Category: engineering

Researchers invent time machine! (But too late to avoid retraction for duplication)

compinterfaceA common theme in movies involving time travel is that if you meet yourself in the past, you’ll upset the time-space continuum, and cause all sorts of problems. Well, a group of materials scientists in Hong Kong seems to have invented a time machine, and learned that if if you publish a paper that appears to have been published in the future, you’ll suffer a retraction (and correction) for duplicating your own data.

We’ll (try to) explain.

The group in 1997 published a paper in Composite Interfaces titled “Reliability of fiber Bragg grating sensors embedded in textile composites.”

But now comes the following — inscrutable — Corrigendum: Continue reading Researchers invent time machine! (But too late to avoid retraction for duplication)

Plagiarism makes renewable energy paper unsustainable

rserHere’s a lesson for would-be authors of papers on power supplies:

Energy = Renewable; Journal articles = Not renewable

Too late for a group of engineers in Iran who borrowed too liberally from previously published work in their 2013 article in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

The paper, “A review of energy storage systems in microgrids with wind turbines,” reported that: Continue reading Plagiarism makes renewable energy paper unsustainable

Punked 2.0: Indian engineer uses “My Cousin Vinny” to publish fake paper, expose “science” conference

Joe Pesci, engineering scholar, by Yausser via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/yausser/
Joe Pesci, engineering scholar, by Yausser via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/yausser/

A technology entrepreneur from Pune named Navin Kabra has pulled back the sheets on a local conference, the International Conference on Recent Innovations in Engineering, Science & Technology, by submitting two bogus manuscripts for presentation — both of which were accepted.

Although the conference organizers were charging 6,000 rupees — about $100 — apiece for submission, Kabra bargained them down to half that amount

by haggling with them in the same way we haggle with vegetable vendors.

Kabra, in an illuminating post on his blog titled “How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system” that was first covered by mid-day.com, says Continue reading Punked 2.0: Indian engineer uses “My Cousin Vinny” to publish fake paper, expose “science” conference

Simulation slip-up leads to retraction of explosives paper

applsci-logoApplied Sciences has retracted a 2012 article by a researcher whose efforts to model a particular kind of explosion called a shaped charge proved to be a dud.

The paper, “Steady State Analytical Equation of Motion of Linear Shaped Charges Jet Based on the Modification of Birkhoff Theory,” was written by Seokbin Lim, a mechanical engineer in the Energetic Systems Research Group at  New Mexico Tech, in Socorro.

According to the abstract:  Continue reading Simulation slip-up leads to retraction of explosives paper

Should this engineering paper have been retracted?

safetyscienceThe journal Safety Science has retracted a 2013 paper by a group of engineers from Brazil who had published the article previously, albeit in a much abbreviated form, a year earlier.

What makes this case more than a straightforward matter of duplication/self-plagiarism is that the authors greatly expanded upon the earlier article. The initial paper also appeared in a conference proceedings — the  18th World Congress on Ergonomics – Designing a Sustainable Future — priority that, at least in the minds of some, doesn’t really constitute a true publication. Continue reading Should this engineering paper have been retracted?

None for all, as selfish co-author loses adhesion paper by cutting out colleagues

TASTcover 1..2Authors should stick together, right?

A materials scientist in France has learned that lesson the hard way, having been forced to retract his 2012 paper in the Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology because he neglected to list any of his co-authors.

The paper, “A generalized cure model for one-part room temperature vulcanizing sealants and adhesives,” was written — ostensibly, at least — by François de Buyl, whose LinkedIn page says is a lighting engineer at Dow Corning Europe. (He worked as a materials scientist at Dow prior to that.) de Buyl is the sole author on the paper, which is why we’re reading the following notice from the journal: Continue reading None for all, as selfish co-author loses adhesion paper by cutting out colleagues

Five plagiarism retractions appear for Taiwan engineer

bjet 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

Irony alert: Authors lose paper in loss prevention journal for plagiarism

losspreventionIf it seems that we write “irony alert” often, well, can you blame us? The Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries (we’ll call it JLPPI for short) has retracted a paper it published earlier this year for plagiarism from multiple sources.

The article, “FTA vs. Tripod-Beta, which seems better for the analysis of major accidents in process industries?” was written by two occupational health researchers at Hamadan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. According to the abstract:

Continue reading Irony alert: Authors lose paper in loss prevention journal for plagiarism

Duplication earns engineering paper a corrigendum rather than a retraction

kybernetesTwo authors in Turkey have had their paper subjected to a correction after it became clear that material was lifted heavily from two previous papers by one of the researchers.

The corrigendum reads: Continue reading Duplication earns engineering paper a corrigendum rather than a retraction

A masterbatch: More polymer retractions, gerontology journal lifts paywall, Microbiology notices appear

masterbatch
Germans and Italians are big masterbatchers. Click to enlarge. via http://bit.ly/100YBKB

Our mothers told us that if we used the masterbatch process, we’d go blind. And what better way to gather some updates to recent posts than to include one that involves said masterbatch process?

First, a retraction John Spevacek noticed when he tried clicking on the link in a Journal of Applied Polymer Science retraction we’d covered: Continue reading A masterbatch: More polymer retractions, gerontology journal lifts paywall, Microbiology notices appear