Frederik Joelving

Cyberstalking pits Harvard professor against PubPeer

A deluge of bizarre and malicious emails targeting a professor at Harvard Medical School has left him reeling, while raising questions about the smear campaign’s use of a popular online forum where scientists publicly critique research.

Joseph Loscalzo sent a letter to PubPeer, the online forum, in September describing an “aggressive cyberstalking and harassment campaign” that “has relentlessly targeted myself and my colleagues” for many months with “misleading and often inaccurate comments.” He called PubPeer “a vehicle” for the attacks, alleging anonymous comments raising concerns about at least 15 papers were posted “in bad faith” and then used to defame and badger him in emails to other researchers, journals, and universities.

Loscalzo, physician-in-chief emeritus and former chair of the department of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, asked PubPeer to remove the offending comments and impose a six-month moratorium on anonymous posts about his work. The letter was obtained by Retraction Watch.

Author of ‘gibberish’ paper admits to extensive plagiarism

A paper that claimed to have developed a new method to predict acid drainage from mines was not so novel after all, according to one of its authors.

In a series of emails to Retraction Watch, Dulian Zeqiraj of the Polytechnic University of Tirana, Albania, admitted to lifting figures and tables from other articles and said he might also have left some “text as it is in original.”

His paper, “A Novel Stochastic Approach for Modeling Acid Mine Drainage in Three Dimensions,” was published November 17 in Process Safety and Environmental Protection, an Elsevier title.

That the article managed to clear peer review is astonishing, said Muhammad Muniruzzaman, a senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Finland in Espoo, who discovered last week that Zeqiraj’s team had plagiarized his work.

Professor in Jordan sues sleuth who exposed citation anomalies

A PhD student in Switzerland who blogged about a series of dubious conferences linked to potential citation fraud is being sued by one of the conference chairs, a professor of computer science, Retraction Watch has learned.

The professor, Shadi Aljawarneh of the Jordan University of Science and Technology, reaped a prodigious number of citations from the conference proceedings, often in highly questionable ways.

“Fraud can pay off,” Solal Pirelli, a doctoral student at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, wrote on his blog in January. “Shadi Aljawarneh has 6082 citations and an h-index of 38 per Google Scholar, above many well-regarded researchers. This probably helped him sit on the editorial board of PeerJ Computer Science, alongside well-regarded researchers.”

Did a prof in India steal his student’s work – or is he being framed?

On Feb. 10, 2022, Avinash Kumar, a PhD student at one of India’s top technical schools, sent a trove of research data to his adviser. But when the same data appeared in a paper in a scientific journal earlier this year, Kumar’s name wasn’t on it.

“I have done the experimental and analysis part of this work,” Kumar, who has since graduated, wrote in an email to Retraction Watch. “I am in deep shock after seeing this article online.”

It seemed like a solid case of plagiarism.

What’s in a name? Made-up authors are penning dozens of papers

Photo by Bilal Kamoon via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilal-kamoon/

Researchers apparently don’t need to be real to publish in scientific journals.

Take Nicholas Zafetti of Clemson University, in South Carolina, who has at least nine publications to his name. Or Giorgos Jimenez of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with 12 papers under his belt.

Both identities seem to be bogus, according to Alexander Magazinov, a scientific sleuth and software engineer based in Kazakhstan. They add to a short but growing list of ostensibly fictitious researchers who appear as coauthors on real papers.

Publisher pulls books about philosophers Žižek and Venn over citation issues

A large U.S. university press has stopped selling two scholarly books about the philosophers Slavoj Žižek and John Venn due to problems with how the authors cited – or didn’t cite – source material.

In both cases, the University of Chicago Press stated on its website that the titles, released in 2023 and 2022, respectively, were “no longer available for sale.” But only “John Venn: A Life in Logic” by Lukas M. Verburgt was “retracted,” according to the publisher.

The author of the other publication – “How Slavoj Became Žižek: The Digital Making of a Public Intellectual” – told us he had been afforded a chance to fix his mistakes. These included “several insufficient, missing, or erroneous citations of source material upon which the author builds his argument,” the University of Chicago Press stated.

“The publisher has given me the opportunity to correct the book and resubmit it for review,” said Eliran Bar-El, a sociologist at the University of York, in England. “In light of it being an ongoing process, I cannot provide further details until there is a review outcome, which will be reflected appropriately in my publication list. At this time, I would like to genuinely thank the observant readers who have brought this to my attention.”

Verburgt, whose work contains “numerous instances of insufficiently cited source material,” does not appear to have been quite as lucky.

Exclusive: Editor caught plagiarizing resigns as more concerns emerge

A radiology professor in France who plagiarized others’ work in a review article has resigned from his role as deputy editor of a medical journal amid new concerns about his publications, Retraction Watch has learned.

The professor, Romaric Loffroy of CHU Dijon Bourgogne, was first and corresponding author of the offending review, which included large amounts of text from two earlier papers without appropriate citation, as we reported last month.

When confronted with evidence of the plagiarism, Loffroy put the blame on an alleged undisclosed ghostwriter, then proceeded to tone down the offense, saying he wouldn’t mind it if his own work had been plagiarized.

Publisher looking into COVID vaccine paper with ‘serious flaws’

A controversial paper on the safety and immunogenicity of an Iran-made COVID-19 vaccine is being investigated by the U.S.-based publisher Wiley, Retraction Watch has learned.

Iran reportedly has already administered 3 million doses of the vaccine, dubbed Noora, which the country licensed for emergency use last year.

The paper describes the vaccine’s first test in humans, marking the only time results from the clinical development of the homegrown shot have been reported in international journals.

“Safety and immunogenicity of a recombinant receptor-binding domain-based protein subunit vaccine (Noora vaccine™) against COVID-19 in adults: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, Phase 1 trial” was published in 2022 in the Journal of Medical Virology, an achievement highlighted in Iranian news media. One report said the study showed a dose of 80 micrograms of the vaccine was “safe” and provided “adequate immunity in adults.”

Professor who blamed plagiarism on ghostwriter to earn first retraction

A professor in France who plagiarized extensively in a review article and then blamed the offense on an undisclosed medical writer will lose the publication, Retraction Watch has learned.

“We have decided to retract this paper,” Yi-Xiang Wang, editor-in-chief of Quantitative Imaging in Medicine and Surgery, told us by email.

The move comes one day after a Retraction Watch exclusive describing how the professor, Romaric Loffroy of CHU Dijon Bourgogne, claimed he had not written the offending paper despite being listed as its first and corresponding author. Instead, Loffroy put the blame on an alleged medical writer.

The retraction will be Loffroy’s first. He did not immediately respond to our request for comments.

Exclusive: Professor in France blames alleged ghostwriter for plagiarism

A professor of interventional radiology in France pointed the finger at an alleged ghostwriter after he was caught plagiarizing large portions of text in a review article, Retraction Watch has learned.

“After careful checking, I noticed that I am not the author of this paper despite my first authorship since it has been written by our previous medical writter [sic],” Romaric Loffroy of CHU Dijon Bourgogne wrote in an email seen by Retraction Watch.

Loffroy also toned down the offense, saying he wouldn’t care if others had plagiarized his work.

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