Here’s a lesson for would-be authors of papers on power supplies:
Energy = Renewable; Journal articles = Not renewable
Too late for a group of engineers in Iran who borrowed too liberally from previously published work in their 2013 article in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
The paper, “A review of energy storage systems in microgrids with wind turbines,” reported that: Continue reading Plagiarism makes renewable energy paper unsustainable
A pair of mathematicians from Egypt has lost their 2012 article in the Journal of the Egyptian Mathematical Society because they reused some of the material from a previous publication.
The article, with the Nabokovian title, “On Humbert matrix functions,” was written by A. Shehata and M. Abul-Dahab. According to the introduction: Continue reading Humbert, Humbert: Duplication topples matrix function paper
Back in August we — and others — wrote about a paper in Organometallics for which one member of the study team appeared to have instructed a co-author to pad the article with artificial results. From the supplemental information (SI) of that paper:
Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis…
Now comes a correction statement from the group that can only be described as “mega.” First reported last month by Chemical & Engineering News, the lengthy notice begins: Continue reading Authors of “just make up an…analysis” Organometallics paper issue mega-correction
Here’s a nice case of a journal taking pains to clear the name of an author.
Last summer we wrote about a case of plagiarism involving two authors from India who’d published a paper on biometrics in the Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences.
Now — seven months later, we’ll note — one of those authors has gotten a reprieve. A notice in the journal states that the researcher had nothing to do with the misconduct.
At the time, the notice for the paper, “Multiple facial soft biometrics for person identification system,” read: Continue reading Doing the right thing: Journal clears unknowing author of plagiarism
A suggestion: When you title your paper “Joined at the hip?”, better make sure it’s not too close for comfort to someone else’s work.
Alas, an Idaho anthropologist failed to heed that lesson when she published “Joined at the hip? A paleoepidemiological study of developmental dysplasia of the hip and its relation to swaddling practices among indigenous peoples of North America,” in the American Journal of Human Biology last October.
The article, by Samantha Blatt, of Boise State University, found that: Continue reading Hip disjoint: Dysplasia paper lacks proper attribution, earns retraction
A group of bird researchers in Korea has lost their 2006 paper on DNA barcoding of that country’s avian species because they feathered the article with material from others.
The paper, “DNA barcoding Korean birds,” appeared in Molecules and Cells, published by Springer for the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology and has been cited 88 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the abstract: Continue reading Clone call for bird gene bar-coding paper
A group of cancer researchers in China has lost their 2013 paper in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology after someone tipped off the journal that the data were copied.
The article, “Importance of spondin 1 and cellular retinoic acid binding protein 1 in the clinical diagnosis of ovarian cancer,” came from Ting-Ting Jiao, Ye-Min Zhang, Lin Yao, Yuan Gao, Jian Sun, Dong-Fang Zou, Guo-Ping Wu, Dan Wang, Jun Ou, Ning Hui, who work at various Shanghai hospitals.
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading “Knowledgeable informant” topples ovarian cancer paper
AAPS PharmSciTech, a journal of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, has retracted a 2013 paper by a group from India. The reason appears to be manipulated data, although the wording of the notice leaves that open to interpretation.
The article, “Design and Formulation Technique of a Novel Drug Delivery System for Azithromycin and Its Anti-Bacterial Activity Against Staphylococcus aureus,” was written by a trio of researchers at the Center for Nanobiotechnology at VIT University in Vellore.
The article, published online in June, purported to find that: Continue reading Pharmaceutical journal retracts antibiotics paper with dodgy data, with an unclear notice
It’s been a busy month for retractions at the Pan African Medical Journal (PAMJ) — dedicated to “Better health through knowledge sharing and information dissemination.”
The journal has retracted a 2013 article by a group from Bangalore, India, for plagiarism. And unlike the authors, the editors didn’t mince words.
The paper, “Detection of ESBL among ampc producing enterobacteriaceae using inhibitor-based method,” concluded that: Continue reading “Protracted and unresolved authors dispute” and “striking similarities” lead to two retractions
Nutrition & Metabolism has retracted a 2008 article by a dwindling group of researchers from Pakistan. We’d say it’s the equivalent of punting on first down, expect that’s what the editors probably should have done in the beginning.
As it happens, the journal seems to be guilty of delay of game in this case. As this blog post by Jeffrey Beall notes, allegations that the now-retracted paper was a verbatim copy of another article arose in 2010.
The abstract of the article, which is still available, reads: Continue reading And then there were none: Plagiarism forces retraction of metabolism paper with vanishing authors