Category: by subject

Neuroscience journal takes tough stance on plagiarism

cortexLike Howard Beale, the character in 1976’s “Network” who famously said “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!,” the editors of the journal Cortex have decided they’ve had enough when it comes to plagiarism.

From an editorial in the current issue:

We will treat academic plagiarism as a misdeed, not as a mistake, and a paper that plagiarizes others will be immediately rejected and may be reported to the author’s academic affiliation.

The editors explain how: Continue reading Neuroscience journal takes tough stance on plagiarism

Saudi journal retracts paper on new chemicals for being, well, not new

JSaudChemIrony alert: If you’re going to publish a paper on purportedly new molecules, please try to make sure those substances are indeed novel. Here’s case were that wasn’t quite so.

The Journal of Saudi Chemical Society has retracted a 2011 paper by a researcher who lifted the entire article from a previously published paper by someone else.

The paper in question, “Synthesis and antimicrobial activity of some new quinazolin-4(3H)-one derivatives,” came from Adnan Kadi at Kind Saud University in Riyadh. But according to the retraction notice, only a few words in that title — “some” and “quinazolin” were accurate. “New,” certainly not. (We suppose “derivatives” hits the mark, but for the wrong reason.) Continue reading Saudi journal retracts paper on new chemicals for being, well, not new

Cardiac arrestees: Questions surface about Heart paper from Italian group that faces charges

heartcoverWe don’t usually cover “pretractions” (see #5 for why), but our friend Larry Husten over at Forbes has a story today about what appears to be a dead paper walking.

The article, in Heart, comes from a group of prominent researchers in Italy who have been arrested for possibly failing to adequately consent their patients, among other potential misdeeds.

According to Husten, the 2010 article in question, “A randomised trial of target-vessel versus multi-vessel revascularisation in ST-elevation myocardial infarction: major adverse cardiac events during long-term follow-up,” by Maria Grazia Modena (a past president of the Italian Society of Cardiology) and colleagues, may have been grossly misrepresented to the journal. Continue reading Cardiac arrestees: Questions surface about Heart paper from Italian group that faces charges

Publishing in triplicate leads to polymer paper retraction

j app polymerA chemist at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia has lost a paper because it was the third time he had published some of it.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Publishing in triplicate leads to polymer paper retraction

Journal withdraws diabetes paper written by apparently bogus authors

BBRCTalk about a Trojan Horse.

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications has withdrawn a paper it published earlier this year on metabolic proteins linked to diabetes, not because the article was bogus but because the authors appear to have been. The work itself is accurate — indeed, it likely belongs to a Harvard scientist, Bruce Spiegelman, who’d presented his data on the subject several times recently and was in the process of preparing his results for publication. We’ve written about researchers trying to punk journals with faked articles, and about a researcher who apparently made up a co-author, but here’s something new!

Nature has the story. According to Nature, in July Spiegelman: Continue reading Journal withdraws diabetes paper written by apparently bogus authors

Journal of Virtual Studies retracts Second Life paper that was, um, virtually on its second life

pellas
Nikolaos Pellas

Second Life is a virtual reality site in which you can “Experience endless surprises and unexpected delights in a world imagined and created by people like you.” Only Nikolaos Pellas, of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is now having two papers on virtual reality retracted because he apparently experienced endless surprises and unexpected delights in a world imagined and created by other people.

Here’s one notice from the Journal of Virtual Studies: Continue reading Journal of Virtual Studies retracts Second Life paper that was, um, virtually on its second life

Big trouble in little China: Two looks at what warps scientific publishing there

economistThe press corps has turned its attention to scientific publishing in China this week.

Here’s Naomi Ching’s lede — that’s how we spell it in journalism — from Nautilus:

You may have heard that Chinese researchers are not very well compensated, compared to their Western counterparts. What you might not know is that they can increase their income by a factor of 10 with a single publication. The better the journal they publish in, as judged by the average number of times that its papers are cited, the more money they make. According to an anonymous source specializing in science evaluation in China, some research institutions follow a simple formula for determining cash rewards: 10,000 yuan, multiplied by one plus the journal impact factor (the impact factor reflects average citation levels). For example, publication in The Lancet, whose impact factor was 39.06 in 2012, would fetch 400,600 yuan (about $65,000). By comparison, the average yearly income of Chinese scientific researchers was 39,850 yuan in 2007, according to a survey by the China Association for Science and Technology.

Hmm, that sort of incentive wouldn’t create any problems, would it? Read the rest of Ching’s piece for more.

And here’s Gady Epstein’s top, from The Economist: Continue reading Big trouble in little China: Two looks at what warps scientific publishing there

Cancer cell line mixup leads to retraction

ccr 9-15At team of researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center has retracted a paper after realizing that the cell lines they were using weren’t what they thought they were.

Here’s the detailed notice: Continue reading Cancer cell line mixup leads to retraction

Spat over tuberculosis study data leads to Expression of Concern

jcmA fight over who owns tuberculosis study data has led the Journal of Clinical Microbiology to publish an Expression of Concern.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Spat over tuberculosis study data leads to Expression of Concern

Dental journal pulls paper for duplicate publication

ccdContemporary Clinical Dentistry has yanked a 2012 article on “full-mouth rehabilitation” after learning that the article had already appeared in two other publications — making the journal, in effect, Contemporaneous Clinical Dentistry.

The article, “Full-mouth rehabilitation of a patient with severe attrition using the Hobo Twin-Stage Procedure,” came from a group at the Dr. R. Ahmed Dental College, in Kolkata, India. It described the following case: Continue reading Dental journal pulls paper for duplicate publication