The editor of Desalination has retracted a paper that plagiarized from another article published in the same journal six years earlier. The papers describe desalination systems, of course.
This retraction happened on a relatively quick timeline: The paper, “An integrated optimization model and application of MEE-TVC desalination system,” was published online in June, and pulled in January.
Here’s the retraction note:
A medical journal has banned eight authors after discovering that they had published plagiarized work.
We don’t see official author bans as often as we see plagiarism (occasionally, and all the time, respectively). That’s why we’re flagging this case, which is a little old — the International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health announced the ban in March 2015, after it retracted three of the authors’ papers for plagiarism.
All three papers — about recovering from orthopedic problems — have a first author in common: Rajesh Valjibhai Chawda, who was affiliated with the CU Shah Medical College and Hospital in India at the time of the research. (We couldn’t find a webpage for him.)
After an author on one of the original articles alerted the journal of one instance of plagiarism, the journal launched an in-house inquiry, the retraction note explains:
A paper about the role of specific proteins in the separation of newly replicated chromosomes is being retracted from the Chinese Medical Journal, after editors found out that the entire article was plagiarized.
The study, “MreBCD Associated Cytoskeleton is Required for Proper Segregation of the Chromosomal Terminus during the Division Cycle of Escherichia Coli,” names Feng Lu as the corresponding author and claims that the work was done in his lab at the Medical School of Henan University in Henan, China. The misappropriation came to light when a member of Lawrence Rothfield’s lab at the University of Connecticut saw the paper after it was published online last April, and realized that it was an exact replica of an unpublished paper that Rothfield’s own lab had produced.
Here’s the retraction note from the journal: Continue reading Entire paper about cell division plagiarized
A paper about combating cyberterrorism is coming under fire after allegations of plagiarism sparked on social media.
Soon after the paper was published by the journal Computer Technology and Application in 2015, Orgnet LLC, a network analysis software company, announced on Twitter that the paper took content from its webpage. The firm tweeted: Continue reading Cyberterrorism paper under attack for plagiarizing from multiple sources
Last Friday, WIRED editor Adam Rogers got a direct message on Twitter that no journalist wants to see. Christina Larson, a freelance writer in China, told him she had seen overlap with her own work in a few WIRED stories, and included links to the relevant pieces.
“She was gracious, just asking for a link back in the future, said she loved WIRED,” Rogers told Retraction Watch by phone this afternoon. It was early morning in San Francisco, so Rogers thanked her for bringing the issue to his attention, and said he’d look at it more closely when he arrived at his desk some 45 minutes later.
It was the start of an episode that would lead to the dismissal of a WIRED reporter, and the addition of warning notes to four of the publication’s stories.
Continue reading “That was a really bad Friday for us:” WIRED warns four stories were plagiarized
A BMC journal has added an expression of concern to a paper on firefly genes after a University of Queensland investigation determined a table should be credited to a different source.
According to a representative of the university, the investigation found no evidence of misconduct. The university submitted an erratum that the journal chose not to publish; in the EOC note, the journal says the wording of the erratum is “under dispute.”
The erratum submitted to the journal specifies that the table should be attributed to former UQ biologist Robert Birch, who was not an author on the paper. The investigation concluded that the authors had not committed misconduct and “acted in good faith” in using the table, Anton Middelberg, University of Queensland Pro-Vice-Chancellor told us.
The paper, “Synthetic versions of firefly luciferase and Renilla luciferase reporter genes that resist transgene silencing in sugarcane, published in BMC Plant Biology, has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s the expression of concern:
Continue reading Firefly paper flagged following Queensland investigation
A peer reviewer apparently thought portions of a manuscript he was reviewing were so good he wanted them for himself.
Substantial sections of a paper that Junwei Di reviewed appear in his own paper on a method for making tiny particles of silver to precise specifications. Di is a chemist at Soochow University in China. The journal has banned Di from submitting papers or serving as a peer reviewer “for a certain time.”
The retraction note for the 2015 paper, “Controllable Electrochemical Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles on Indium-Tin-Oxide-Coated Glass” explains how the editors at ChemElectroChem became aware of the plagiarism:
Continue reading Peer reviewer steals text for his own chemistry paper, gets sanctioned by journal
An article that suggested there is no benefit to being overweight among cancer survivors – the so-called “obesity paradox” – is being retracted for plagiarizing large sections from another paper that explored the same topic in cardiovascular disease.
The journal Cancer Causes & Control pulled the 2014 article last June after determining it contained “large portions” of text from another paper in Preventive Medicine by a different set of authors, which suggested that evidence linking obesity to health benefits in cardiovascular disease may stem from a form of selection bias.
Here’s more from the retraction note: Continue reading Paper on alleged – and paradoxical – health benefits of obesity pulled for plagiarism
A 2012 paper co-authored by Gilles Seralini, who has published controversial research showing the dangers of genetically modified foods, has been plagiarized by another researcher.
The 2016 paper, published in the International Journal of Technical Research and Applications, has not been retracted, but the text comparison is fairly obvious.
It’s a case of intra-predatory crime: the International Journal of Technical Research and Applications is on the list of predatory journals compiled by Jeffrey Beall, and the Seralini paper appeared in the Journal of Environmental Protection, which is published by Scientific Research Publishing, which Beall considers to be a predatory publisher.
Here’s the abstract from Seralini’s 2012 paper, “Glyphosate Exposure in a Farmer’s Family:” Continue reading Seralini paper released by predatory publisher is plagiarized by predatory journal
A journal has pulled a paper about the molecular details of different types of adipose tissues after learning the researchers had plagiarized much of a Ph.D. thesis.
The researchers copied from former Ph.D. student Bettina Meissburger’s doctoral thesis in a 2013 paper in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. The retraction note for “Adipose stromal-vascular fraction-derived paracrine factors regulate adipogenesis” provides the name of Meissburger’s thesis: Continue reading Researchers plagiarized chapter of doctoral thesis in mol bio paper