A plastic surgeon in Turkey has notched his fifth retraction for plagiarism and other issues.
That makes him a retractor — even if most plastic surgeons would have something else in mind if they used that term.
Ilteris Murat Emsen, then of the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery at the Numune State Hospital in Erzurum, has lost five papers dating back to 2006. Four were pulled in 2009. The most recent retraction appeared last month in the European Journal of Plastic Surgery, for a 2007 article titled “Management of the large septal perforations with the support of porous high-density polyethylene (MEDPOR).”
According to the notice:
The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article [1] because significant parts of the text and Figs. 1 to 6 and 7a were duplicated from a previously published article by Romo et al.
[2]. Additionally, Figs. 7b to 7 h have been removed because the author did not obtain written consent to publish from the patients shown. The author agrees with this retraction.
[1] Emsen, I. Eur J Plast Surg (2007) Management of the large septal perforations with the support of porous high-density polyethylene (MEDPOR) 29: 277. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00238-006-0103-9
[2] Romo T, Sclafani A, Falk A, Toffel PA (1999) Graduated approach to the repair of nasal septal perforations. Plast Reconstr Surg 103: 66–75.
We emailed Emsen, who recently joined Istanbul Tuzla State Hospital, for comment but haven’t heard back. Meanwhile, several of his retracted papers, including the most recent one, were case studies — of which the surgeon has published many.
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