Category: Legal Threats

Researcher accused of fraud, embezzlement acquitted by Italian court

University of PerugiaAn Italian court has acquitted a gastroenterologist who was accused of fraud and embezzlement.  

An earlier institutional investigation into Stefano Fiorucci, based at the University of Perugia in Italy, found that he had manipulated images in publications that he allegedly used to win two million Euros of funding. The story, which has dragged on for years, has resulted in four retractions and nine expressions of concern for publications authored by Fiorucci. 

Fiorucci’s lawyer, Stefano Bagianti, told us: Continue reading Researcher accused of fraud, embezzlement acquitted by Italian court

Lawsuit against publisher over retraction comes a step closer to reality

De GruyterAn author has begun the process of taking legal action against a publisher for retracting his paper.

As we reported last month, John Bishop, the CEO of an independent media company called Crocels, based in Pontypridd, Wales, argues that by taking down his paper, De Gruyter defamed him and breached a contract — their agreement to publish his paper. Now, Bishop has sent the publisher what’s known in the UK as a “letter of claim.”

In the letter, Bishop writes:

Continue reading Lawsuit against publisher over retraction comes a step closer to reality

Finnish universities must now use courts to revoke degrees

layout_set_logoA court in Finland has ruled that universities must go through the court system if they want to revoke a degree.

In a precedent-setting decision, a body dubbed “the court of last resort in administrative cases” in Finland ruled that universities must apply to them to revoke someone’s degree. The ruling, which occurred this month, took place after a former student filed an appeal after the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) cancelled his degree over charges of plagiarism and fraud.

Here is more from the publication Helsingin Sanomat (which we translated using One Hour Translation):  Continue reading Finnish universities must now use courts to revoke degrees

Author threatens to sue Elsevier if paper remains retracted

Computational Materials Science

An author is prepared to sue Elsevier if it doesn’t un-retract his paper.

Computational Materials Science published two papers by the same author just eight months apart; nearly four years later, the journal pulled one for duplication. Author Masoud Panjepour, affiliated with Isfahan University of Technology in Iran, told us that he is working with a lawyer to negotiate a solution. However, if the publisher does not un-retract the paper, he does “not rule out filing a lawsuit.”

Here’s the retraction notice for “The effect of temperature on the grain growth of nanocrystalline metals and its simulation by molecular dynamics method,” which appeared last November:

Continue reading Author threatens to sue Elsevier if paper remains retracted

Dutch university ordered to pay economist after she was accused of plagiarism

VU UniversityA court in the Netherlands has fined Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) 7,500 euros to compensate for “immaterial damage” to an economist accused of plagiarism.

Karima Kourtit, a researcher at VU, has been at the receiving end of anonymous complaints to her institution accusing her of plagiarism and her professor, high-profile economist Peter Nijkamp, of duplication (i.e. self-plagiarism). Kourtit is now seeking to prosecute the unnamed source of the complaint for defamation; the VU told us it will no longer accept fully anonymous complaints.

The case began when VU cancelled Kourtit’s thesis defense for plagiarism, and a report published on the VSNU, the Association of Universities, accused Nijkamp of self-plagiarism. Two of Nijkamp’s papers have been retracted as a result of the investigation; Kourtit is an author on one of the retracted papers.

A VU spokesperson told us:

Continue reading Dutch university ordered to pay economist after she was accused of plagiarism

Publicly available data on thousands of OKCupid users pulled over copyright claim

okcupidThe Open Science Framework (OSF) has pulled a dataset from 70,000 users of the online dating site OkCupid over copyright concerns, according to the study author.

The release of the dataset generated concerns, by making personal information — including personality traits — publicly available.

Emil Kirkegaard, a master’s student at Aarhus University in Denmark, told us that the OSF removed the data from its site after OkCupid filed a claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires the host of online content to remove it under certain conditions. Kirkegaard also submitted a paper based on this dataset to the journal he edits, Open Differential Psychology. But with the dataset no longer public, the fate of the paper is subject to “internal discussions,” he told us.

In place of the dataset on OSF, this message now appears: Continue reading Publicly available data on thousands of OKCupid users pulled over copyright claim

Author: I’ll sue if publisher doesn’t retract my retraction

Journal of Homeland Security

An author is preparing to sue a publisher for retracting his paper.

John Bishop, the CEO of an independent media company called Crocels, argues that by taking down his paper, De Gruyter is breaching a contract — their agreement to publish his work.

Perhaps appropriately, the paper suggests ways to combat negative online comments — including litigation.

Bishop told us he learned that his paper was pulled when he was alerted to the brief retraction notice, published in April. The notice, published in the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, says:

Continue reading Author: I’ll sue if publisher doesn’t retract my retraction

Neuroscientist pleads guilty in court to fraud, gets two-year suspended sentence

Bruce Murdoch
Bruce Murdoch

A Parkinson’s researcher pleaded guilty to fraud in court this morning in Brisbane, Australia, and received a two-year suspended sentence.

Court sentences for fraud are rare, to say the least. This one follows an investigation by Bruce Murdoch‘s former employer, the University of Queensland, into 92 papers — resulting in the retraction of three papers co-authored by Caroline Barwood, also facing fraud charges. The investigation was unable to find any evidence that published research cited in court had been ever carried out.

The Australian reported this morning that Murdoch:

Continue reading Neuroscientist pleads guilty in court to fraud, gets two-year suspended sentence

Lawsuit couldn’t stop four retractions for diabetes researcher

Mario Saad
Mario Saad

Four expressions of concern in the journal Diabetes have turned into retractions for Mario Saad, a move which he had tried to stop with a lawsuit.

Last August, a judge dismissed Saad’s suit against the American Diabetes Association, which publishes Diabetes, concluding that the expressions of concerns on the papers were not defamation, but part of an “ongoing scientific discourse.” Now, after an investigation at the University of Campinas in Brazil, where Saad is based, and an assessment from an ADA ethics panel (which overturned some of Unicamp’s recommendations), the journal has added to that discourse by turning the EOCs into retractions — and flagging two more of Saad’s papers with EOCs.

Together, the retracted papers have been cited more than 600 times.

As the retraction notes explain, Continue reading Lawsuit couldn’t stop four retractions for diabetes researcher

Chemist fighting to keep PhD asks University of Texas to pay $95k in legal fees

University of Texas

After the University of Texas postponed a hearing to determine whether it should revoke a chemist’s PhD, her lawyer has filed a motion to stop the proceedings, and requested the school pay her $95,099 in lawyer fees and expenses.

This is the second time UT has threatened to revoke Suvi Orr‘s PhD, following a 2012 retraction for a paper that made up part of her dissertation, which the school alleged contained falsified data. UT revoked her degree in 2014, only to reinstate it after she sued. The school is now trying to revoke it again, but the scheduled hearing on March 4 was postponed. Last week, her lawyer filed a motion for final summary judgment requesting that UT stop the proceedings and repay $95,099 in lawyer fees and expenses. The new motion makes a few requests:

Continue reading Chemist fighting to keep PhD asks University of Texas to pay $95k in legal fees