Category: plagiarism

Editor in chief steps down after being found plagiarizing in her own journal

diab met syndImagine you were a cop, sitting in your squad car at the side of the road with a radar gun, when you clock someone speeding. You turn on your lights, pull the speedster over to the side of the road, and walk to her driver’s side window.

Just as you say “Driver’s license and registration, please,” you realize the driver is your squad captain. Oops.

That must have been something like what it was like — with plagiarism detection software sitting in for the radar gun — for the co-editor-in-chief of Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome when he realized that Marilia de Brito Gomes, the other co-editor-in-chief, had published two papers in their journal that contained plagiarized passages.

Here’s the notice for “Historical facts of screening and diagnosing diabetes in pregnancy:” Continue reading Editor in chief steps down after being found plagiarizing in her own journal

De-coli: Plagiarism leads to retraction of highly cited recombinant protein paper

appliedmicrobioThe authors of a 2005 article on E. coli in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology have lost the paper because they recombined it from previous work.

The article, titled “Strategies for efficient production of heterologous proteins in Escherichia coli,” came from a pair of biochemical engineers from the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, in New Delhi, India.

According to the abstract: Continue reading De-coli: Plagiarism leads to retraction of highly cited recombinant protein paper

Miłość at first sight: A retraction notice worth emulating from Poland

j polish cimacIf we had a Retraction Watch headquarters (other than the diner where we occasionally meet for breakfast), we would have had to have closed up early today, because we both swooned when we saw a retraction notice from the Journal of Polish CIMAC this morning.

The notice, signed by the journal’s editor-in-chief Jerzy Girtler, of Gdansk University of Technology, reads:

Continue reading Miłość at first sight: A retraction notice worth emulating from Poland

A retraction involving Sarah Palin

prqFormer U.S. vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin is no stranger to retractions, or perhaps “walk backs,” as politicians usually call them. There was her apology for comments about Pope Francis, a clarification about comments thought to be directed at Rush Limbaugh, and a walk back on her behalf from her running mate, Sen. John McCain.

Now, a paper in the academic literature that refers to her has been retracted. Here’s the notice from Political Research Quarterly: Continue reading A retraction involving Sarah Palin

The “sins and virtues of authors span a rather colorful palette”: New editor yanks plagiarized paper

scientometricsWhat a difference a new editor can make.

Consider the case of a paper in Scientometrics that came to the attention earlier this year of Jeffrey Beall.

Beall, a research librarian and scourge of the predatory publishing world, had previously posted on his blog about his frustrations with the journal’s seeming indifference to the word theft. (He also helped bring about another plagiarism retraction we covered earlier this year.)

The article was titled “Educational reforms and internationalization of universities: evidence from major regions of the world,” and was written by a group from China and Pakistan.It has been cited just once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, by another paper in Scientometrics.

Continue reading The “sins and virtues of authors span a rather colorful palette”: New editor yanks plagiarized paper

Near “word-to-word” similarities topple microflora paper

matfetneonatThe Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine has retracted a 2012 paper by a group of pediatric gut researchers in Naples, Italy, who seemed to have had a visceral reaction to using their own words.

The paper, “Composition and roles of intestinal microbiota in children,” sought to

provide an update of the advantages of new-generation molecular diagnostics to study the diversity of intestinal microflora and to evaluate its alteration in human diseases.

The paper has been cited five times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Near “word-to-word” similarities topple microflora paper

Robot paper retracted for stealing from doctoral thesis

int j adv robot sysThe authors of a paper in the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems have lost it after it became clear that they’d lifted most of it from a PhD thesis.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Robot paper retracted for stealing from doctoral thesis

Plagiarism (and plenty of it) fells Crohn’s paper

jcpcover414A group of researchers from Italy has lost their 2010 paper in the Journal of Cellular Physiology for having plagiarized — in style.

The article, “Early Years of Biological Agents Therapy in Crohn’s Disease and Risk of the Human Polyomavirus JC Reactivation,” was led by Valeria Pietropaolo, of Sapienza University in Rome and the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia.

The paper has been cited 10 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The abstract, which is still available, reads:

Continue reading Plagiarism (and plenty of it) fells Crohn’s paper

“With deep regrets we apologize:” Economics paper retracted for plagiarism

econ managementAn economics paper has been retracted after the journal that published it became aware that it contained plagiarism.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading “With deep regrets we apologize:” Economics paper retracted for plagiarism

Retractions appear in case of former Kansas water scientist rebuked for misconduct

groundwaterBack in December, the University of Kansas issued a public censure of a former water researcher who, the school says, engaged in a pattern of plagiarism and other shoddy publishing practices.

Marios Sophocleous, who’d held the position of senior scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey:

Continue reading Retractions appear in case of former Kansas water scientist rebuked for misconduct