A researcher in France has lost his fifth paper for plagiarism, this one a 2015 article on weakness in the elderly.
The study, “Identification of biological markers for better characterization of older subjects with physical frailty and sarcopenia,” appeared in Translational Neuroscience and came from a group in France led by Bertrand Fougère, of the Universitaire de Toulouse.
As we reported in 2019, Fougère had tallied previous retractions for plagiarism dating back to 2018. At the time, he told us:
We know this problem. We did some big mistakes forgetting to cite some papers in our review paper. So, we asked the editor to retract our manuscript.
We were very uncomfortable with this situation.
Fougère has not responded to a request for comment about the new retraction.
According to the notice:
The lead author and the publisher would like to inform that the article “Identification of biological markers for better characterization of older subjects with physical frailty and sarcopenia” (https://doi.org/10.1515/tnsci-2015-0009) has been retracted as per their request.
The article bears the hallmarks of plagiarism, using the unreferenced quotes from, among others, the following papers…
The then statement lists 11 articles, one of which is by Matteo Cesari, the last author of the now-retracted paper, and colleagues but the rest of which do not appear to involve Fougère or any of his co-authors on the retracted paper.
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A citation is not enough ! the authors have to construct their text and rephrase
“…Bertrand Fougère, of the Universitaire de Toulouse. ”
Université, not Universitaire.
And here is number six!
This week a paper of Bertrand Fougere in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA) has been retracted: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2016.05.009
Fougère B, Morley JE, Decavel F, Nourhashémi F, Abele P, Resnick B, Rantz M, Lai CK, Moyle W, Pédra M, Chicoulaa B, Escourrou E, Oustric S, Vellas B. Development and Implementation of the Advanced Practice Nurse Worldwide With an Interest in Geriatric Care. J Am Med Dir Assoc. 2016 Sep 1;17(9):782-8.
Interesting fact: The second author (John Morley) was at the time the Editor-in-Chief. And two co-authors, Barbara Resnick and Marylin Rantz are associate editor/editor at JAMDA:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-the-american-medical-directors-association/about/editorial-board
I just discovered retraction number seven (!!) of author Betrand Fougere. Again in the Journal of the Americal Medical Director Association (JAMDA):
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2017.06.024