The January 2012 issue of Biosystems Engineering has a commendably thorough retraction notice regarding a case of plagiarism in its pages.
The notice, regarding the article “Advanced techniques for Weed and crop identification for site specific Weed management,” by Karan Singh, K.N. Agrawal, and Ganesh C. Bora, of North Dakota State University, speaks for itself: Continue reading Plagiarism kills weed paper
Several journals in the field of orthopedics and related disciplines have been victimized by an apparent serial plagiarist.
The author, Bernardino Saccomanni, of Gabriele D’ Annunzio University, in Chieti Scalo, Italy—across the boot and up a bit from Rome—appears to have lifted significant amounts of text in several articles.
Last January, for example, Current Reviews in Musculoskeletal Medicine, a Springer title, retracted a 2010 article by Saccomanni, “Painful os intermetatarseum in athletes: a literature review of this condition is presented,” after determining that it plagiarized a 2007 article in the Archives of Orthopaedic Trauma Surgery, also from Springer, with a very similar title, “Painful os intermetatarseum in athletes: report of four cases and review of the literature.”
Osteoporosis International, another Springer publication, has retracted a 2011 paper by Saccomanni titled “Vertebroplasty: an international point of view on this “minimally invasive” surgical technique,” after evidently learning that the point of view wasn’t exactly Saccomanni’s to begin with. Continue reading Multiple retractions as brazen plagiarist victimizes orthopedics literature
Another paper in Diabetologia by Yoshiyuki Hattori has been retracted for image duplication, marking the second of his articles in the journal to be pulled for that reason.
The notice for the article, “A glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue, liraglutide, upregulates nitric oxide production and exerts anti-inflammatory action in endothelial cells,” states: Continue reading Another Hattori retraction over reused figure from cardiology pub
Research in Veterinary Science has retracted a 2010 paper by Egyptian scientists who published the same article the previous year in a different journal.
Here’s the retraction notice for the paper, “Comparative biochemical studies on steroidogenic compounds in chickens,” by Mohamed O.T. Badr and Mohamed A. Hashem, from Zagazig University and the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture: Continue reading Which came first? Vet journal retracts previously published chicken paper
An HIV researcher in Germany has run afoul of a number of journals because he duplicated his papers in multiple outlets.
The funny business by Ulrich Hengge earned him a 3-year ban on publishing in two journals, the Journal of Molecular Medicine (JMM) and Cells, Tissues and Organs (CTO). (We’ve written about publishing bans — which appear to be fairly rare — before.)
Those journals also sanctioned one of his co-authors, Alireza Mirmohammadsadegh. The JMM’s managing editor, Christiane Nolte, told us by email: Continue reading Duplication earns German HIV researchers a retraction, and a 3-year publishing ban
Is retracting a paper like shutting the barn door after the horses have bolted?
Sadly, that’s a more apt metaphor than we’d like for a retraction in Equine Veterinary Journal of a short paper about efforts to save Przewalski’s horses, an endangered species closely related to domestic horses. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Neigh: Journal retracts brief endangered horse paper for mysterious reasons
Silvia Bulfone-Paus, the Borstel Institute researcher who was forced to step down as institute director and has already retracted 12 papers, has retracted another, this one in Transplantation. Here’s the text of the notice: Continue reading Bulfone-Paus retraction count grows to 13 with one in Transplantation
A retraction notice appeared a few months ago in the Biophysical Journal:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of Edward Egelman, Editor-in-Chief.
The editors have noted that there is a substantial overlap of figures and text between this Biophysical Journal article and D. Rutkauskas, V. Novoderezkhin, R.J. Cogdell and R. van Grondelle. Fluorescence spectral fluctuations of single LH2 complexes from Rhodopseudomonas acidophila strain 10050. Biochemistry, 43 (2004) 4431–4438, doi:10.1021/bi0497648. The submission of this paper was inconsistent with the Biophysical Journal policy which states: “Manuscripts submitted to Biophysical Journal (BJ) must be original; papers that have already been published or are concurrently submitted elsewhere for publication are not acceptable for submission. This includes manuscripts previously submitted to BJ, as well as material that has been submitted to other journals while BJ is considering the manuscript. If some part of the work has appeared or will appear elsewhere, the authors must give the specific details of such appearances in the cover letter accompanying the BJ submission. If previously published illustrative material, such as figures or tables, must be included, the authors are responsible for obtaining the appropriate permissions from the publisher(s) before the material may be published in BJ”. We are therefore retracting the publication of the Biophysical Journal article.
Ordinarily, such duplications go to the bottom of our list of retractions to cover, despite how common they are. There’s usually less of a story behind them than there is behind a completely opaque notice, or behind one that sports a whiff of fraud. But they’re still important, as Bruce Chabner, the editor of The Oncologist, pointed out in a recent issue of his journal in which a duplication retraction appeared: Continue reading Why editors should stop ignoring anonymous whistleblowers: Our latest LabTimes column
Here’s a he said-he said that left one author with a publication, then nothing, and us scratching our heads.
In March 2010, the British Journal of Haematology issued a rather straightforward correction regarding a 2007 article by a group of researchers from Kansas Kansas City, Missouri.
The glitch? The manuscript evidently left out an author:
In Iyamu et al (2007), the list of authors was incorrectly published and should have read:
Efemwonkiekie W. Iyamu, Syed Jamal, Chiazotam Ekekezie and Gerald M. Woods
Or maybe not. The journal is now retracting the correction: Continue reading Lab squabble leads to retracted correction over authorship in British Journal of Haematology
The journal Chemosphere has retracted two papers over authorship concerns. The problem is, we don’t really know what those concerns are.
Here’s one notice: Continue reading Two murky retractions in Chemosphere for authorship issues