Journals pull two papers after blogger shares plagiarism suspicions

Journals have retracted two papers after they were flagged by a pseudonymous blogger, who suspected all had copied text from other sources.

What’s more, a third paper seems to have simply disappeared from the journal’s website, after the blogger, Neuroskeptic, alerted the journal to the text overlap.

Neuroskeptic became suspicious about the three unrelated papers – about food chemistry, heart disease, and the immune system and cancer – after scanning them with plagiarism software. After alerting the journals, two issued formal retractions for the papers – but neither specifies plagiarism as the reason.

The retractions were the result of a larger project, Neuroskeptic told us:

Continue reading Journals pull two papers after blogger shares plagiarism suspicions

Paper on cranberries’ health benefits retracted after researcher forges authors’ names

Image via Bruce Foster.
Image via Bruce Foster.

A paper in Food Chemistry suggesting cranberry extract has healing properties was retracted after some of the authors complained they had no idea the paper was being published.

Here’s the notice for “Phenolic composition, antioxidant properties, and endothelial cell function of red and white cranberry fruits:” Continue reading Paper on cranberries’ health benefits retracted after researcher forges authors’ names

Which came first? Plagiarism flap forces retraction of chicken nugget paper

food chem coverIt never pays to take a closer look at the inside of a chicken nugget.

The journal Food Chemistry has retracted a 2010 article by Iranian researchers who claimed to have used spectroscopy to examine the inner workings of breaded-fried chicken nuggets. Trouble was, someone else had already done the work.

Issues with the paper first surfaced in March, in the form of a correction that should have given the editors serious indigestion: Continue reading Which came first? Plagiarism flap forces retraction of chicken nugget paper