Category: taylor and francis

“Breach of warranties” leads to retraction of literacy paper

langideneduYou’d have to be fairly literate to understand the phrase “breach of warranties,” so it’s a good thing it appears in a retraction notice for paper on literacy itself.

The 2012 article, “Information Literacy in Croatia: An Ideological Approach,” appeared in the Journal of Language, Identity & Education, a Taylor & Francis title. The authors were Melita Poler Kovačič, Nada Zgrabljić Rotar and Karmen Erjavec.

Here’s what the abstract had to say: Continue reading “Breach of warranties” leads to retraction of literacy paper

What’s the difference between plagiarism and “unintended and unknowing breach of copyright?”

Weijmar Schultz
Willibrord Weijmar Schultz

In our work here at Retraction Watch, we’ve seen a number of euphemisms for plagiarism. (See slides 18-22 of this presentation for a selection.) Today, in following up on a case we covered last month, we’ve learned of a new way to avoid saying the dreaded p-word.

We reported in June that sex researcher Willibrord Weijmar Schultz had retracted two papers. One was for “substantial overlap between this paper and an earlier published paper by Talli Yehuda Rosenbaum,” while the other was for “breach of warranties made by the authors with respect to originality” and failure to cite a dissertation.

Two more retractions from Weijmar Schultz, for exactly the same reasons as the second one above, have just appeared. One was of a 1991 paper in Sexual and Marital Therapy (now Sexual and Relationship Therapy), while the other was of a 2003 article in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.

The Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy notice reads as follows: Continue reading What’s the difference between plagiarism and “unintended and unknowing breach of copyright?”

Bad Memory? Repressed sexual abuse memory paper retracted for data inconsistencies

memoryThe journal Memory has retracted a paper on repressed sexual abuse after a protracted dispute between the authors and an institutional investigation in The Netherlands that led to no findings of misconduct against the first author, Elke Geraerts  — a rising star in the field of social psychology. (The title of hers TEDx talk, by the way, is “Resilience as a key to success.”)

The article, titled “Linking thought suppression and recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse,” was published in 2008 and has been cited 10 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Bad Memory? Repressed sexual abuse memory paper retracted for data inconsistencies

Pesticide paper pulled for plagiarizing prior publication

intjnrpestmgmtThe International Journal of Pest Management has retracted a 2007 article on spinosad pesticides by researcher who stole much of the material from the thesis of a Kansas State University masters student.

But the retraction comes more than five years after a correction indicating that plagiarism had occurred — an odd interposition that we can’t quite figure out.

The article, “Insecticidal effect of spinosad dust against four stored product insect species in different grain commodities,” was written by Amin Nikpay, who, according to this website, is now with Arak Islamic Azad University, in Iran. It was published in the spring of 2007, but a few months later the journal issued the following notice: Continue reading Pesticide paper pulled for plagiarizing prior publication

“Soft biometrics” for human ID paper guilty of identity theft, retracted

ausjrforensciThe Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences has retracted a paper it published earlier this year on the use of facial biometrics to identify humans.

The reason: Evidently, those biometrics had already largely been described by another group.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading “Soft biometrics” for human ID paper guilty of identity theft, retracted

21-year-old article on the sex lives of women with cancer retracted for data misuse

journal of sex researchHere’s one for the way-back machine.

The Annual Review of Sex Research (which is a supplement to the Journal of Sex Research) has retracted a 1992 paper by a group of researchers who lifted much of their analysis from two even older articles by another scholar. At 21 years post-publication, this is one of the oldest — but not the record-oldest — retractions we’ve covered to date.

The pulled paper, “Sexuality and cancer in women,” came from Willibrord C. M. Weijmar Schultz, Harry B. M. Van de Wiel, Daniela E. E. Hahn, and Mels F. Van Driel. (Weijmar Schultz and Van de Wiel  are co-authors of this rather curious passage about the appropriateness of sexual contact between doctors and patients:

Continue reading 21-year-old article on the sex lives of women with cancer retracted for data misuse

A masterbatch: More polymer retractions, gerontology journal lifts paywall, Microbiology notices appear

masterbatch
Germans and Italians are big masterbatchers. Click to enlarge. via http://bit.ly/100YBKB

Our mothers told us that if we used the masterbatch process, we’d go blind. And what better way to gather some updates to recent posts than to include one that involves said masterbatch process?

First, a retraction John Spevacek noticed when he tried clicking on the link in a Journal of Applied Polymer Science retraction we’d covered: Continue reading A masterbatch: More polymer retractions, gerontology journal lifts paywall, Microbiology notices appear

Four papers about gaming and virtual worlds become more virtual and less reality as they’re retracted

int j human-computer interactionThe International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction has retracted four papers about virtual reality for reasons that aren’t quite clear.

The common author of the studies is Dong-Hee Shin of Seoul’s Sungkyunkwan University. Here’s the retraction notice, which is signed by journal editors-in-chief Gavriel Salvendy and Julie Jacko: Continue reading Four papers about gaming and virtual worlds become more virtual and less reality as they’re retracted

Would you pay $37 to find out that a publisher had mistakenly printed an article twice?

clinicalgerontologistDo you have a spare $37 that’s just burning a hole in your pocket?

If so, today is your lucky day. You can plunk down your hard-earned cash for a chance to read a retraction notice in Clinical Gerontologist that resulted from a goof by its publisher, Taylor & Francis.

Here’s the notice for “Does Social Desirability Confound the Assessment of Self-Reported Measures of Well-Being and Metacognitive Efficiency in Young and Older Adults?” Continue reading Would you pay $37 to find out that a publisher had mistakenly printed an article twice?

Identity theft: Psych journal retracts paper on gay sex for plagiarism

identityIdentity, which bills itself as “An International Journal of Theory and Research,” has retracted a 2013 article by an Italian researcher who stole the work from another author, then published it twice.

The paper, “Behind the mask: A typology of men cruising for same-sex act,” was ostensibly written by Stefano Ramello, an “independent researcher explores the interactions between space, erotic practices, identity, gender and sexuality.” But as the retraction notice explains, Ramello appears simply to have thrown his own name on top of an earlier paper.

Continue reading Identity theft: Psych journal retracts paper on gay sex for plagiarism