Category: plagiarism

Blatant plagiarism sinks paper (and earns a sabbatical!) for mathematician

Image via Akash Kataruka
Image via Akash Kataruka

You know it’s a good one when it makes it onto the Wikipedia page for “scientific misconduct.”

On April 21, the International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics retracted two 2008 papers by scientist Alexander Spivak of Holon Institute of Technology in Israel. In September, the journal updated the notice to explain why: The papers both contained copy/pasted chunks from a 2001 paper by Spivak’s post-doc boss at Tel Aviv University, Zeev Schuss, and two other authors.

The tipster seems to have been Schuss himself, who told us about his role in the unravelling of the fraud: Continue reading Blatant plagiarism sinks paper (and earns a sabbatical!) for mathematician

Arizona prof plagiarizes student’s thesis, gets reprimanded, but keeps her job

Susannah Dickinson, University of Arizona
Susannah Dickinson, via University of Arizona

An architecture professor at the University of Arizona has been sanctioned — lightly — for plagiarizing from the thesis of one of her masters’ students.

According to a report in the Arizona Daily Star, the professor, Susannah Dickinson: Continue reading Arizona prof plagiarizes student’s thesis, gets reprimanded, but keeps her job

Author of alcohol paper retracted for plagiarism defends copy-and-paste strategy

nmlogoThe authors of a paper retracted for plagiarism of a popular website have decided not to take the charges — which they don’t contest — lying down.

Here’s the notice for “Alcohol consumption and hormonal alterations related to muscle hypertrophy: a review,” which appeared in Nutrition & Metabolism, a BioMed Central title: Continue reading Author of alcohol paper retracted for plagiarism defends copy-and-paste strategy

Economics paper retracted for plagiarism after citing its twin

econmodAs we’ve pointed out before, economics and business journals have few retractions compared with the other academic literature. Opinions vary on why this is, but the fact that only a few journals have plagiarism policies can’t help.

Research Papers in Economics, or RePEc, an organization that maintains a database of economics papers, however, thoroughly investigates accusations of misconduct. A RePEc report, which indicated that the plagiarists were polite enough to cite the original paper, was used in the notice as evidence for a retraction in Economic Modelling.

Here’s the notice for “Retraction notice to “Analysis of nonlinear duopoly game with heterogeneous players”: Continue reading Economics paper retracted for plagiarism after citing its twin

Montenegro’s science minister accused of plagiarism

vlahovic
Sanja Vlahovic

Sanja Vlahovic, science minister of Montenegro, copied two-thirds of a 2010 paper on tourism from previously published work by other academics, according to the national daily newspaper Vijesti.

The newspaper compared her paper, “Destinations’ Competitiveness in Modern Tourism,” presented at the Tourism & Hospitality Management 2010 conference in Opatija, Croatia, to three previously published papers and found much of the content to be identical, without the minister acknowledging two of those papers in the bibliography. Continue reading Montenegro’s science minister accused of plagiarism

Dissertation in transition: Plagiarism leads to delisting of education thesis, lost PhD

ccjThe author of a doctoral dissertation on veterans education has lost the paper — and a mention of the work in a roster of theses — because he lifted text from a previously published dissertation from a student at another institution.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Dissertation in transition: Plagiarism leads to delisting of education thesis, lost PhD

Incomplete reference helps editor find duplicate paper — and retract article

botswanaPro-tip: If you’re going to try to publish your work twice, don’t give editors a reason to go searching the internet for your previous work.

Here’s case in point, a retraction notice from the Botswana Journal of Agriculture & Applied Sciences: Continue reading Incomplete reference helps editor find duplicate paper — and retract article

Wasted breath: Cribbing earns retraction of anesthesia paper

cbandbThe authors of a paper on anesthetic waste gases in the operating room have pulled the article for plagiarism.

The paper, titled “Further Pieces of Evidence to the Pulmonary Origin of Sevoflurane Escaping to the Operating Room During General Anaesthesia,” appeared in Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics and came from a group at various institutions in Harbin, China.

But according to the retraction notice, the further pieces weren’t really further, after all:
Continue reading Wasted breath: Cribbing earns retraction of anesthesia paper

Journal that “suffered” from plagiarism purges itself

pharmpractWhen Pharmacy Practice found out it had been victimized by plagiarists, it apparently took the news personally — and to heart.

In an elaborate statement with more than a dozen references — but not one to the plagiarizing work — the journal lashed out against the behavior of word thieves, and described the discovery as a Road to Damascus moment.

Here’s the notice, which was published in 2012 but was only just indexed on PubMed:

Continue reading Journal that “suffered” from plagiarism purges itself

Mistaken punctuation, misreferencing, and other euphemisms for plagiarism

soas_logo_3It’s always amusing to see how far a journal will bend over backward to avoid coming out and calling something “plagiarism.”

We’ve got two notices for you that exemplify the phenomenon, which we discussed in our Lab Times column last year.

The first, an article about apartheid, was presented at a student conference and published in the Polyvocia: The SOAS Journal of Graduate Research. It was later retracted because the author “should have used quotation marks around material written verbatim from that source.”

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Mistaken punctuation, misreferencing, and other euphemisms for plagiarism