A high-profile sports medicine researcher who earlier this week had an editorial he wrote while editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine retracted has asked for another of his articles to be retracted, Retraction Watch has learned.
On Monday, we published a guest post by Steve Haake, whose work the former editor, Paul McCrory, had plagiarized. And on Wednesday, we reported that McCrory had called the plagiarism “isolated” but that sleuth Nick Brown had found at least two similar cases.
Of those two cases, McCrory, who has also served as an Australian Football League consultant, now tells Retraction Watch:
Definitions for the Purist” (BJSM 2005; 39; 786) – this was part of the retracted paper as a run-on article and was uploaded at the same time as the retracted article and has the same error of being a initial draft not a final version and an accidental error. I have already requested through the BMJ editor that this is retracted as well.
Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints…?, Br J Sports Med 2006;40:56 – This has the correct citations including the source material of the authors and the news article where the text came from however the typesetting has not included the quotation marks in the text and not inserted the references in the text correctly. I have sought advice through the BMJ as to whether this needs an erratum or should be retracted.
In both cases, the errors were not deliberate or intentional but nevertheless require redress as what has been published is plagiarism. Once again I apologise for my error.
McCrory also tells us that it was he who requested the retraction of the editorial that is now retracted:
I requested that the paper be retracted.
In no way does any explanation suffice to explain this mistake but please allow me to explain the circumstance for what happened. In the mid 2000’s, as editor I wrote a series of warm up pieces for the Journal. These were a monthly column designed to pick up on sports medicine papers of interest published in other journals that may be of interest to readers and used to develop ideas in sports medicine. They were not data papers but papers reflecting research from other groups designed to highlight interesting research to the readers of the BJSM.
I have now found out that what was uploaded in this particular situation was the early working draft of the manuscript not the final version and as the draft was incomplete, it failed to appropriately cite the original and excellent work of Professor Haake. This was entirely my error which I did not pick up on at the time and I apologise. I was unaware this problem had happened until I was contacted by the editor of the BMJ in December 2021 and once I realised this appalling error I requested that the paper be retracted formally. I felt it important that the retraction should be made as soon as possible. I have only heard via retraction watch over the past weekend that this has now happened. I have no idea why there was any delay in this process.
Although the error was unintentional, the published work nevertheless plagiarised the work by Professor Haake and I am sincerely sorry that this has happened and caused him and his team hurt.
I have already reached out to Professor Haake and his team to offer my personal apology. I am in the process of removing any reference to the article on the various online manuscript databases.
I am also rechecking the whole series of warmup articles that were uploaded at that time to see whether I have made the same error in other articles in the upload process.
I completely agree with Prof Haake point re research integrity and this episode reflects extremely poorly on my due diligence in this regard.
Once again I offer my sincere and humble apologies for this episode.
In the meantime, sleuth James Heathers has also identified some potential issues in McCrory’s work.
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Dr McCrory’s claim that he submitted a draft version of “Definitions for the Purist” raises more questions than it answers.
Remembering now, in an “a-ha” moment, that he uploaded the wrong version 17 years ago would suggest a memory capacity that cognitive scientists will be rushing to study. Alternatively, if he has found the “final” version of the article in a contemporaneously timestamped Word file, he will doubtless be happy to share with us.
On the other hand, if he know about this error all along, why did he not correct the problem by sending a corrigendum to the journal?
And why did the draft version of the post contain over 250 words that had been copied and pasted, and partially rearranged and reduced (but with none of the sentences themselves being changed other that in trivial ways) in the first place.
Nick, I have one thing to say to you: U DA MAN!!!! 🙂
Based on Paul McCrory’s commentary above, I suggest that he be given a specified period of time for him to carry out a thorough reexamination of all of his ‘warm-up’ work and that his institution give him the necessary tools and assistance needed to address any lapses and that corrective actions be taken immediately. Of course, ‘data papers’ and any other work that, if flawed, can conceivably have a detrimental health effect, should perhaps be looked up now if there is reason to suspect that problems exist.
I found the initial article by Professor Haake disturbing. I contacted the Florey Institute on 2 March 2022 to ask them what they intended to do about this plagiarism issue. The response I received on 4 March 2022 is copied and pasted in its entirety within the quotation marks:
“Dear Dr Clarke,
Thank you for reaching out to the Florey Institute with your query. The Florey Institute had no association with the retracted article, published in 2005, years before A/Prof Paul McCrory became an employee of the Florey Institute.
The Florey Institute believes the integrity of all published material is critical to all forms of scientific research.
Best wishes,
Ashleigh
Communications Team
The Florey Institute of Neuroscience & Mental Health”
Make of that what you will but they appear to be washing their hands of issues from the past even though that impacts current standing and integrity.
As of Saturday evening, Sydney time, Paul McCrory has resigned by The Australian Football League’s advisory body on concussion and from various other bodies dealing with this issue. I attach a link to a Guardian article on this from Friday – 5 March 2022 – not behind a paywall:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/05/concussion-kingpin-resigns-global-post-over-plagiarism-scandal
My concerns remain – how could the Florey Institute send such a response to me on 4 March 2022? Resignations from various bodies certainly make a difference but the response from the body that sponsors his work is just plain weird in the circumstances.
So, what we have is a great resource, who is now removed from the science due to 2 examples of plagarism. Plagarism is bad, but it is not data falsification. The great ridiculousness of the huge consequence of plagarism is getting way out of hand. This is scientism, not science.
Paul, do you mind explaining what this ‘great resource’ is? Is it the article? Is it Dr. McCrory? If a researcher cannot be trusted in small things, how can he be trusted in large things? All his work is under a cloud, as he seems to be taking credit on the backs of others. Let’s refer back to Dr. Haake’s work instead, who is a resource, and not under a cloud.
Three examples of plagiarism…SO FAR.
It’s more likely that these are just the tip of the iceberg than that Nick just stumbled into the only two out of 200 additional papers where these “mistakes” were made.
Plagiarism is a high crime in the science world. Many important people have paid a lot higher prices for it than McCrory has. And this is nothing new, so please save the “cancel culture/woke science” takes.