper plagiarizing another one….