A political scientist in Canada copied his postdoc’s work without credit in a paper, according to the retraction notice and a university inquiry report.
The paper by Charles Conteh, a professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, appeared in Sage’s Outlook on Agriculture in October 2023. It has one citation, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
An inquiry by Brock identified plagiarism and uncredited authorship in the article, according to the report finalized this March and seen by Retraction Watch. Failure to give post-doctoral fellows the “opportunity to publish in peer-reviewed journals negatively impacts [them] both reputationally and financially,” the report states.
Amy Lemay, now a science analyst and founder at VISTA Science & Technology Inc., was Conteh’s postdoctoral fellow from August 2020 to January 2023.
In emails seen by Retraction Watch, Conteh asked Lemay and another faculty member for feedback in March 2023, on a draft of the article they were writing. After reviewing their feedback, Conteh said he could no longer proceed with the project, citing “serious reservations” about Lemay’s suggestions to publish separate papers based on policy reports they had produced for Niagara’s Community Observatory platform.
“We can (and most likely will) cite them in future papers, but I object to the idea of us reproducing and republishing them in their current forms,” Conteh wrote in an email seen by Retraction Watch. “I plan to revisit this project at a future date, but at this point, after some reflection, what I can candidly say is that I am not clear about a collaborative way forward.”
Months later, Lemay discovered the published paper online by accident. The article used text from the policy briefs she had worked on, without citing those sources.
“When it finally sunk in, I was angry (outraged, really) and felt betrayed,” Lemay told Retraction Watch. “I took a couple of days to calm down and think through my options for responding. I knew what Dr. Conteh had done was wrong. I felt that I was in a unique position to call it out.”
Lemay asked Conteh to add her as a co-author to the paper. In October, Conteh asked a journal editor if the authorship could be updated to include Lemay and another co-author’s name.
Conteh replied he was “glad that you’ve suddenly taken an interest in being a co-author in the manuscript now that it has been published. I am adding your name not because I think you deserve it or are entitled to it, but because it is the noble thing to do.”
In November, Jillian Lenne, an editor at Outlook on Agriculture, said it was too late to update the authorship as the paper was already accepted. Lemay then requested Sage retract the paper for misrepresented authorship and copying previous publications without citation.
In response to Lemay’s request for retraction, Conteh wrote in the email she “has no basis for claiming co-authorship or requesting retraction of a paper she did not write.” Conteh said Lemay’s acknowledgment in the manuscript as a postdoc should have been sufficient. “By the logic of Amy’s claim to authorship, all research assistants I’ve hired to help me on a project should claim co-authorship whenever I publish an article that draws from a data source they helped me collect or analyze,” he wrote.
Lemay said she finds Conteh’s views on authorship troublesome and that she was responsible for the majority of the research. “This view about what constitutes co-authorship contradicts one of the most fundamental and canonical academic principles,” she said. “That it is an attitude that may be held by other faculty is a serious concern that needs to be addressed to protect graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.”
The article was retracted in May, with the following notice:
Due to the unattributed text which calls into question the author contributions in this article, the Journal Editor has retracted this article.
Conteh, who disagreed with the retraction, told Retraction Watch he has no further comment beyond reiterating he was the principal investigator of the project and the retracted article came from that project.
Lemay said the citations listed in the retraction are incorrect because they credit Conteh as the lead author when it should be her. A spokesperson for Sage said they are working to correct the citations.
Though she recently finished a postdoc, Lemay worked in academia for 25 years before pursuing her PhD. At this point in her career, she said, she is not intimidated by the “power imbalance” in academia, as some younger students who are still forging a career path may be.
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What a stupid view on authorship from this professor. Yikes! Talk about setting up your postdocs for failure….
Conteh was an author on the policy reports. Nothing in this article proves that he didn’t simply commit self-plagiarism, and upset someone that wanted more credit than they earned.