A journal is pulling an article (with approval of “most” of the authors) because a similar paper had already been published in Chinese.
That wasn’t the only problem with “Aneuploidy analysis of non-pronuclear embryos from IVF with use of array CGH: a case report,” published in the Journal of Molecular Histology.
The retraction note lists the three things that led to the paper’s retraction:
Continue reading IVF embryo paper pulled for plagiarism, errors, lack of permissions
A journal has banned three researchers after an investigation confirmed that a “significant portion” of the text of their paper on screening for urinary tract infections had been plagiarized.
The researchers Sreenivasan Srirangaraj, Arunava Kali and MV Pravin Charles, who are all based in India, won’t be allowed to publish in Australasian Medical Journal in the future, according to the retraction note.
The retraction note takes the form of a letter from the Editor in Chief of the journal:
Continue reading Journal bans authors following investigation confirming plagiarism
SEOUL — In one of the single biggest instances of misconduct we’ve ever come across, prosecutors in South Korea are seeking up to 18 months’ prison time for 75 professors who are among those charged with plagiarizing science and engineering textbooks wholesale.
Prosecutors say that since the 1980s, 179 professors at 110 universities across the country have been publishing other authors’ books under their own name, merely swapping the covers, making only cosmetic changes to the text, and assigning them to their classes. Thirty-eight titles are involved, ranging from architecture, civil engineering, fire fighting, mechanical engineering, and chemistry. Of the 179 charged, 23 are the books’ original authors, who allegedly continued to be cut royalties from the repurposed texts and hoped to maintain good relations with the publishers for future books. The plagiarists stood to boost their CVs for their yearly high-stakes evaluations, in addition to the book contracts. Five employees from the four publishing companies involved were also charged.
Seventy-five of the professors have been formally indicted without detention on charges of copyright infringement, and will face a bench trial by judge. (Juries are rarely used in South Korean criminal proceedings.) The prosecutor’s district office in Uijeongbu, north of Seoul, is in charge of the case; the bureau’s chief, Soon-jeong Kwon, told us Continue reading Korean prosecutors seek jail time for professors in massive plagiarism scheme
A paper on the quality of computed tomography (CT) images of the human body didn’t stand up to a close examination. It’s been retracted after an investigation found that it plagiarized work from two publications and a poster by another researcher.
The text in the Journal of the Korean Physical Society paper was taken from work by Kenneth Weiss, a radiologist at the University of Miami, and Jane Weiss, CFO of the couple’s medical imaging company. According to emails that Jane Weiss forwarded to us, Kenneth Weiss brought the plagiarism to light after a PhD student pointed out the similarities between the JKPS paper and one of Weiss’s in the American Journal of Roentgenology. Weiss notified the AJR in January. They started an investigation into the matter, and alerted the JKPS.
The retraction note for “Measurement of image quality in CT images reconstructed with different kernels” provides more details about the investigation:
Continue reading Investigation into CT scan paper reveals plagiarism
A paper on a way to inhibit arthritis has been retracted following an investigation confirming that it plagiarizes a figure from another paper on the same topic.
The paper, “Blockade of 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 enzyme inhibits experimental collagenase-induced osteoarthritis,” was published in Molecular Medicine Reports. A figure claims to show cartilage treated with a specific inhibitor:
The retraction note tells us that the authors reproduced the figure from another paper in Inflammation — which describes a different inhibitor:
We’ve stumbled upon a trio of retractions published in August, 2013 from BMJ Case Reports for “redundant publication” to a group of researchers based in India.
Editors found that the reports, which were published between 2012 and 2013, had considerable “overlaps” with articles that had been published in other journals. Although one of the retracted authors was also an author on one of the overlapping articles, the rest of the authors have no obvious connection to the previous work.
The authors of the three retracted papers are based at the Modern Dental College and Research Centre in India.
One retracted paper, “A rare occurrence of peripheral ossifying fibroma in the first decade of life and its management,” described the case of a 10 year-old girl with a lesion growing on her gums. The notice reads:
Continue reading BMJ Case Reports pulled three dental papers for plagiarism
A case report that detailed the removal of a cyst from the side of a young woman’s face has been retracted for plagiarizing text from a similar case report published two years earlier.
Contemporary Clinical Dentistry posted the notice on July 31. Parts of the 2014 report were “directly copied” from a report published in 2012 by the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology. Neither of the reports share authors in common.
The notice reads:
Continue reading Case report on cyst surgery sliced by journal for plagiarism
A group of computer scientists has a pair of retractions for duplicating “substantial parts” of other articles written by different authors. Both papers, published in Neural Computing and Applications, are on ways to screen for breast cancer more effectively.
According to the abstract of “An improved data mining technique for classification and detection of breast cancer from mammograms,” computers make the process of identifying cancer in lesions detected by mammograms faster and more accurate:
Although general rules for the differentiation between benign and malignant breast lesion exist, only 15–30% of masses referred for surgical biopsy are actually malignant. Physician experience of detecting breast cancer can be assisted by using some computerized feature extraction and classification algorithms. Computer-aided classification system was used to help in diagnosing abnormalities faster than traditional screening program without the drawback attribute to human factors.
The article has been cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The retraction note reveals where “substantial parts” of the article came from:
Continue reading Plagiarism detected in two papers on improving detection of cancer by mammograms
The authors of a paper on an anti-fungal bacterium couldn’t ward off a very common problem: plagiarism. The people credited on the paper, published in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, apparently weren’t the original authors, according to the retraction note.
We’re not sure who the original authors are. The retraction note doesn’t elaborate much:
Continue reading A bacterium may be anti-fungal, but it’s not anti-retraction
A 2013 review article about tuberculosis is being retracted for “unacknowledged re-use of significant portions of text” from another article, which the first author said wasn’t intentional.
Sayantan Ray, based at Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata in India, told us that “most of the unchanged text” is present in sections written by junior co-authors. Since there doesn’t appear to be any attempt to cover it up, he argued anyone responsible for the plagiarism must not have realized it was wrong:
You can appreciate that this type of obvious similarity can only happen when the concerned person [does] not have any idea about [the] plagiarism issue.
According to the notice, published by Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management, most of the re-used text appears to have come from a 2012 paper in the Indian Journal of Medical Research. Here’s more from the notice:
Continue reading Plagiarism was “not an intentional act,” says first author of retracted TB paper
