The head of a Japanese university has been found guilty of research misconduct for self-plagiarism – technically, duplication – and has agreed to pay a one-time cash penalty for his transgressions.
In response to allegations of plagiarism, the vice chancellor of a university in Pakistan has brought a 500 million rupee (~$2,800,000USD) defamation suit against his accuser.
As we reported last July, Farukh Iqbal, of the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at RMIT University, in Melbourne, Australia, had discovered that a paper in the journal Fuel had lifted text from his master’s thesis.
Among the authors was Muhammad Suleman Tahir, the vice chancellor at Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, in Rahim Yar Khan.
The ‘publish or perish’ culture is no longer reserved for academic faculty and post-doctoral fellows. The paradigm has spilled over (or bled into) medical training, aided by the digital revolution. The widespread availability of online library catalogs and referencing software has enabled the mass production of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
With all of that in mind, the orthopaedic surgery residents at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, gathered virtually for their annual research day to debate whether they supported or rejected the status quo that residents be encouraged to publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses. At the start of the debate, following an opening Visiting Professor Presentation on trends in retractions by Retraction Watch co-founder Ivan Oransky, 58% of the residents opposed the status quo, while 42% supported it.
The publisher Frontiers has retracted at least a dozen papers in the last month, after announcing an “extensive internal investigation” into “potentially falsified research.”
Here’s an example of a notice, this one from Frontiers in Endocrinology for “Overexpression of microRNA-216a-3p Accelerates the Inflammatory Response in Cardiomyocytes in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus by Targeting IFN-α2,” which was originally published in November 2020:
A cancer journal with a history of batch retractions has pulled 15 articles dating back to 2014 after concluding that they contained manipulated or misused images.
As we reported in 2017, Tumor Biology was forced to retract 107 papers that had been corrupted by fake peer review – a record at the time. That move had followed a similar, if smaller, sweep in 2016 by the journal, which was owned by Springer but purchased by SAGE in December 2016 after the more massive cleanse.
A group of cancer researchers at the University of Rochester have now lost three papers over concerns about the data in the articles – issues that evidently did not rise to the level of misconduct, according to the institution.
The work came from the lab of Yuhchyau Chen, of the university’s Wilmot Cancer Institute. A common co-author was Soo Ok Lee, who is no longer affiliated with the University of Rochester. In addition to the three retractions, Lee has several corrections and an expression of concern.
A major Canadian medical journal has retracted a letter to the editor by a prominent surgeon in Quebec who expressed reservations about a photo the journal had published of two young girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab.
The photo in question (above) ran on the cover of the November 8, 2021 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.The image prompted a letter from Sherif Emil, an endowed chair of surgery at Montreal Children’s Hospital of McGill University. Published December 20, the letter voiced concern that the photograph used “an instrument of oppression [the headcovering] as a symbol of diversity and inclusion.” (That’s in the title of the letter, which the journal now acknowledges writing, not Emil.)
A cancer immunologist who as of 2017 was “the most highly cited immunologist in Australia” has “seriously breached Codes relating to responsible research conduct,” according to his former employer.
QIMR Berghofer in Brisbane “has commissioned an independent external investigation after a number of complaints relating to the research conduct of a former employee Professor Mark Smyth,” the institute said in a statement.
The external investigation, led by a retired appeals court judge, Robert Gotterson, followed a preliminary investigation, according to QIMR Berghofer, which said it “has referred the findings to the Crime and Corruption Commission in accordance with its legislative obligations.” The institute has “also organised for an independent review into a broad range of issues arising out of the Panel Report” that will be conducted by former federal court judge Bruce Lander.
The news, which was first noted by Nick DiRienzo, who co-authored papers with Pruitt but has been one of the scientists trying to cleanse the scientific record of Pruitt’s problematic work, suggests that Priutt now lacks a PhD, generally considered a requirement for professorships.
A tourism researcher in Japan has been suspended and demoted after university officials found that they had committed plagiarism in at least three papers in school publications.
In an August 4 statement, Atomi Gakuen Women’s University said Masami Murakami, formerly an associate professor, had been suspended from July 15 to September 14, and would now hold the rank of “full-time lecturer” at the school.
According to the statement, signed by university president Kiyoshi Kasahara, the punishment was “Based on the recognition of specific fraudulent activity (plagiarism) in the written paper.”