by reason for retraction – Page 61

Up to 19% plagiarism is just fine, journal tells authors

Apparently, you can be a little bit pregnant. We’ll explain.

The other day we received an email from a researcher tipping us off to a remarkable admission from a journal in Pakistan about how much (as in, precisely how much) plagiarism it was willing to accept in its pages.

The publication, the Punjab University Journal of Mathematics, had approached the researcher (whom we’re not identifying, at their request) asking them to be a reviewer. When the scientist demurred, the following message arrived:

Former BU prof falsified images, agrees to 5-year funding ban

A former researcher at Boston University (BU) committed research misconduct, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

William W. Cruikshank, formerly of BU’s Pulmonary Center,
“engaged in research misconduct by knowingly, intentionally, and/or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data” in a paper retracted in 2014, in an earlier version of that paper, in a seminar presentation, and in two grant applications submitted to the National Cancer Institute, the ORI reports.

Cruikshank did so by “copying blot band images from unrelated sources, manipulating to disguise their origin, and combining multiple images to generate new figures to falsely represent results using sixty-four (64) such band images” in 16 figures and related text.

A university requested retractions of eight papers. It took journals a year to yank four of them.

On March 30, 2018, The Ohio State University (OSU) released a 75-page report concluding that Ching-Shih Chen, a cancer researcher, had deviated “from the accepted practices of image handling and figure generation and intentionally falsifying data.” The report recommended the retraction of eight papers.

By the end of August of 2018, Chen had had four papers retracted — one in Cancer Research, two in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, and one in PLoS ONE.

But it wasn’t until more than a year after the report was released that the other four papers — two from Carcinogenesis, one from Clinical Cancer Research, and one from Molecular Cellular Therapeutics — were retracted, all between April 1 and May 1 of this year.

What took so long? Your guess is as good as ours; none of the editors of those journals responded to our requests for comment.

Sharing the coin of the realm: How one journal hopes new authorship rules will cut down on bias

Retraction Watch readers may have noticed what seems like a growing trend: Co-first authorships. While the move might seem like a way to promote equality, some researchers are worried that it’s having the opposite effect. In response, the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) recently created additional requirements for shared first authorship. We asked Arturo Casadevall, the first author of an editorial describing those changes, to answer a few questions.

Retraction Watch (RW): The title of your editorial, as well as the editorial itself, refers to bias. What kind of bias is of concern when it comes to co-first authors?

“This is how science works:” Error leads to recall of paper linking Jon Stewart and election results

Jon Stewart is a powerful figure in American media. How powerful is he? So powerful that his departure in 2015 as host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central may have tipped the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

Forensics Friday: Can you spot the problem with this image?

Ever wanted to hone your skills as a scientific sleuth? Now’s your chance.

Thanks to the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), which is committed to educating authors on best practices in publishing, figure preparation, and reproducibility, we’re presenting the first of a new series, Forensics Friday.

Take a look at the image below, and then take our poll. After that, click on the link below to find out the right answer.

How often do authors with retractions for misconduct continue to publish?

How does retraction change publishing behavior? Mark Bolland and Andrew Grey, who were two members of a team whose work led to dozens of retractions for Yoshihiro Sato, now third on the Retraction Watch leaderboard, joined forces with Vyoma Mistry to find out. We asked Bolland to answer several questions about the new University of Auckland team’s paper, which appeared in Accountability in Research.

Retraction Watch (RW): You “undertook a survey of publication rates, for authors with multiple retractions in the biomedical literature, to determine whether they changed after authors’ first retractions.” What did you find?

Meet Elisabeth Bik, who finds problematic images in scientific papers for free

Retraction Watch readers may know the name Elisabeth Bik, whose painstaking work inspecting tens of thousands of Western blot images has led to dozens of retractions in journals including PLOS ONE. Today in The Scientist, we profile Bik, a microbiologist who calls herself a “super-introvert.”

Bik tells us:

Compression plagiarism: An “under-recognized variety” that software will miss

If you’re interested in plagiarism in the scholarly literature nowadays, you’ve probably come across the name Michael Dougherty. Dougherty’s efforts to root out plagiarism has led to dozens of retractions, including several by a prominent priest. In a new paper in Argumentation, Dougherty, author of the recent book Correcting the Scholarly Record for Research Integrity: In the Aftermath of Plagiarism, has coined a new term: “compression plagiarism.” We asked him more about the phenomenon, which Dougherty says “is invisible to unsuspecting readers and immune to anti-plagiarism software.”

Retraction Watch (RW): You define a term that is new to us: Compression plagiarism. What is compression plagiarism, and why is it particularly problematic? Continue reading Compression plagiarism: An “under-recognized variety” that software will miss

“A new form of plagiarism:” When researchers fake co-authors’ names

There’s a new publishing trend in town, says Mario Biagioli: Faking co-authors’ names. Biagioli, distinguished professor of law and science and technology studies and director of the Center for Innovation Studies at the University of California, Davis, writes in an article in Trends in Chemistry that it’s “the emergence of a new form of plagiarism that reflects the new metrics-based economy of scholarly publishing.” We asked him a few questions about what he’s found, and why authors might do this.

Retraction Watch (RW): You write that “A new trend in scientific misconduct involves listing fake coauthors on one’s publication.” Why would authors do that? Continue reading “A new form of plagiarism:” When researchers fake co-authors’ names

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