Bitter herbs: Parsley paper retracted after authors omit colleague

A pair of plant experts at Uludag University, in Turkey, has lost a paper on techniques for drying parsley because they evidently left a key contributor off the manuscript.

The article, “Effect of Vacuum, Microwave, and Convective Drying on Selected Parsley Quality,” was published online in June 2011 by the International Journal of Food Properties.

During the study, the authors subjected parsley (Petroselinum crispum Mill.) to the various drying techniques, then measured how much each degraded the sample.  Ascorbic acid — a particularly “important indicator of quality,” according to the authors — was lowest after convective drying, and highest after using the microwave. “At the end of the study, microwave drying at 750–850 W ensured the shortest drying time and the best overall quality of parsley; thus, it was chosen as the most appropriate technique for parsley drying.”

But as the retraction notice states:

We, the Editor and Publisher of International Journal of Food Properties are retracting the following article: Nuray Akbudak, Bulent Akbudak “Effect of Vacuum, Microwave, and Convective Drying on Selected Parsley Quality,” International Journal of Food Properties 16.1 (2013): 205-215, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10942912.2010.535400

We are now cognizant that the authors conducted the research with a third party and knowingly published the article without the knowledge and permission of the third party.

The article has received only 5 citations, per Google Scholar. We emailed the authors and the journal and will update this post if we learn more.

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