A civil engineering researcher will soon have 12 retractions to his name after a data sleuth notified journals of issues with image reuse in the papers.
Jorge de Brito, a professor at the University of Lisbon, has lost four papers in Construction and Building Materials, two in the Journal of Building Engineering, of which he had been editor-in-chief, and another in Engineering Structures since we reported in March on retractions for a pair of researchers in Iran with whom de Brito had coauthored papers.
Editors of the Magazine of Concrete Research have decided to retract another paper, “Improved bending behaviour of steel-fibre-reinforced recycled aggregate concrete beams with a concrete jacket,” we learned from a staffer who copied Retraction Watch on an email to the data sleuth who raised concerns. The paper has been cited eight times, and this retraction would bring de Brito’s total to 12.
The sleuth, who goes by the pseudonym Artemisia Stricta, is an expert in the field of construction engineering who has identified issues in papers leading to dozens of retractions.
Artemisia notes that de Brito is “among the most prominent researchers in his field,” and told us:
All of these retractions have been prompted by duplicative publication of results (primarily in the form of images), purportedly representing different materials or conditions in different papers. Besides concerns of self-plagiarism (and, in a few cases, plagiarism from others), this reuse cast the results in obvious doubt, as it was not possible to determine which (if any) were correct and which may have been fabricated.
One of the more specific retraction notices, from Construction and Building Materials, states:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors-in-Chief.
Following receipt of whistle-blower complaints, an investigation of this and related papers was conducted. The Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the scientific integrity of this paper.
This paper contains multiple instances of the use of unattributed third party images. Figure 1 is a ‘catalogue’ image that can be found in multiple locations on the internet and therefore may not be a true representation of the fibre material used in this study. Figure 2 was published previously in an unrelated study [https://doi.org/10.1590/S1983-41952018000500006]. Figure 11 is an image that has appeared in various locations on the internet and in published academic papers; its provenance is not known. In addition, this image has been manipulated (without acknowledgement) in this paper. Unattributed use of images and unacknowledged image manipulation are violations of COPE publishing ethics guidelines and can have the effect of distorting the scientific record.
Communication with the corresponding author [de Brito] raised further concerns with the integrity of this work to the extent that he has expressed that he no longer has confidence in its content.
All but one of deBrito’s retracted papers have Arash Karimipour as a coauthor, and many include Mansour Ghalehnovi of Ferdowski University of Mashad, where Karimipour got his master’s degree in civil engineering. According to Karimipour’s LinkedIn page, he is currently a graduate research associate at the University of Texas at El Paso.
In March, de Brito placed the blame for the papers’ problems on Karimipour, telling us:
I have exchanged emails with Prof. Ghalehnovi about this and I have collected lots of information about these and other papers that I co-authored with him and Arash Karimipour (AK).
I am convinced that Prof. Ghalehnovi has not participated willingly in any wrongdoings and that the issues with these and other papers were totally AK’s responsibility.
I am also convinced that there was nothing drastically wrong in terms of ethics in the first papers AK published with either of us and that at some stage AK understood that he could drastically increase his publication rate by cheating, but never informed us about it.
At the time, de Brito was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Building Engineering, but he is no longer listed on the journal’s editorial board.
Karimipour declined to comment. We emailed de Brito and Ghalehnovi, and the editor-in-chief of the Magazine of Concrete Research for comment, and haven’t heard back.
Artemisia was not impressed with de Brito’s deflecting responsibility to Karimipour:
It is important to stress that all authors on a paper are ethically responsible for its integrity…
Given the magnitude of problems not only in publication integrity but apparently also in the mentorship of junior collaborators, I question whether it is appropriate for De Brito to continue to hold so much influence over the field of construction materials.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
The experimental data of research works in these subjects, such as construction materials, usually are not tested by other researchers and data sleuths, so, it’s very difficult to catch fake data fabrication; or never discovered. The resulting papers are mostly useful for academic promotion and getting prestige, nobody practically needs the data at work (or even trust the results), like in manufacturing sector. I’ve observed students and their supervisor fabricating a bunch of exp. data in a week that need at least a few months exp. work in the lab. Researchers are more cautious for fabrication of data in health sci subjects, as they are under more attention of scientists and data sleuths.
But, the cheaters don’t care retraction of a paper after a few years of publication as far as they got the expected advantage from the work, such as tenure and academic promotions and prestigious jobs in editorial boards of scholarly journals and experts committees. And, nobody goes for returning the wasted public funds misused by cheating researchers and related professional disciplines.
Where I come from, Health and Medical research data are constantly fabricated by many, many med students (mostly residents) and their professors. Easy peasy, piece of cake!
That is one of the more lucid retraction notices I’ve seen.
According to Karimipour’s LinkedIn page, he is currently a graduate research associate at the University of Texas at El Paso.
“He is also a reviewer of many ELSEVIER’ and SPRINGER’s journals.”
I can assure you that Jorge de Brito knew nothing about the wrongdoings. Why? Because all the signs were always there: he’s an adrenaline junkie and keeps submitting papers from his group (all solid and neither of which under suspicion). What happens to this style of high-profile researchers is that people want to jump in. I am sure he just read the text diagonally and became very excited with the proposal of another paper. I can guarantee this: he’s not the only one I know with this behavior. Easy on the coffee, perhaps?
It is not acceptable for an author to publish an article and not be sure of the accuracy of the content, or to blame other authors. When the article is published, all authors sign it. Now, if a person abuses his position as an editor and now declares ignorance and accuses other writers, it is definitely running away and all authors have the same share. Also, this author has thanked and appreciated his center in the acknowledgment section of the articles, which indicates another violation. If he did not know about the authenticity of the content or if the centers did not cooperate, he should not have done this. Also, de Brito had a retracted article with other group of authors, which showed the weakness of this person’s performance as an editor. He has published articles with many people from all over the world, which shows that this person has abused his position as an editor without caring about the content of the article and only out of ambition to publish more articles. Even now, he only tries to make himself appear ignorant by blaming other co-authors
It is very surprising that an editor has abused his position and by writing his name on the articles of other authors, without any participation in conducting experiments and analysis, increased the number of publications. In my opinion, such corrupt and illiterate people, like de Brito, should be excluded from the editorial board of all journals.