A paper on the quality of computed tomography (CT) images of the human body didn’t stand up to a close examination. It’s been retracted after an investigation found that it plagiarized work from two publications and a poster by another researcher.
The text in the Journal of the Korean Physical Society paper was taken from work by Kenneth Weiss, a radiologist at the University of Miami, and Jane Weiss, CFO of the couple’s medical imaging company. According to emails that Jane Weiss forwarded to us, Kenneth Weiss brought the plagiarism to light after a PhD student pointed out the similarities between the JKPS paper and one of Weiss’s in the American Journal of Roentgenology. Weiss notified the AJR in January. They started an investigation into the matter, and alerted the JKPS.
The retraction note for “Measurement of image quality in CT images reconstructed with different kernels” provides more details about the investigation:
The Editorial Board of Journal of the Korean Physical Society have decided to retract the above referenced article for reasons of plagiarism. Following notification by the American Roentgen Ray Society, publisher of the American Journal of Roentgenology, an investigation revealed that substantial portions of the text, notably in the Introduction and Conclusion sections, had been plagiarised from the following sources:
Hybrid Convolution Kernel: Optimized CT of the Head
Kenneth L Weiss MD, Aaron L Greeley DO, Rebecca S Cornelius MD, Dongmei Sun PhD
(A poster published on the website of Dr Kenneth Weiss, www.drkennethweiss.com)Hybrid convolution kernel: optimized CT of the head, neck, and spine.
Weiss KL, Cornelius RS, Greeley AL, Sun D, Chang IY, Boyce WO, Weiss JL. American Journal of Roentgenology. 2011;196: 403-406. DOI:10.2214/AJR.10.4425Hybrid Reconstruction Kernel: Optimized Chest CT
William M. Strub, Kenneth L. Weiss and Dongmei Sun American Journal of Roentgenology.
2007;189: W115-W116. DOI:10.2214/AJR.07.2244The Journal of the Korean Physical Society would like to thank Dr Kenneth Weiss and the ARRS for bringing this matter to their attention.
The journal appears to have pulled the original paper, which has been cited five times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge; the link provided to it on the note just shows gibberish. The abstract is still available here.
Jane Weiss told us that since she and her husband file patents, plagiarism can complicate ownership:
The danger with plagiarized papers is not only do they harm the publishing journals, [and] original authors, but they make their way into the worldwide patent system as prior art.
We’ve reached out to JKPS, and will update this post if we learn more. We were unable to find contact information for the authors of the retracted paper. The first author is Jang Keun Jo at Jeonju University, in South Korea.
Hat tip: Rolf Degen
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