Ivan Oransky

Neuroscience journal takes tough stance on plagiarism

Like Howard Beale, the character in 1976’s “Network” who famously said “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!,” the editors of the journal Cortex have decided they’ve had enough when it comes to plagiarism.

From an editorial in the current issue:

We will treat academic plagiarism as a misdeed, not as a mistake, and a paper that plagiarizes others will be immediately rejected and may be reported to the author’s academic affiliation.

The editors explain how: Continue reading Neuroscience journal takes tough stance on plagiarism

Dipak Das dies at 67

Dipak Das, the resveratrol researcher who had 19 papers retracted following findings of misconduct by the University of Connecticut, has died at the age of 67.

Das died on September 19, according to an obituary posted to the Hartford Courant‘s website. The obituary does not give a cause of death. Continue reading Dipak Das dies at 67

Science reporter spoofs hundreds of open access journals with fake papers

Alan Sokal’s influence has certainly been felt strongly recently. Last month, a critique by Sokal — who in 1996 got a fake paper published in Social Text — and two colleagues forced a correction of a much-ballyhooed psychology paper. A few days after that, we reported on a Serbian Sokal hoax-like paper whose authors cited the scholarly efforts of one B. Sagdiyev, a.k.a. Borat.

And today, we bring you news of an effort by John Bohannon, of Science magazine, to publish fake papers in more than 300 open access journals. Bohannon, writing as “Ocorrafoo Cobange” of the “Wassee Institute of Medicine” — neither of which exist, of course — explains his process: Continue reading Science reporter spoofs hundreds of open access journals with fake papers

Publishing in triplicate leads to polymer paper retraction

A chemist at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia has lost a paper because it was the third time he had published some of it.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Publishing in triplicate leads to polymer paper retraction

Ask Retraction Watch: What happens to a paper draft after a lab member realizes data are flawed?

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

Another installment of Ask Retraction Watch:

A lab member is asked to write up a paper with some data and after a couple of drafts and some more experiments he/she realizes the data is flawed. The lab head decides to pursue the paper anyway and writes it up with another lab member. Can they use the first drafts made by the first lab member (use the introduction, the methods, and parts of the discussion)? Or can that be considered plagiarism? And if it is plagiarism, what can the first lab member do?

Take our poll, and comment below. Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: What happens to a paper draft after a lab member realizes data are flawed?

Journal of Virtual Studies retracts Second Life paper that was, um, virtually on its second life

Second Life is a virtual reality site in which you can “Experience endless surprises and unexpected delights in a world imagined and created by people like you.” Only Nikolaos Pellas, of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is now having two papers on virtual reality retracted because he apparently experienced endless surprises and unexpected delights in a world imagined and created by other people.

Here’s one notice from the Journal of Virtual Studies: Continue reading Journal of Virtual Studies retracts Second Life paper that was, um, virtually on its second life

Big trouble in little China: Two looks at what warps scientific publishing there

The press corps has turned its attention to scientific publishing in China this week.

Here’s Naomi Ching’s lede — that’s how we spell it in journalism — from Nautilus:

You may have heard that Chinese researchers are not very well compensated, compared to their Western counterparts. What you might not know is that they can increase their income by a factor of 10 with a single publication. The better the journal they publish in, as judged by the average number of times that its papers are cited, the more money they make. According to an anonymous source specializing in science evaluation in China, some research institutions follow a simple formula for determining cash rewards: 10,000 yuan, multiplied by one plus the journal impact factor (the impact factor reflects average citation levels). For example, publication in The Lancet, whose impact factor was 39.06 in 2012, would fetch 400,600 yuan (about $65,000). By comparison, the average yearly income of Chinese scientific researchers was 39,850 yuan in 2007, according to a survey by the China Association for Science and Technology.

Hmm, that sort of incentive wouldn’t create any problems, would it? Read the rest of Ching’s piece for more.

And here’s Gady Epstein’s top, from The Economist: Continue reading Big trouble in little China: Two looks at what warps scientific publishing there

Cancer cell line mixup leads to retraction

At team of researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center has retracted a paper after realizing that the cell lines they were using weren’t what they thought they were.

Here’s the detailed notice: Continue reading Cancer cell line mixup leads to retraction

Marc Hauser’s second chance: Leading science writers endorse his upcoming book

Yesterday, Marc Hauser, the former Harvard psychologist found by the Office of Research Integrity to have committed misconduct, tweeted that his new book, Evilicious, is coming out on October 15.

An excerpt of the book, which was originally scheduled to be published by Viking/Penguin, is available at Hauser’s website. (We learned about the book in a blog post by Andrew Gelman.) Viking/Penguin is apparently no longer publishing it, however, as the book will be available “at Amazon as a Kindle Select, for print-on-demand at Createspace, and as an audio book at Audible (also available on Amazon).”

What caught our eye were two blurbs. One was from Nicholas Wade, former science editor of the New York Times, who covered the Hauser case, and co-authored 1983’s Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science. The other was from Michael Shermer, founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, and a monthly columnist for Scientific American.

Wade: Continue reading Marc Hauser’s second chance: Leading science writers endorse his upcoming book