A group of anesthesiology researchers in China has lost their 2011 paper in Der Anaesthesist because, well, the article wasn’t theirs to begin with.
The paper, “Different anesthesia methods for laparoscopic cholecystectomy,” came from authors at the 309th Hospital of PLA, in Beijing, who purported to report on a randomized trial of 68 patients undergoing laparoscopic colon surgery with either general or spinal (that is, a nerve block) anesthesia. According to the abstract:
Laparoscopic cholecystectomy with low pressure pneumoperitoneum with CO2 can be safely performed under spinal anesthesia. Spinal anesthesia was associated with an extremely low level of postoperative pain, better recovery and lower cost than general anesthesia.
That language must have sounded familiar to Luiz Imbelloni and colleagues, authors of a 2010 paper in the Revista Brasileira de Anestesiologia on, you guessed it, anesthetic technique for laparoscopic cholecystectomy in 68 patients, titled “General Anesthesia versus Spinal Anesthesia for Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy.” Abstract:
Laparoscopic cholecystectomy with low-pressure pneumoperitoneum with CO2 can be safely performed under spinal anesthesia. Spinal anesthesia was associated with an extremely low level of postoperative pain, better recovery, and lower cost than general anesthesia.
Per the retraction notice:
This article has been retracted due to plagiarism because it is identical with the publication:Imbelloni LE, Fornasari M, Fialho JC et al (2010) General anesthesia versus spinal anesthesia for laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Rev Bras Anestesiol 60:217–227
The study has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Poaching from a Brazilian medical journal to publish in a German periodical does have a warped sort of logic. Just not a very smart one.
This seems to be a pattern rather than a coincidence.
REF: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00101-012-2029-x
In the same journal published by Springer, Hein et al. state, in a paper entitled “Scientific fraud in 20 falsified anesthesia papers”: “Anesthesiology journals are affected not only by ghostwriting and plagiarism but also by counterfeiting. In the present study 20 publications in anesthesiology known to be falsified by an author were investigated for irregularities with respect to Benford’s law…”
>That language must have founded familiar to Luiz Imbelloni and colleagues
“sounded” I would think.
Fixed — thanks.