Metals and Materials International has retracted three papers from one author, due to suspicions of plagiarism and authorship issues.
The three papers have one thing in common — the same lead author, Reza Haghayeghi from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran.
The retraction notices — all released in March, 2016 — lead with the following:
Continue reading Materials journal breaks three papers from the same author
Anti-terrorism researcher Nasrullah Memon has notched seven more retractions, bringing his total up to 15 — earning him a spot on our leaderboard.
We previously reported on eight pulled papers authored by Memon, based at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. There was some confusion over whether his count then increased to nine — but, following a retracted retraction, his total was back to eight.
Now, it seems like the retracted retraction has been re-retracted, and six other of Memon’s publications have been pulled. Memon has also been found guilty of plagiarising his PhD thesis, and more of his work is being questioned online.
The retraction notices for the newly pulled material — all published by Springer — include the following statement: Continue reading Seven more retractions for anti-terrorism prof brings count to 15
We’ve unearthed four more retractions for Khalid Zaman, an economist who lost 16 papers in 2014 for orchestrating fake peer review.
That brings Zaman’s total to 20, and ties him at the #18 spot on our leaderboard.
One of the more recently discovered retractions is for fake peer review, attributed to Zaman; one is for plagiarism, and two other papers were withdrawn while in press, for reasons that are unclear. (Note bene: These retractions are all at least one year old.)
First, the retraction notice for peer review issues, published in April 2015 for “Environmental Indicators and Energy Outcomes: Evidence from World Bank’s Classification Countries:”
Continue reading Peer review scam leader now up to 20 retractions
Here’s a joke for all you middle-schoolers out there. How are doctored images like bad pennies? They keep cropping up!
Here’s the latest one we’ve picked up: Lung Cancer has retracted a 2014 paper on the genetics of tumors after concluding the authors cribbed a figure that had appeared in a 2005 feature story in Science.
The paper, “ß-elemene against human lung cancer via up-regulation of P53 protein expression to promote the release of exosome,” drew attention on PubPeer last September from a reader who noticed striking similarities between one of the images the authors used and a figure in the Science piece (subscription required). According to the PubPeer commenter: Continue reading Cancer paper that doctored image from Science story earns retraction
A publisher has retracted a chapter from a book on flow cytometry after determining the authors plagiarized some material — but noted that because the authors cited the article they lifted from, they likely acted “in good faith.”
We were tipped off to this retraction from the authors of the review article the chapter plagiarized from, who told us they were upset by the incident and doubted whether the authors had performed the experiments they described in the chapter.
More broadly, the retraction raises an important question: How can publishers retract one chapter of a book, leaving the rest intact?
First, let’s take a look at the retraction notice: Continue reading Book publisher: Authors plagiarized “in good faith” because they cited previous work
The Open Automation and Control Systems Journal has published five items this calendar year — and all of those are retraction notices.
That’s what we’re sure about. Now to what we’re not clear on in this story, which is one of a growing number of cases we’ve seen in which so-called “predatory” publishers are starting to retract papers, perhaps because they hope the practice suggests they are rigorous. Four of the papers have been pulled for “compromised” peer review, some of which are due to the actions of an “external agent,” according to the journal. A co-author of one of these manuscripts, however, claims the paper has been pulled for using material from another researcher’s paper without acknowledgement but the journal has retracted it for issues with peer review.
The remaining paper has been pulled for plagiarizing from another published paper.
Let’s take a look at the retraction notice for the four papers felled by rigged peer review, which are all similar. They read: Continue reading Confusion reigns: Are these four retractions for compromised peer review, or not?
A research assistant at King Saud University (KSU) has lost his job after he used material from a student’s thesis without permission or attribution in a paper.
Lakshmana Krishnappa was terminated after a disciplinary committee considered his case last November, the vice dean for postgraduate training and research at KSU told Retraction Watch. In April of last year, Krishnappa retracted a paper published in January 2015 — we think that’s the date; the journal doesn’t make it all that clear — that included plagiarized material, published in Reviews in Medical Microbiology. He recently lost a second unrelated paper for duplication.
Here’s the retraction notice for the Reviews in Medical Microbiology paper, “Acinetobacter baumannii: pathogenecity, virulence factors and their correlation with adherence and invasion:”
Continue reading Research assistant fired for using student’s thesis in a paper
An engineering journal has published a statement by a researcher alleging that a 2015 paper in the same journal plagiarized his thesis — and was so poorly done it “should not have been published.”
In the “counterstatement” to the 2015 paper, Christian Seip of the Rostock University in Germany said the paper — about the development of a Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) in Croatia — took content from his dissertation thesis, about MSDI geoportals in Germany.
In addition, Seip argued that the original paper, “A Framework for Evaluation of Marine Spatial Data Geoportals Using Case Studies,” in GeoScience Engineering (GSE) — shows “major weaknesses” and therefore “should have not been published even [if] it was not plagiarized.”
Seip told us: Continue reading Engineer: Paper plagiarized my thesis — badly
Journals have retracted two papers after realizing that they contain “nearly identical” abstracts and introductions, published only months apart.
The two retracted papers, along with a third that also contains similar text, all conclude that a certain polymorphism could signal a risk for coronary artery disease among Chinese people, though each paper presents different data. The papers do not have any authors in common; the first authors are all based at different hospitals in China. The editor in chief of one journal told us that some of the reviewers did not use institutional email addresses, which leaves open the possibility that they were fake emails, and the peer-review process was compromised.
Here’s the first retraction notice, for “Fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 polymorphisms and susceptibility to coronary artery disease,” published in DNA and Cell Biology. The notice states the paper contains:
Continue reading Journals retract two heart papers with “nearly identical” abstracts
Here’s an interesting case: We’ve found two retracted papers that describe the same gene, and both have nearly identical retraction notices. What’s unusual is that the two papers don’t have any authors in common, and appeared in two different journals published by two different companies.
The cause of both papers’ demise: Plagiarism, and use of unpublished data without permission “from an unnamed source,” who wishes to remain that way. The author of one of the papers confirmed to us that the unnamed source is a “3rd party service company.” Springer told us that the third party in the other paper, however, is another researcher.
It’s a puzzling case, to be sure. We think we have uncovered some of what happened, but remain slightly fuzzy on the details.
Here’s the first retraction, for “KDM3A interacted with p53K372me1 and regulated p53 binding to PUMA in gastric cancer,” originally published online September 30 by Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications: