An attorney for Fazlul Sarkar, the Wayne State University researcher who claims he lost a job offer because of comments about his research on PubPeer, has asked a judge to reconsider last month’s decision not to release information about the site’s anonymous commenters. As a consequence, the brief in support of that motion identifies a key commenter as the pseudonymous Clare Francis.
A paper on wiretapping in the Arab region has been retracted by a Qatari law review journal for redundant publication and “possible misuse of plagiarism detection software at the authoring stage.”
The 2013 article in the International Review of Law discusses how different Arab countries regulate intercepting telecommunications, and how to balance public safety with the right to privacy. According to the notice, it ripped off two other articles by author Nazzal Kisswani, published in 2011 and 2010. “Although it is not an exact copy of a previously published article, it contains parts of it,” the retraction explains.
We are pleased to present the first in a series of articles by John R. Thomas, Jr., a lawyer at Gentry Locke [Editor’s note, 3/26/19: He has since moved to Haley, Hafemann, Magee and Thomas] who represents whistleblowers in a variety of False Claims Act cases. He writes about how whistleblowers can do the right thing and protect themselves in the process.
John R. Thomas, Jr.
As readers of Retraction Watch are well aware, scientific misconduct is a problem for a number of reasons. Science builds upon itself; unfounded scientific results lead to wasted research efforts, ineffective medical therapies, and faulty public policy conclusions. Even one fraudulent paper can have profound effects, such as fueling an anti-vaccine movement.
Research misconduct also erodes public trust in science and endangers ongoing public funding of scientific research. Following the recent discovery of fabricated AIDS research at Iowa State University, Senator Grassley addressed the issue before the U.S. Senate:
Danish judges have overruled scientists in that nation, concluding that a panel of experts erred in finding that physiologist Bente Klarlund Pedersen, of the University of Copenhagen, was guilty of misconduct.
Last September, Pedersen announced that she would fight the ruling of the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD, Danish acronym UVVU), which had said she had committed misconduct in four of 12 articles it had examined.
A PhD candidate in the law school of University of Malaya in Malaysia retracted a paper from a journal on Islamic law in governments, because he failed to add his deceased advisor as an author.
The paper, which calls government secularism in Bangladesh “shadow rather than substance,” was published in Jurnal Syariah, which translates to Shariah Journal. It is quite critical of the idea that the country’s Constitution can name Islam as the state religion while also claiming that it cannot grant political status to any religion.
Although most of what Alanis Morissette sang about in her hit song “Ironic” wasn’t irony at all, had she included a line or two about Angela Adrian she would have nailed it.
Adrian is an expert in intellectual property law, a former editor of the International Journal of Intellectual Property Management, a legal scholar whose resume boasts more degrees than a protractor. According to this bio:
Dr Angela Adrian is a dual qualified lawyer in Louisiana and the UK. Her specialisms include Intellectual Property, Information Technology, International Trade, and Criminal Law. She has two Masters degrees with distinction in Business & Management (Schiller International University) as well as in Commercial Law (University of Aberdeen). She obtained her Juris Doctorate at Loyola University, New Orleans. Dr Adrian published her PhD from Queen Mary, University of London as a monograph entitled “Law and Order in Virtual Worlds: Exploring Avatars, their Ownership and Rights”. Currently, she is Chief Knowledge Officer of Icondia Ltd, an images rights company, co-author of the 4th edition of “Intellectual Property: Text and Essential Cases” (Australia), and Editor of the International Journal of Intellectual Property Management.
Sometimes, retractions seem to have a juicy back story, but the explanation proves tantalizingly out of reach.
Such is the case for a law review retraction on a paper about reparations for human rights violations. After someone complained that author Gentian Zyberi “had not done sufficient justice to the substantial contribution” they made, the complainant refused both a co-author credit and a rewrite of the passages in question, insisting instead on a full retraction.
We have a curious case for the “avoiding the p word” files from the Journal of East Asia & International Law.
The paper in question, “Border Enforcement of Plant Variety Rights: A Comparison between Japan and Taiwan,” was written by Shun-liang Hsu and appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of the journal. Here are the first two pages.
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, photo by Peter Weis via Wikimedia
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who was stripped of his PhD last week after being found guilty of plagiarizing his law thesis, has resigned his post as Germany’s defense minister. According to Reuters:
“I was always ready to fight but I’ve reached the limit of my powers,” Guttenberg, 39, told journalists in a hastily arranged news briefing at the Defense Ministry in Berlin.
“I informed the chancellor in a very friendly conversation that I’m resigning from political offices and requested to be relieved. It’s the most painful step of my life.”
As we wrote last week, a Bremen University professor first discovered the plagiarism, which was then explored a wiki. The University of Bayreuth took away his doctorate on Wednesday the 23rd.
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, photo by Peter Weis via Wikimedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peter_Weis
When we cover plagiarism on Retraction Watch, particularly when it leads to retractions, we’re writing almost exclusively about science. But there’s a story about a retraction outside of the scientific literature that has been unfolding over the past week, and grabbing enough headlines, that we figured we should post something on it.
It was Bremen University’s Andreas Fischer-Lescano who discovered what he called “a brazen plagiarism” in German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s 2006 law thesis, according to The Guardian. The minister was already a member of parliament at the time, and had apparently used sections of newspaper articles without attribution.
An attorney for Fazlul Sarkar, the Wayne State University researcher who claims he lost a job offer because of comments about his research on PubPeer, has asked a judge to reconsider last month’s decision not to release information about the site’s anonymous commenters. As a consequence, the brief in support of that motion identifies a key commenter as the pseudonymous Clare Francis.
