Exclusive: Prof plagiarized postdoc’s work in now-retracted paper, university found

Charles Conteh

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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28 thoughts on “Exclusive: Prof plagiarized postdoc’s work in now-retracted paper, university found”

  1. What a stupid view on authorship from this professor. Yikes! Talk about setting up your postdocs for failure….

    1. 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.

      1. Agreed. Grad students and post docs are hired by professors (often from their own grant monies) so that they can get research experience. In no way is the author / PI required to add them to a publication— although it is often the right thing to do if, and only if, they have contributed to the writing, editing and submission of the article to the journal. For Lemay to argue that she should be first author when (1) it is not her research ( she is the profs post-doc) and (2) she did not write the most or lead the writing of the article. And also, the prof wrote in the email to Lemay that he did not see a collaboration going forward could have meant that, if they had done any writing of the article, it wasn’t usable (for many reasons). Engaging in the analysis of data, or even writing a literature review for a professor does not equate authorship. Al though personally, I’d the graduate student contributed to the manuscript with a literature review—- and also engaged in data analysis, I would definitely add them on as 2bd or 3rd author— depending on their contribution to writing the manuscript. In no way are Principal Investigators / research professors required to do so.
        It is odd that there was only one reference…. But this is an entirely separate issue. Notions of entitlement are a big issue in academia when post docs / grad students do not understand their role as “hired” research support.

        1. This is incredibly clueless. Your ‘research support’ is the only the research is even being published. You have no data without someone doing the analysis for you. Doing the analysis is a critical component of research especially when the collection of data involves a high level of challenge or skill needed to produce the information required. You don’t get to decide who gets authorship because of their title or who ‘leads’ the project, it’s who contributed meaningfully to the work. If you produced 15% of a paper that is worthy of publication ESPECIALLY if that 15% is important to the success of the paper and the conclusions it draws.

          1. Your last sentence is def. an incomplete sentence. How can we trust your authority on matters of academics and academic research if you haven’t yet mastered the grammar necessary to communicate the research?

        2. “Dr Gomez”: I suggest that you go read the rules for authorship for journals in your field of expertise. I am certain that you will find that students and postdocs are REQUIRED to be included as coauthors if they meet the requirements for their contributions to the reported work. I agree with Zach – your comment is completely clueless.

        3. “In no way is the author / PI required to add them to a publication…” This is against every ethical principle regarding publication I know, and I first published back in the early 1990s.
          Have you ever actually read the relevant guidelines put out by journals in this regard?

        4. The PI is usually the one who does the work, so knows the subject intimately, and often more competently than the PI.
          Interesting point of view, “Dr Gomez”.

        5. Why and how on earth could areas of plagiarism escape both the Professor and postdoc assistant? Is it a matter of time constraint or inadequate peer-reviewers time commitment mindful of integrity and years of hard earned professionalism fineness protection? It’s definitely not any good news of Higher Education scholarly leadership fineness.
          Artificial Intelligence is a new delicate tool deployed to bring out every infinitesimal human missteps, far proficient than the more familiar “turnItin”_classroom written work submission verification. Let’s heighten sensitivity especially on scholarly papers intended for publication as such written submissions, now than in the past, do face maximum public scrutiny. We can run finished papers through relevant software for plagiarism minimization to absolute zero.

          1. Martin Atayo you didn’t read the article. The prof plagiarized work that the postdoc produced but did not publish. But it’s still her work. No plagiarism software can catch this. What a narrow minded thinking lol

        6. Any one who sufficiently contributes to an article must be added as co author depending on his contribution to the article. This has nothing to do with being a hired research support or not. I’m sorry but l disagree with you Dr Gomez.

        7. “their own grant money”
          It is incredible how often academics believe that grant money is their own.

        8. Dr Gomez you didn’t read the article correctly. Who wrote to whom, etc. And your general views on authorship do not interest with reality.

      2. Conteh was a jerk that stole work. He gave the game away when he claimed to be adding an author out of “nobility”. Nobility is not a factor in authorship. He could have easily said that the postdoc didn’t contribute enough effort to justify authorship. People like him are a VERY poor representation of the academic research environment and should be rooted out.

  2. This guy is just a classic bully PI — real ‘ugh, I’m sorry they’re your supervisor’ territory…

  3. Here’s the opposite path. Howard Newman wrote a PhD thesis under Prof. Richard Caves at Harvard in 1976. Then Newman went off to Wallstreet. Prof Caves took Newman’s thesis, wrote an article from it, and submitted it to “The Review of Economics and Statistics,” one of the top economics journals. When the article was returned to Prof. Caves with requests from the referees for revisions, Prof. Caves sent it to Newman to do the revisions. Newman did them. the article was accepted, and published. Question: whose names were on the article? https://www.jstor.org/stable/1924167

    1. That explains the odd footnote on page 1:

      “The author’s debt to R.E. Caves for his assistance in this article is such that co-authorship would have been appropriate.”

      Did Professor Caves decline the opportunity to be a co-author, despite his having rewritten Newman’s thesis to make it publishable?

    2. This happened to me! My prof. submitted my thesis’ article to a conference without my name on it. A day before his oral presentation, he called me to go teach him what my thesis is about and what he should say!

  4. I don’t think there is an assle as regards who should be an authors in an article.

    The noble thing to do is the include names of everyone that has participated in the success of the research article.

    Not trying to over ride others because you felt you employed them or own the research project.

    For any article to be published, all the concerned authors should be carried along to avoid any form of rancour.

    Thank you.

  5. This case shows the limitations and problems with the catch-all “plagiarism” label. Conteh was second author on the “plagiarized” report, so the label doesn’t fit well. But to submit a paper as sole author when he was one of three authors is improper, and from the email excerpts, he indeed sounds like a bully. However, “Collaborations gone bad” get complicated. PI’s can be left holding the bag to deliver when the post-doc, student, contractor, colleague, whomever, moves on before the project is completed. I had a collaborator move on, disengage, and then want extensive changes after the manuscript was written. In the end, it was “the budget is gone, the paper is late, so either sign on or I’ll move your name to the acknowledgments.” Bullying? Or standing up for myself and other co’s? What if they had dug their heels in, I followed through, and they complained? It can get messy.

  6. I have supervised numerous PhD students and there was never any suspicion that plagiarism was around. Absolutely never. I can be easily seen by Googling Abed Peerally Author.

  7. Do not blame this prominent professor who has established publication records. I believe graduate students and postdocs are typically under-qualified trainees with less knowledge and research experience. I think blaming the professor is unprofessional and rude.

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