The journal Cureus retracted an article for plagiarized images after questioning the motives of the researcher who said her images were taken.
The researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, first emailed Cureus, an open-access journal Springer Nature acquired in 2022, on August 1. She said she noticed images in the October 2023 paper, “Pediatric Acute Dacryocystitis and Orbital Cellulitis With Concurrent COVID-19 Infection: A Case Report,” came from a lecture she posted online and later removed.
“The images used in this article were edited and presented under a fabricated clinical scenario” and had been used without her permission, the researcher wrote in an email seen by Retraction Watch. She requested the journal retract the article. She also provided what she said were her original images, which were replicated in Figure 1 of the paper, and copied the corresponding author of the article.
That author, Ahmed A. Abdelaziz, of Dallah Hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, responded and said the researcher’s allegation was correct. First author Saleh Ghulaysi (often spelled “Ghulaisi” by colleagues), a medical student at Jazan University in Jazan, Saudi Arabia, was “unable to provide an answer regarding the source of the image,” Abdelaziz wrote. He continued:
I had reviewed the materials provided by Saleh and trusted that they were legitimate. However, it is now evident that Saleh not only failed to provide accurate and verifiable information but also intentionally misled the co-authors and myself. Given the severity of Saleh’s misconduct, I believe the case report should be retracted, and all authors, including myself, should be held accountable.
Ghulaysi disputed that he was responsible for the image. “All my research project have been peer reviewed and answered correctly and conducted ethically,” he told Retraction Watch.
Prateek Harne, an associate editor at Cureus, said in an email reply to the anonymous researcher on August 4 the “images are copied.”
“The paper should be retracted, and the authors should be flagged,” Harne wrote.
Graham Parker, director of publishing at Cureus, told the researcher the journal’s investigation would take four to six weeks. In emails we received, the researcher questioned this timeframe, asking if six weeks was “really needed just to check that the published images are identical to the ones I sent you, and to confirm that they only replaced the color annotations?”
“I am not sure I understand your demand for urgent action?” John Adler, the editor-in-chief of the journal, told the researcher in an email. He said her “efforts to go around our process, and to apply added pressure both puzzles and even concerns me that there might be another secondary agenda at play.” He urged her to “sit back and let our process play out over the next 1-2 weeks.”
In a follow-up email, the researcher said she was copying us on the thread and “hoping that you act more seriously with scientific fraud.” Parker called the statement “insulting and offensive to the efforts of our small staff.” He then said: “you do not have the journal’s permission to share any communications with them,” referring to our organization.
After we reached out to Parker, on August 14, he emailed the researcher and said he considered her actions to be a “breach in confidentiality” and “it may in fact constitute a violation of copyright law for which you could be help [sic] legally liable.”
Cureus retracted the article the same day, citing images that were “plagiarized from an online lecture” and the authors’ inability to “verify authenticity of the patient data upon request.”
On August 15, Parker responded to our email saying the journal was “investigating this case carefully and have now retracted the paper due to plagiarism and concerns regarding the authenticity of the case data.”
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The title of this essay is misleading. John Adler, the editor-in-chief of the journal was very rude and aggressive, instead of being kind, apologetic, and thankful. Yet, it didn’t occur to me at all that he was trying to “gag” the researcher who complained.
Perhaps you missed this part:
I wish to be a fly on the wall in the office of Cureus’ legal department after Parker’s threat to sue.
@Ivan, thanks a lot. No I didn’t miss that part, but it too didn’t look to me like an attempt to gag or oppress at all.
I think the anonymous complainer should have first waited 4-6 weeks for the official procedures to finish. Then if (and only IF) the journal seemed determined to sweep the stuff under the mat, she had every right to even sue the journal, let alone expose and report them.
But after the investigation deadline, not before that.
Copying a third party in the middle of a confidential conversation can even be a cyber-crime (with jail time), right? So I don’t really interpret even one bit the editor’s expression of anger about copying Retraction Watch as an attempt to “gag” this person.
The editor didn’t tell her “you are not allowed to tell anybody about this”. He was talking about not sharing their exact confidential communications with others. And he was right.
Most journals and almost all reputable publishers already put a disclaimer underneath almost all their emails warning the receiver that the contents of the email is confidential. Are they trying to “gag” the other receiver?
More importantly, when it comes to a sensitive content like the investigation of scientific fraud and plagiarism, the confidentiality of communications matters even more. So I see no “gagging” here.
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I even take my word back (when I said that the editor should have sounded apologetic and thankful). We should consider the fact that he was like a blind judge, not knowing if the complaining researcher was right or if she had another agenda. So he had the right to be suspicious. And then, when the complaining researcher refused to wait for one month, the editor got frustrated and angry. That is understandable and natural.
The editor first asked her to wait a little longer (only 4 to 6 weeks!), which she refused to wait and kept stomping her feet on the ground, and then unnecessarily involved RW.
1. All the editor wanted was time (a little time, only 4 to 6 weeks)! It was the researcher who didn’t understand or accept this reasonable request –i.e., to wait for 4-6 weeks.
2. What was the relevance of CCing Retraction Watch? Had the editor done something bad to deserve the involvement of RW? The editor was just asking for TIME to investigate the matter. Was it so difficult to understand?
3. Copying RW became even more unacceptable considering that (1) the conversation did not have anything illegal in it that needed being reported to authorities or RW, and (2) the editor was not even finished his investigations!!
So no, what he did was not a case of gagging, IMO.
If you have specific examples of where this would lead to jail time, we’d be interested in seeing those. But we fail to understand how making a legal threat, whether civil, criminal, or even justified at all, shouldn’t be construed as gagging. It’s the very definition, whether the threat is justified or not.
Again, how is that not an attempt to gag the critic?
Those disclaimers are entirely unenforceable and yes, they are trying to prevent people from talking.
You say that this “didn’t look to me like an attempt to gag or oppress at all.” We’ll have to agree to disagree, since your conclusion defies the existence of clearly available facts.
Ivan: “If you have specific examples of where this would lead to jail time, we’d be interested in seeing those.”
In my own country, a screenshot of a phone messaging conversation without consent of the other side has up to 6 months of jail time. But even without jail time, when someone emails me, he is trusting me with his privacy. When I share or publish his emails without his consent, I betray his trust (unless his email was hurting, needing to be reported).
But about other countries, I see many will only fine the person for “breach of privacy”. But the fines are sometimes very large.
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Ivan: “But we fail to understand how making a legal threat, whether civil, criminal, or even justified at all, shouldn’t be construed as gagging. It’s the very definition, whether the threat is justified or not.”
Ivan: “Again, how is that not an attempt to gag the critic?”
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Me:
This is a matter of intent and motive. To the best of my knowledge, gagging makes sense when there is something evil to hide. Without a dark secret to keep hidden, “gagging” will not even be defined. For gagging someone, first there must be some misconduct or something bad to be kept hidden (hence, gagging the whistleblower). In this story, what was the misconduct of this editor? What was this editor afraid of? Was he afraid or simply mad at an entitled person who didn’t agree to wait a little bit?
If you can find a true intent (some misconduct to hide or any other secret) for gagging, I would take back my word and change my mind and say he was gagging her. I can’t find any such motive here. The editor did not do anything wrong to be afraid of leaks.
I for one don’t see anything wrong said by the editor. He said we need more time, be patient. This is not illegal or bad.
Example:
1. I am a teacher and have a bad and entitled student who repeatedly annoys me. I shout at him “if you don’t shut up, I will fail you”. I don’t have any bad intent. It is the student who is the culprit here. I just lost control as a result of a bad student.
2.
3. I have an affair with another teacher that I want to be a secret. An innocent student sees me with her. I threaten her that if you talk, I will fail you. Here, I am the culprit.
4.
In my book, the first scenario is NOT gagging but the second one is. What do you think?
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Ivan: “Those disclaimers are entirely unenforceable”
Me:
OK, you are right. But at the same time, they are not even needed because the contents of emails are ALREADY protected by privacy laws or perhaps even copyright laws, with or without any disclaimers.
https://www.netmanners.com/229/rules-for-forwarding-emails/
https://www.nevadaemployers.org/to-include-or-not-to-include-the-art-of-email-disclaimers/
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Ivan: “and yes, they are trying to prevent people from talking.”
Me:
You mean all reputable publishers and all tens of thousands of reputable journals who put such disclaimers in their millions of emails want to “gag” millions of researchers? Isn’t this some conspiracy theory?
But let’s, for the sake of discussion, assume that those disclaimers are for preventing people from talking. In that case, the question will be: Talking about what? Again, I don’t see any illegal activities in those emails that need being kept secret by gagging people.
So I would think about those disclaimers more as reserving and emphasizing the senders’ right to privacy than silencing people.
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Ivan: “You say that this “didn’t look to me like an attempt to gag or oppress at all.” We’ll have to agree to disagree, since your conclusion defies the existence of clearly available facts.”
Me:
I am open to reason and learning. Definitely you too are the same. I didn’t see any intent for gagging in this editor-researcher case. But if I am missing something, please let me know.
Perhaps for gagging, there is no intent. In that case, I rest my case and agree with you.
Just because a party has unilaterally declared a communication “confidential” in no manner obligates the other party or constrains them. The complainant signed no contract with the Journal and is most certainly not bound by the ludicrously ridiculous unilateral assertion that such a contract exists.
If there is any legal liability it is on the part of the party engaged in the plagiarism and the Journal for its foot dragging reluctance to retract the article.
@Grover Larkins, yes I agree. But at the same time, emails are AUTOMATICALLY protected by the privacy law and copyright law. So even without a unilateral contract, each email is inherently and automatically and already confidential once it is sent/received.
https://www.netmanners.com/229/rules-for-forwarding-emails/
https://www.nevadaemployers.org/to-include-or-not-to-include-the-art-of-email-disclaimers/
Why on earth is she under any obligation to keep it confidential at all?
How was the conversation confidential? What you are claiming appears to be that any conversation by email can only be copied with the consent of all participants which doesn’t seem to be true. Something has to be agreed to be confidential for confidentiality to be expected.
@Allan McKinley, I took those from these links that talk about the privacy laws and copyright laws protecting emails:
https://www.netmanners.com/229/rules-for-forwarding-emails/
https://www.nevadaemployers.org/to-include-or-not-to-include-the-art-of-email-disclaimers/
Perhaps I’m reading Mike’s linked articles incorrectly, but I think that they support your statement that both sides would need to agree that the conversation should be confidential for it to be confidential. The gist that I got from those articles was, “it’s polite” and “it’s probably not legally binding.” In my mind, attempting to prevent or limit discussion of this via implying confidentiality and legal consequences is an attempt to gag (and just bad form). But I do recognize journal’s desire to not be rushed.
Mike,
You’re citing irrelevant links and are applying a rudimentary and incorrect analysis about copyright and privacy law.
And even if ALL emails are automatically copyrighted (they’re not), then what are the exceptions to copyright law?
OH, those would include… criticism, commentary, news reporting…
@VF, thanks for letting me know. My apologies if I were incorrect (emphasis on *IF*). That was *my* understanding after reading those links. Both my understanding and those links might (or might not) be incorrect.
I would appreciate it if you can kindly provide some better and correct legal advice about email confidentiality, backed up by good and correct links.
Hi Mike,
I cannot provide you with legal advice, but I can share that I am an attorney in biotech, and that you are most assuredly wrong. The sources you utilized are a non-legal purported net ethics blog and a non-legal website for employers purporting solely for Nevada employers.
First, copyright does not inherently protect the information in a work. So the researcher could share the content (“I said this, he said that”) without sharing the emails. Second, copyright law is most concerned with commercial uses (i.e., someone trying to make money off of your works, or preventing you from making money off of your work), and I would recommend you spend a while researching ‘Fair Use Doctrine.’ Third, if you are going to be this vociferous (and verbose…) on the internet, you should be damn sure you have solid sources, because surely you would not want to unfairly malign and disparage others because you relied on an etiquette blog.
If you would like to learn more,
My link for you got cut, but here’s a good place to start that is legally vetted, acknowledges that there’s a lot of nuance and complication, and starts off in a way that (hopefully) an educated layperson can understand.
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/
@VF, thanks a lot for your good and informative answer and link. Glad to talk about this with an attorney.
But you MISSED about 95% of my verbose comments on legality of this situation. Your explanation and link were merely about COPYRIGHT, which was only a super-tiny part of my comments.
My comments (and those 2 links) were almost all about the PRIVACY law, not copyright. So I would much appreciate it if you could kindly re-read my comments/links in light of your knowledge about PRIVACY laws, and tell me what you think. Thanks in advance.
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I researched this scenario a little bit and guess the editor has strong legal grounds to sue the researcher on these accounts:
(1) breach of trust, confidentiality, and expected privacy by sharing highly sensitive content without consent,
(2) suspicion and accusation without any evidence,
(3) intention to harm the editor (as in a preemptive attack),
(4) multiple false accusations and defamation.
What do you think?
Adler also threatened me for reporting this article, which also was ultimately retracted.
https://retractionwatch.com/2015/11/02/sex-addiction-article-retracted-republished/
Adler emailed a (male) colleague telling him I was mentally ill to try to get me to stop reporting the article to COPE and RetractionWatch. He told me he contacted his son, Chip Adler, to have my Twitter account closed because he was “friends” with Jack Dorsey. Adler stated he would report me to my licensure board and had contacted my employer, UCLA, to have me fired. When I accurately reported his harassment to Stanford, they instructed Adler to stop his harassment.
Adler did not stop. He then partnered with a violent misogynist group I study, called “NoFap”, that posts many death threats against scientists, including me, in their forums. Adler wrote a letter of support for this group, recognized by the International Centre of Counter Terrorism as an “extreme misogynist” group.
I consider the journal Cureus not only of poor quality, but dangerous to scientists and likely targeting women.
I don’t find it rude to tell someone that they aren’t entitled to demand an expedited retraction.
@Not soft: Before seeing your post, I changed my mind and took back my word about the editor in my answer to Ivan. Yes I do agree. The editor was right here in becoming angry and frustrated. He didn’t have to be thankful or apologetic. And he had a right to privacy and confidentiality.
Hi Mike and others,
I am one of the parties involved in the retraction.
I raised this issue with Graham, the Cureus Publishing Director, more than six weeks ago. He simply replied, “We take such allegations seriously and we’ll investigate.” I followed up with him weeks later but received no response.
I then informed my colleague, who handled the situation when RetractionWatch was notified. The retraction eventually took place, but only an inquiry from RetractionWatch.
Please note that the journal received a clear email from the corresponding author stating that Saleh Ghulaysi (the first author) had submitted a fraudulent manuscript. The situation was quite clear, and the email came directly from the corresponding author. Given this, why did it take six weeks to address the issue?
Hi Researcher
Thanks for your explanation which clarified important aspects, i.e., the fact that the journal did know from the beginning that the paper is indeed fraudulent.
To the best of my knowledge, sometimes journals may take veryyyyyyyyyyyy long for some very basic procedures, even much more basic than what you think your case was. Once I submitted a paper to a reputable journal which is famous for its speed. They took 5 months to FAST-reject my paper, only because we had stated that “the data are not available”.
Such a simple decision of FAST-reject took them 5 months. So 6 weeks seems nothing in comparison.
As response to your question “Given this, why did it take six weeks to address the issue?”, I think of these HYPOTHETICAL scenarios:
1. The editor was cooking some misconduct. I am not accusing him. This is just a hypothetical scenario to balance out my arguments.
2. The editor did not believe that the email from the corresponding author was legit. (Suspected that someone impersonating the corresponding author with a similar email address).
3. The editor suspected the corresponding author himself and wanted to investigate into this, more in-depth, before retracting the paper. This is VERY strange that the corresponding author (who has submitted the paper and has pledged to reading the paper and being responsible for it) didn’t know that the paper was poisonous.
So it is possible that the corresponding author himself was a culprit who pushed his student under the bus when the stuff hit the fan. Again not accusing anyone. Just hypothetical scenarios.
4. It is possible that the editor was following the COPE flow-chart. Now I am not familiar with COPE’s guidelines for plagiarism, but from experience, I know that some of COPE’s guidelines may take a very long time to perform.
5. For example, it is possible that you and the corresponding author say that the images are plagiarized. But unless the student (first author) himself does not confess to plagiarism, COPE doesn’t allow instant retraction. Again, just my guess.
6. COPE or not COPE, if I were an editor and faced such a case, I would double-think before retraction. I would ask ALL authors about this, not just the corresponding author, but all of them. I would do that to find out who is the culprit, even when I know the paper will definitely be retracted.
And other hypothetical scenarios.
And add to all of them the fact that the editor is very very busy. Your paper is not his only concern. So given the above possibilities, 6 weeks looks like an instant to me.
The commenter Mike defends the editor’s foot-dragging by saying the editor is “busy” and that the paper is “not his only concern.” That is a poor excuse. If a journal becomes aware that it has published a study that is not only plagiarized but also fraudulent, retracting the paper and correcting the record should be the journal’s top priority. The editor should be able to clear enough time in his busy schedule to click the “retract” button without waiting 6 weeks to get around to it. After all, the editor found the time to send nasty threatening emails to the researcher.
Cureus markets itself as a fast-track publisher that has a median 26-day submission-to-publication rate (https://www.cureus.com/about). Yet they need 6 weeks to retract an article that both the associate editor and the corresponding author already acknowledged was a proven fraud? If the journal is so busy churning out articles as fast as possible—while collecting money from publication fees—that it doesn’t have time to promptly address blatant fraud, it should rethink its priorities.
But for the sake of argument, let’s accept the premise that 6 weeks is a reasonable amount of time to wait, and that the researcher simply should have been more patient. Even in that case, it is still absolutely inappropriate for the editor to threaten and baselessly accuse the researcher who brought the fraud to the journal’s attention. Kudos to the researcher for not being intimidated by the editor’s threats, and kudos to Retraction Watch for helping shed light on this situation.
@Andrew R Coggan, The commenter Mike DOES NOT defend the editor. Mike also does not JUST say the editor is “busy” and that the paper is “not his only concern.” Mike wrote 440 words, but you saw only the 6-word part you wanted to see.
Please don’t put word in others’ mouth. Please be honest. Please read carefully and completely. Thanks.
“I don’t find it rude to tell someone that they aren’t entitled to demand an expedited retraction.” That is a curious (Cureus?) take.
Once it has been definitively established that someone stole your work and misrepresented it in a fraudulent article, you are certainly “entitled” to question why a retraction should take up to 6 weeks—especially if the journal boasts about how fast its review process is. It’s outrageous (and yes, “rude”) for the editor to threaten legal action against the researcher and accuse the researcher of having some nefarious “secondary agenda” merely for expecting prompt action.
It does seem short-sighted for a journal to promote itself as being fast-track with a rapid (median) publication timeline and then demand more time to fix their mistakes. If journals have the editorial and business processes to make prompt publications, then they should have invested as much effort (or more if they care about quality and honesty) in responding to criticism/corrections/retractions.
It shouldn’t matter one bit how long other journals take to correct course. Instead, it should just be more frustrating and infuriating that publisher can take months!
Has Retraction Watch reported on the ratio between median submission-to-publication time and median report-to-resolution time? I’d love to see such statistics for different journals, publishers, and scientific fields. (Although I fear that it would make me depressed.)
@EB, Cureus was lightning-fast when requesting only 1 to 1.5 months for their evaluation of the paper before retraction. It was indeed very fast as advertised; So much faster than almost all journals or than the average retraction time of fraudulent papers.
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See my comment at the end of this page, signed “Mega Mike”. In that, I provide several peer-reviewed articles and even a 2017 Retraction Watch article showing that (1) retraction usually takes so long and (2) retraction of **fraudulent papers** usually takes several YEARS.
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For your convenience, I summarize it below:
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1. Retraction of fraudulent papers takes much LONGER than retraction of erroneous papers. Not just longer, but the LONGEST: i.e., Fraudulent papers are the ones with the longest retraction times. (Which is several YEARS by the way).
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2. Even retractions due to error (which are finalized much faster) are not done in days or weeks. They too take MONTHS and many times, YEARS.
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3. In general (combining all sorts of retractions [due to fraud, error, etc.]), retraction takes an average of around 2 to 4 **YEARS** –not weeks or days the way some people are expecting Cureus to act!
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4. Even Retraction Watch itself in 2017 considered a retraction time of 4 to 6 —MONTHS— (not days or weeks, but MONTHS) as relatively FAST. See my main comment for links.
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Conclusions: A retraction time of 1 to 1.5 months for a fraudulent paper is considered LIGHTNING FAST and IMMEDIATE.
Agreed. The editor didn’t seem to be engaging in some insidious cover-up. Journals are just slow.
Are they really supposed to believe every random person who e-mails them with a suspicious story without investigating? Wouldn’t it be more likely that the person who removed their images from the internet was the plagiarist trying to hide their plagiarism? From the journal’s perspective they just have someone, refusing to identify themselves, using what appears to be an edited picture, claiming that it was posted online and then removed and that it was actually the image in the paper that was edited instead. Then, one author on the paper gives a vague accusation to another author without a clear explanation of what they are trying to say? Making it sound like they asked the other author where they stole it from and didn’t get an answer because obviously if they didn’t steal it they wouldn’t have an answer.. then that author they accused Saleh, publicly says that it wasn’t plagiarized… so it’s literally just hearsay on Ahmed’s part with a claim that they couldn’t tell him where it was stolen from. Because if he wanted the provenance of the image it should have been in the research paper unless they are completely inept. Considering the claimant is anonymous, it could even be Ahmed for all we all know, making all of this up, or Saleh, seeking a payout from legal reputation damages when it is shown they didn’t plagiarize it and they listened to an anonymous tip who pressured the press into forcing a retraction. There’s a reason the police aren’t supposed to listen to anonymous tips, because they have no integrity behind them and if the person wanted to hide their name and research it’s entirely likely that they plagiarized it as well or got it illegally. Otherwise it just looks like something purely vindictive, and the editors should not be beholden to any anonymous person claiming whatever they please. Cause I’ll make an anonymous claim right now! The whole journal is plagiarized and just a copy of my work that I removed from the internet and they edited slightly. Photoshop, I mean pictures available up on request.
I was under the impression that the researcher was not anonymous to the journal; only anonymous to us RW readers. But even if she was not anon, as I said to the researcher herself here, even if she introduced herself, there was no way for the editor to verify her ID and claim, just by looking at an email address; unless (1) the complainant’s email address was academic affiliated with a renown university, and (2) she did provide solid proof of that conference showing that the images were really hers.
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Even if her ID was 100% verified, there could be many other fraud scenarios at play (see my comments to her here). These should have been ruled out by the editor before retraction. So I do agree 10000%.
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Interestingly enough, the editor had asked the researcher for only 1-2 WEEKS, when the researcher snapped. So all the fuss and accusations in this RW article and many comments under it is for nothing. Literally *nothing*.
The researcher certainly seemed to be upset, but I see nothing that justifies the claim that the researcher “snapped.” And “literally nothing” is an odd way to describe legal threats and baseless accusations that were made against the researcher. I wonder what you think the word “literally” means.
Andrew R Coggan, either your can’t understand logic, or you understand but intentionally try to distort it. In any case, you don’t seem to appreciate that (1) there was no baseless accusation, (2) the editor’s righteous threat came AFTER the researcher unfairly and illegally attacked him by carbon-copying RW and falsely accusing him of misconduct, while all he was asking for was only 1 or 2 weeks.
So yes there was “literally” nothing to make a fuss about. If anything worth news coverage here, it was only the illegal and unethical action of the researcher in her attempt to defame an editor who was merely doing his job (and doing it very effectively).
Saleh Ghulaysi’s blatant theft of intellectual property is a stain on Jazan University and a disgrace to the academic reputation of Saudi Arabia! This is not just a case of academic misconduct—it’s an assault on the very principles of honesty and integrity that should define medical research. How can Jazan University and the Saudi academic system allow someone like Ghulaysi to continue unpunished? This demands immediate action! If this is the standard in Saudi academia, who knows how deep this rot goes? It’s time to expose and root out this corruption!
I’ve always gotten a bit of a whiff from Cureus. The appeal of zero APC vanishes when vague “rules” are broken, rules clearly they can detect automatically but do not tell you about before moving you from free tier to standard pay-to-publish. Certainly my experience could be an anomaly, but this attitude towards Retraction Watch increases the rankness of the odor emitting from Cureus.
Yep. Cureus is very sketchy. I do not trust what they publish and would never seek to publish with them.
Vikas O’Reilly-Shah, you threw a lot of very false and incorrect information about Cureus. If you want to criticize, at least make sure you know what you are talking about.
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Actually the more I read about Cureus, I like it more and more and more. Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Cureus. Back to your false accusations:
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1. Cureus, despite being open access, does not have any APC at all. If any fee is taken, it is just a small language editing fee, which is requested **BEFORE** peer review, for the sake of perfecting the language. And can be refused.
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2. Those rules you mentioned are not vague at all. They are just about the English language/style and are ALL clearly described here: https://www.cureus.com/cureus_editing_services
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And here: https://www.cureus.com/about_publishing
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3. As the worst-case scenario, if they request English editing fees, you are not bound to pay. You can simply refuse and withdraw your paper and submit it elsewhere. No damage done!
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You won’t even lose time, because they would let you know within a few days if you need language perfection or not.
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4. They do not even limit you to using their own language editing services. You can simply do it yourself and come back later. Or, you can hand the manuscript to ANY English editor of choice. Though unless their own editor deems your English language perfect, you need their own service (which again you can refuse and go to another journal).
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5. Their English editing fee is only $345. Do not claim falsely that it is an APC, which is usually around $1500 to $3000.
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6. Exactly what attitude toward Retraction Watch increased the rankness of their odor?! In the emails of the editor, there was no smallest hint of any attitude toward Retraction Watch.
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7. Let’s assume for one moment that the editor showed some strong negative attitude toward Retraction Watch in his email to the anonymous researcher (which he didn’t). How do you generalize that to the systematic attitude of the whole editorial board at Cureus?
The journal published a paper about the effects of Covid in infants. Given the pandemic and how policies have and continue to be modeled according to current research, including treatment protocols.
Given the critical nature of this work, I don’t see what’s unreasonable about preventively retracting the paper and publish it again if it turns out it was valid.
The research papers don’t live in a vacuum, and a fake study can kill thousands if not millions, or at the very least cause delays and false assumptions to real research
What? If it’s plagiarized wouldn’t the information still be correct as long as it was true in the first place? I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if that was why the anonymous researcher wanted it removed, considering they deleted it off the Internet in the first place.
Cureus had no business threatening the complaining researcher.
It sounds like Cureus staff, especially the publishing director, got steamed about being challenged on the slowness of their investigation process, and decided to take out their pique on the complainant.
If their “small staff” is insufficient to handle reports of research fraud in a timely manner, maybe they shouldn’t be in the business of publishing research.
It appears that Cureus deliberately delays the process, perhaps hoping that time will cause the issue to be forgotten, allowing them to avoid issuing a retraction.
I raised a similar complaint about six months ago, but no action has been taken. It seems that because I didn’t follow up, or perhaps because RetractionWatch wasn’t involved, the matter has been ignored.
Very good. I will copy retraction watch whenever I am reporting scientific misconduct and fraud, and do it from the beginning so that the email is not considered something private. I have seen many cases of journals trying their best to sweep the stuff under the rug. What is RW’s email address for reporting fraud?
These confirm what I said:
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/04/30/cureus-retracts-paper-for-plagiarism-following-retraction-watch-inquiries
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/01/26/journal-retracts-more-than-50-studies-from-saudi-arabia-for-faked-authorship/
(RetractionWatch was not involved –> 2 years to retract)
Firstly, I was not being sarcastic or anything. As I have said here repeatedly, the worst fear of journal editors is retraction. And I have seen a lot of editors who have tried their best to escape retraction. Even in my response to your previous post, I said in my first scenario that the editor might have been cooking something. So I am indeed aware of this possibility.
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But, those anecdotal cases you cited cannot and do not confirm your claim because they are cherry picked. I believe the editor has the right to sue you and/or RW for defamatory, false accusations.
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By the way, I have not ever published anything in Cureus. Nor have I reviewed or edited anything for them, nor will I publish or review anything there. So I personally have no benefit in defending them. I also don’t know you and have no beefs with you. Even if you see my first comment here, I even backed YOU up and said that the editor was rude to you.
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So believe me, I just care for fairness and justice. And if it turns out that the editor did do some misconduct, I for one will agree that you have every right to expose and even sue him. But you are defaming him without him doing anything wrong. And that is just bad. The editor just asked for 4 to 6 weeks, which is NOTHING in retraction world. Papers with misconduct take the longest time for retraction, up to several years. And you didn’t give even 1.5 months (which is a blink) to the editor to do his job; instead you jumped to the conclusion. That’s totally unfair.
Correction: I should correct myself when I said I will not publish or review there. I don’t see any problem publishing in Cureous or reviewing for them in the future. If they were that bad, they would not be indexed by Web of Science and Pubmed, etc. But so far, I haven’t done any collaboration with them.
@Andrew R Coggan, you either don’t read completely or intentionally cherry pick a small part of my answers out of context and put word in my mouth. This is not your first time and I do see a strong pattern in your dishonest, distorting comments.
What I did:
I listed lots of balanced hypothetical scenarios, each could be a good reason for slowness. Even the first scenario was directly against the editor. Then I said “add to them” the fact that the editor is busy.
What you cherry picked and distorted:
You accused me of defending the editor, intentionally ignored my whole list of possible reasons for slowness, cherry-picked my last sentence but only a part of it, ignoring the “add to them” part, put false word in my mouth, and called it a poor excuse. (as if I need to defend the editor or bring excuses for him).
And this is not your first time. You repeatedly do this cherry picking out of context and putting word in others’ mouth and distorting their comments to your will.
Mike: “The editor was right here in becoming angry and frustrated. He didn’t have to be thankful or apologetic. And he had a right to privacy and confidentiality.”…”We should consider the fact that he was like a blind judge, not knowing if the complaining researcher was right or if she had another agenda. So he had the right to be suspicious. And then, when the complaining researcher refused to wait for one month, the editor got frustrated and angry. That is understandable and natural.”
Also Mike: “Mike DOES NOT defend the editor…Please don’t put words in others’ mouth.”
I’m not “cherrypicking” or “distorting” what you said and I am not “putting words” in your mouth. One doesn’t need to address every single word in your extremely long comments to point out key problems with what you’re saying.
How long does it take for a journal to retract a paper? What if the paper is fraudulent too?
Some commenters interpret the editor’s request to wait for only 4 to 6 WEEKS (1 to 1.5 months) as “reluctance” and “foot dragging”. The commenter Andrew Coggan says since the the journal markets its speed and since the paper was fraudulent, the editor should retract it even faster. Let’s see whether or not these expectations are relevant and logical?
Summary:
1. Retraction of fraudulent papers takes much LONGER than erroneous papers. Even more than that, they are the ones with the longest retraction times.
2. Retraction takes an average of around 2 to 4 years (not weeks or days)!
3. A retraction time of 4 to 6 —MONTHS— is considered relatively quickly by Retraction Watch.
Conclusions: Exactly the opposite of what the commenter Andrew Coggan demands, a retraction time of 1-1.5 months for a fraudulent paper is considered EXTREMELY FAST.
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1. A peer reviewed PLOS One article reads “Mean time to retraction was 3.9 years, median time was 2 years, with a range from 0 to 26 years to retraction.”
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277814.g003
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2. A peer reviewed article says “Average time from publication to retraction is calculated to 2.86 years and retractions due to fake data takes longest period among the reasons.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349874986_Retracted_articles_in_the_biomedical_literature_from_Indian_authors
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3. Another peer reviewed article: Grey A, Avenell A, Bolland M. 2021. Timeliness and content of retraction notices for publications by a single research group. Accountability in Research 0:1–32. DOI: 10.1080/08989621.2021.1920409.
This website (https://howtopublishscience.org/retract.html) summarizes it, saying that **retraction of fraudulent papers takes much Longer**:
“It takes a mean time of nearly 2 years between notification of problems with a paper, and issuing a correction or retraction (Grey, Avenell & Bolland, 2021), but this belies a bimodal distribution in retraction times with the first hump coming from self-correcting authors, or clerical errors from journals coming within months of the original date of publication. The second hump is usually associated with fraud, and comes after several years of investigations by institutions often with added legal frustrations.”
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4. Retraction Watch (2017) considers a retraction time of 4 to 6 **MONTHS** as relatively QUICKLY.
RW says: “… We’ve explored how long it takes a journal to act over the years, and we’ve found that the time between identifying a problem to retracting the paper can vary — and sometimes last years. … Retractions take time — and some more than others. …… some acted relatively quickly—issuing retractions or corrections within four to six months—while others have not taken any action yet.”
https://retractionwatch.com/2017/07/07/retraction-countdown-quickly-journals-pull-papers/
The editor didn’t complain that the researcher wanted a retraction; he complained that she was angrily demanding an expedited retraction. She would not wait for the process that everyone else was expected to accept. Nobody called her a liar. Her claims had been accepted but there was still a process.
Aside from anything else, Ghulaysi clearly feels that he’s been utterly thrown under the bus by someone and, (from an academic reporting point of view), there might be important information to be gained before the name of every author on that paper is stamped “RETRACTED” (but maybe one tries to look like the hero by saying “Oh yes, I insisted even though it affects me”.)
The researcher squealing “I’m gonna tell Retractionwatch on you and then you’ll be sorry” is just childish. She’s behaving as if they’ve refused to retract when he’s already told her the matter is in hand. I grant you, his legal threat was silly but (because I’m a hopeless romantic) I believe it was because he was trying to protect reputations by TAKING THE TIME to separate the genuinely guilty parties and those honestly unaware of, and not involved in, any wrong-doing.
I don’t believe he was trying to “gag” the researcher at all. I just think he lacked the people-skills to teach her to have a little consideration and a little patience.
Zarah Daniel, it is interesting that you seem to downplay and rationalize the transgressions of the editor whose journal published the offending paper (e.g., you frame his threats and insults as a merely “silly” but well-intentioned failure of “people-skills”)—while you use a notably more disparaging vocabulary when describing the protestations of the actual victim in the situation (e.g., you describe the researcher was “angrily demanding” because she pressed for an expedited retraction and as “childish” and “squealing” because she cc’ed Retraction Watch).
The irony of the journal threatening with copyright infringement while publishing images he is (then) aware are stolen and, I believe, copyrighted since they’re original work from the complaining person is quite funny!
Nobody files copyright forms for PowerPoint presentations.
Kador: “… while publishing images he is (then) aware are stolen …”
It was not “while publishing”. The editor’s copyright threat happened while he was RETRACTING those copyrighted images, not while publishing them. So the editor did nothing wrong.
@LaLa Land: it doesn’t matter, copyright protection is automatic once a work is created. You don’t have to file for it (though it is necessary if you want ti file lawsuit, etc)
The other day, I ordered a burger. The cashier informed me that it would be ready in about 5 mins. I stomped my feet on the ground and shout at her repeatedly ‘give me my burger right now’! The cashier replied “Sir, sit back and give us a couple of minutes to do our job”. I snapped and reported the evil cashier to my friend who is an investigative journalist. The cashier knew I wanted my burger right away, but she refused to give me my burger instantly and asked me to wait.
The burger analogy doesn’t work. In the analogy, what represents the images that were stolen and misrepresented? In the analogy, what represents the theft of those images? In the analogy, what represents the fraudulent paper? In the analogy, what represents the legal threat that was made to the researcher? In the analogy, what represents the editor’s accusation that the researcher has some secret agenda? You’re disregarding all those key elements of the situation—which comprise most of what editor is being criticized for and all of what made the retraction necessary in the first place. The analogy is therefore nonsensical. A retraction isn’t a service that someone provides you; it’s an action they need to perform to rectify a problem they caused.
The other day, my neighbor’s kid stole my bike. Then I saw it sitting on my neighbor’s porch. I told my neighbor it was my bike and provided documentation proving it. My neighbor acknowledged that it was my bike and confirmed that his kid had stolen it, but he told me it would take 6 weeks to give the bike back to me. I grew impatient and asked whether it really takes 6 weeks just to hand over something that he already confirmed is mine. I also mentioned that I would bring up the issue at the neighborhood watch meeting. But my neighbor snapped at me, saying “I don’t see what the urgency is. I’m starting to think you have some evil plans for your bike or you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get it back. By the way, you better not tell anyone what I said or I’ll sue you!” Then a guy named Mike walked up and said to me, “I don’t know why you’re so upset over literally nothing.”
Andrew R Coggan, thanks for your replies, but if your audience is me, just please be notified that I didn’t have the time to read 3 replies of yours in this forum. Otherwise I would answer.