A psychologist in Australia has earned a pair of retractions after publishing several papers with international coauthors suspected of authorship fraud, Retraction Watch has learned.
Kelly-Ann Allen, an associate professor at Monash University, in Clayton, and editor-in-chief of two psychologyjournals, declined to comment for this article.
The retractionnotices, both in Frontiers journals, cite an investigation by the publisher confirming “a serious breach of our authorship policies and of publication ethics.”
The British Medical Journal has retracted an article that found UK households bought 10% less sugar in the form of soft drinks after the government started taxing the manufacturers on the sugar in their products.
The authors of the paper found an error in their analysis when following up on the work, and republished a corrected version – with less flashy results – in BMJ Open.
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.
Sampen, also a research professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said that “any errors that occurred involved discrete erroneously-placed figures or images” that “in no way undermine our basic conclusions and findings.”
Calling the episode a “long and hard battle for me,” Sampen sent us these comments:
A research biologist at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Chicago faked images and inflated sample sizes in published papers and a grant application, the federal agency has determined.
Hee-Jeong Im Sampen, also a research professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Illinois, Chicago, “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly and/or recklessly falsifying/fabricating data” in three published papers, an unpublished manuscript, a poster presentation, and a grant application for VA funding, according to a Federal Register notice.
Sampen, who publishes under the name Hee-Jeong Im, is corresponding author on all of the published papers the VA identified. The articles, which also list an affiliation with Rush University Medical Center, are:
At the beginning of February 2023, I discovered that the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (SJIS) had been hijacked. As editor-in-chief of the publication, I had been contacted by an author confused by receiving both an acceptance letter and a desk rejection for her manuscript. I had rejected the paper because it did not align with our editorial policy. Upon investigation, the acceptance letter turned out to have been issued by cybercriminals attempting to charge her for publication in what she thought was SJIS but was in fact a fraudulent website posing as the journal.
Journal hijacking is a growing problem and a threat to the entire scientific community. Hijacked journals are scam websites that impersonate legitimate journals and attempt to take over their brand. A list including hundreds of these fake sites can be found at the Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker. By stealing the brand, web domain, or the serial number used to identify a publication, cybercriminals try to lure researchers into paying for publications. The problem is in part attributable to increased pressure on researchers to publish their work in journals indexed in Scopus, Elsevier’s abstract and citation database.
Researchers of all experience levels fall prey to such scams. This susceptibility often stems from the tendency to be off guard when communicating with seemingly authentic and trustworthy academic journals, particularly when links to these journals are found on otherwise credible bibliographical databases.
In the case that led to the discovery of the SJIS hijacking, the researcher who was swindled described the experience as harrowing, making her question whom she could trust. She also ran into trouble at her university, which required her to have two publications in Scopus-indexed journals to advance her career.
A paper touted as “the first systematic review and meta-analysis” of research on the effects of homeopathy for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been retracted more than a year after critics first contacted the journal with concerns.
The article, “Is homeopathy effective for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder? A meta-analysis,” appeared in Pediatric Research, a Springer Nature title, last June. It has not been cited in the scientific literature, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, but Altmetric, which quantifies the online attention papers receive, ranks the paper in the top 5% of all articles ever tracked.
Individualized homeopathy showed a clinically relevant and statistically robust effect in the treatment of ADHD.
However, the retraction notice, dated September 20, detailed four “concerns regarding the analysis of the articles included in the meta-analysis,” and concluded:
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.
It’s Nobel Prize week, and the work behind mRNA COVID-19 vaccines has just earned the physiology or medicine prize. But this is Retraction Watch, so that’s not what this post is about.
A Nobel prize-winning researcher whose publications have come under scrutiny has retracted his 10th paper for issues with the data and images.
Gregg Semenza, a professor of genetic medicine and director of the vascular program at Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering in Baltimore, shared the 2019 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for “discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”
The pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis had flagged possibly duplicated or manipulated images in Semenza’s publications on PubPeer before 2019, and other sleuths posted more beginning in October 2020.
A prominent physician-scientist in South Korea may soon be facing his fourth retraction. Last month, Hui-Nam Pak of Yonsei University was found guilty of duplicate publication, a form of academic misconduct, according to a report from the school’s committee on research integrity Retraction Watch has obtained.
Pak, a cardiologist, has had dozens of papers flagged on PubPeer. As we reported in February, journals pulled two of his papers the previous month after a whistleblower pointed out problems with the articles. One was retracted for “a number of issues related to scientific misconduct,” while the other was a duplicate publication. A third paper by Pak was retracted years earlier after mistakenly being published twice by the same journal.
Our February story triggered a flood of comments, many of them malicious. Some likened whistleblowing to “academic vandalism.” Others asserted that “whistleblowers deserve strong legal penalties” and that “immoral whistleblowers” seemed bent on ruining Pak’s “outstanding career.” Many comments were rejected for not adhering to our commenting policies, in particular making unsubstantiated claims.
The September 12 report from Yonsei University (in Korean) explains that an “informant” reported two of Pak’s papers to the school’s Research Ethics Integrity Committee on March 7.
