Not long ago, Amy Barnhorst opened an email from the editor of a journal to which she and a colleague submitted, but ultimately pulled, a paper on gun violence.
The cheery note — “thought you two might be interested to see what we came up with” — announced the publication of a recent article in the Journal of Health Service Psychiatry Psychology by a pair of authors. The title,“Collaborating with Patients on Firearms Safety in High-Risk Situations,” had an unpleasant whiff of irony to it — because the article was, in fact, Barnhorst’s own work. (Barnhorst told us she wanted to wait to name the paper until it was retracted, but the JHSP paper, identified by sleuth Elisabeth Bik, matches passages and descriptions tweeted by Barnhorst.)
As Barnhorst, the vice chair of psychiatry at UC Davis, and the director of the Bullet Points Project, a program to help clinicians prevent firearm injuries among their patients, tweeted:
Those two guys are Michael O. Miller and Gary R. VandenBos — who, as Barnhorst relates, are as follows:
As Barnhorst notes, much of the article was a verbatim version of what she and her colleague had written — and the rest was pretty darn close to that.
VandenBos, who for decades was publisher at the American Psychological Association, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did his co-author Michael Miller, who according to his University of Arizona bio is a former Arizona Court of Appeals and Pima County Superior Court judge.
We can only speculate about why VandenBos felt compelled to advertise the plagiarism to Barnhorst so breezily. Maybe he sincerely believed in the title he’d chosen for the article. But “collaboration” without credit sure seems like theft, Your Honor.
And Barnhorst seems to agree:
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Would one still have to refer to a former judge as “Honorable,” if they were to pull a stunt like this?
By the way, why’d he “retire” after 5 years on the bench? Enquiring minds and all.
What about a current judge?: http://retractionwatch.com/2017/04/05/supreme-court-nominee-gorsuch-lifted-earlier-works-scholarly-papers-report/
I found Ms. Barnhorst’s account fascinating, because the same thing happened to me. Some years ago, the editor of the American Council on Science and Health asked me for an article about a mystical nursing practice called “Therapeutic Touch.” I didn’t like his edit, and when he insisted the edit stay, I asked to withdraw the article. But he published it anyway, under his name, and with additions that made me see red (long story). When I asked for a retraction, the editor told me I should just be glad the information got published. I was surprised to have a lot of pressure from all sides to forget the plagiarism in order not to damage ACSH’s reputation. But I pursued it and got a retraction.
This is mind-boggling
I wonder if that was the same editor who insisted that meteorology is not a science, apparently unable to distinguish genuine scientists from the clowns who read the weather report at 6.
Maybe those two will run for president and vice president one day… We can see from the highest office that if you can openly admit to plagiarizing, the media looks the other way. I am sorry that Amy and her colleague had their work stolen. Very sad state of affairs.
Given VanderBos stature in the field of psychology, I sincerely hope there is an acceptable explanation in this case. However, if there is no adequate explanation and his rationale for plagiarizing Barnhorst’s work was to ultimately get all that important knowledge ‘into use’ (see below), then perhaps his extensive body of published works should be given a closer look!
From https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/11/personalities-publisher:
“VandenBos’s many responsibilities have also included serving as managing editor of APA’s flagship journal American Psychologist, as editor-in-chief of the APA Dictionary of Psychology and as co-editor of APA’s open-access journal Archives of Scientific Psychology. In all of those roles, VandenBos sees a unifying theme to his work: getting knowledge into use”.
I couldn’t agree more. If he lack of integrity is this egregious (it is), I’m inclined to think this is not his first time.
There is never an explanation for plagiarism; and yes, all of his work should be considered suspect. This would be grounds for dismissal at any university, why should he be treated any differently?
Also in Barnhorst’s account of the incident on Twitter, they reached out to the journal’s EIC who didn’t want to “rush to judgment” and subsequently offered them belated co-authorship instead of the extremely obviously required steps of retracting the paper and kicking VanderBos off the editorial board immediately. The EIC needs to be replaced too.
Isn’t VandenBos the EIC? He is listed as managing editor and there’s no mention of an editor in chief.
Or is it Sammons? He has three co-authorships with VandenBos in 2020…
Journal of Health Service Psychology – https://www.journalofhealthservicepsychology.org/
This is absolutely insane. I can’t even begin to imagine the thought process of the Editor that led to this. I think the EIC has some explaining to do.
Just maybe these two guys need to be punished with 100 hours talking to psychologists and psychiatrists and getting their minds looked into
Tremendous article! It is a wake-up call for the entire scientific community. Writing a paper is intense expereince and then authors have to navigate the frustrating and user-unfriendly electronic maze of the on-line submission process quite often. Then, if one is unlucky, the editor “send in the clowns” to review the manuscript. I don’t consider them peers, I call them trolls.
To be fair, one Editor-in-Chief of a respectable engineering journal was superb in handling my Letter-to-the-Editor. A couple of authors cited a technical paper of mine but used the infomation to pursue an angle of research which I do not believe to be correct, because, without them knowing, they were working against their own overall goal. When I wrote to the journal to set things right, the EID just took two days to reply and published my Letter! Never have I published something so rapidly.
Dr. Amy Barnhorst deserves all our support, and the scientific community owes her a big debt of gratitude of telling her story. The sad fact remains that we don’t really know how editors make their decisions whether to publish or not (but I am sure they’ll say they have their own psychological needs). I understand exactly how Barnhorst feels. The sense of unfairness is palpable. I like to see the result of this investigation, anyone with a backbone does.
Blatant plagiarism is very hard, psychologically, emotionally and perhaps spiritually on the victim. It is so soul-destroying. If any editor disrespects intellectual property, then the betrayal is complete. One professor told me that, once upon a time, the contents of his entire patent application was plagiarised successfully to become a new patent without him being named as the Inventor. How cool is that!
Thinking and innovation are hard work, and people who cannot think critically should leave the publishing game.
In your article you cite the plagiarizing journal as “Journal of Health Service *Psychiatry*” when in reality it is *Psychology* not Psychiatry. This could be relevant to this case since the original author is a psychiatrist (MD) and the alleged plagiarizer is a psychologist (PhD).
Corrected, using strikethrough — thanks!
So, basically the original paper was stolen by the editors and published with modifications as if it were their own work.
This is somewhat similar to another story at IEEE Access documented here:
http://retractionwatch.com/2020/07/16/a-mystery-how-did-this-team-plagiarize-an-unpublished-paper/
Sounds like we need a code of conduct for Editors to sign in addition to signing their contract with the Publisher. Might make for easier removal of editors who do not act ethically…