We’ve been alerted to a third retracted paper, and a retracted book chapter, for Stefano Ramello, a self-styled “independent researcher” into sexual identity.
Turns out there wasn’t so much independence after all.
The article, “Same sex acts involving older men. An ethnographic study,” had appeared in the April 2013 issue of the Journal of Aging Studies. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading “He certainly has some chutzpah!” More plagiarism retractions for sex researcher Ramello
Add to the retraction pile for a pair of chemists in Iran who duplicated their work — and reviewed their own articles to boot.
The authors, Kobra Pourabdollah and Bahram Mokhtari, are affiliated with the Razi Chemistry Research Center in the Shahreza Branch of Islamic Azad University. In September, we reported on the retractions of three articles by the researchers in Synthesis and Reactivity in Inorganic, Metal-Organic, and Nano-Metal Chemistry.
Readers then alerted us to five other retractions in the Journal of Coordination Chemistry — although these papers did not appear (at least by the retraction notice) to have involved self-reviewing.
The duo now also has lost a 2012 article in Spectroscopy Letters: An International Journal for Rapid Communication. , which has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. According to the notice: Continue reading More retractions for authors who duplicated — and did their own peer review
We’re always glad to have guest posts, and here’s one from François-Xavier Coudert, reporting from France.
As we reported the other day, a Nature editorial suggested that police involvement might be an appropriate response to research misconduct. The French seem to agree, based on reports in the media there, as Coudert writes:
A husband-wife team of French odontology researchers at l’université Paul-Sabatier in Toulouse have been on trial in that country for research misconduct. Christine Marchal-Sixou, an associate professor, faces a charge of plagiarism, and Michel Sixou, full professor and dean of the faculty of dental medicine until September, has been charged with complicity. Continue reading France tries husband-wife team for research misconduct in plagiarism case
A group of anesthesiology researchers in China has lost their 2011 paper in Der Anaesthesist because, well, the article wasn’t theirs to begin with.
The paper, “Different anesthesia methods for laparoscopic cholecystectomy,” came from authors at the 309th Hospital of PLA, in Beijing, who purported to report on a randomized trial of 68 patients undergoing laparoscopic colon surgery with either general or spinal (that is, a nerve block) anesthesia. According to the abstract:
Continue reading Same “difference,” as anesthesia paper retracted for plagiarism
The European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging has an interesting exchange of retraction-related notices in its pages.
The article, “Neuroradiological advances detect abnormal neuroanatomy underlying neuropsychological impairments: the power of PET imaging,” appeared in 2011 and was written by Benjamin Hayempour and Abass Alavi, one of the pioneers in PET imaging.
According to the retraction notice:
This article has been withdrawn at the request of the Editor-in-Chief of European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging owing to the unexplained close similarity of some passages to parts of a previous publication [Rushing SE, Langleben DD. Relative function: Nuclear brain imaging in United States courts. J Psychiatry Law 2011; 39 (winter): 567–93].
Continue reading Retraction prompts letter of explanation by co-author — and a legal threat against Retraction Watch
Two researchers who have appeared frequently on Retraction Watch have racked up another retraction each.
This is the fourteenth retraction for Alirio Melendez, who was found guilty of misconduct by the National University of Singapore but denies the allegations. Here’s the notice in The International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology for “Environmental toxicogenomics: A post-genomic approach to analysing biological responses to environmental toxins,” a paper published in Environmental Research and cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge: Continue reading Melendez notches retraction 14, Lemus now stands at 12
The other day, we nominated a phrase in a retraction notice for the prize “of most-extra-syllables-used-to-say-the-word-plagiarism” because a journal decided to call the act “inclusion of significant passages of unattributed material from other authors.”
That lovely phrase can now be added to our list of best euphemisms for plagiarism, which we highlight in our most recent column for LabTimes. There, you’ll find such gems as “unattributed overlap,” “a significant originality issue,” an “approach,” and an “administrative error.”
As we write: Continue reading P values: Scientific journals’ top ten plagiarism euphemisms
Two journals have retracted five papers by a researcher in Taiwan who evidently took the notion of teamwork a little too liberally.
The first notice is one we missed when it came out in 2012 in the British Journal of Educational Technology. The article, “Learning in troubleshooting of automotive braking system: a project-based teamwork approach,” was written by Janus Liang, of the Yung-Ta Institute of Technology and Commerce in Taiwan. It has yet to be cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
According to the notice: Continue reading Five plagiarism retractions appear for Taiwan engineer
The journal Applied Surface Science (okay, so maybe it’s not called ASS at the home office) is retracting a pair of articles in its December issue.
The first, “Structure and mechanical properties of Ni–P electrodeposited coatings,” appeared in 2009 and was written by a group of researchers in Beijing. It has been cited nine times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. Its problem: Plagiarism. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Holes in ASS as journal pulls two papers
If you’ve come across a case of plagiarism and want to report it to the proper authorities, a new article in the journal Ethics & Behavior would be a good place to start.
Mark Fox, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Indiana University, and Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver, known for Beall’s List of questionable publishers, teamed up for the article. As they write in their abstract: Continue reading Want to report a case of plagiarism? Here’s how