A pair of researchers in India has lost a paper in Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries for lifting chunks of text from other sources.
The article, “Advancements in morphometric differentiation: a review on stock identification among fish populations,” appeared in last March from scientists at the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources in Lucknow.
According to the retraction notice: Continue reading The one that got away: Plagiarism cuts line on fish stock paper
The journal Clinical Research and Regulatory Affairs has retracted a 2012 article on over-the-counter drugs by a trio of pharmacy researchers in India who decided to “reproduce content to a high degree of similarity” from other sources.
Here’s how the retraction notice puts it: Continue reading Paper on over-the-counter drugs goes over the line in borrowing text
The author of a review article on diabetes has been forced to retract the paper after it emerged that he failed to properly credit some of the text — an omission we generally associate with the word plagiarism.
The article, “Colonic flora, probiotics, obesity and diabetes,” was written by Paul Marik, of Eastern Virginia Medical School, and appeared in July 2012 in Frontiers in Endocrinology. It has been cited once, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
Here’s the retraction notice:
Continue reading Frontiers papers on GMO debate, diabetes retracted for improperly cited text
The fifth of six expected retractions for copyright infringement has arrived for a group of sex researchers led by Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, this one in the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer of a 1992 article.
As we reported earlier this year, Schultz (whose 1999 paper on sex in an MRI won an Ig Nobel prize) and his colleague, Mels F. Van Driel, were found not to have committed plagiarism by investigators at the University of Groningen. Instead, they were found guilty of “unintended and unknowing breach of copyright.”
But they were asked to apologize formally to a litany of people — from the editors involved to the sponsors of the research — for what the institution described as “unintended and unknowing breach of copyright” of the work of one Diana Jeffrey, whose 1985 dissertation evidently was very much worth reading.
Here’s the latest retraction notice: Continue reading One more paper down for sex researcher Weijmar Schultz
A recent issue of Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology (CREST) adds a new euphemism for plagiarism to our rapidly growing list.
There are two retractions in the issue of the Taylor & Francis journal. One is for “Remediation of Heavy Metal Contaminated Soils: An Overview of Site Remediation Techniques,” by a group from Portugal: Continue reading A new plagiarism euphemism: “language from already published sources without using proper citation methods”
The Journal of Prosthodontics has retracted a 2006 paper by a pair of Saudi researchers and given them a pass because of an alleged lack of grasp of English — and, we’d add, publishing ethics.
The article, titled “Effect of Chemical Disinfectants and Repair Materials on the Transverse Strength of Repaired Heat-Polymerized Acrylic Resin,” was written by Ayman Ellakwa and Ali El-Sheikh, from institutions in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
The paper’s abstract stated: Continue reading Dental journal gives plenty to chew on in retraction of resin paper
With this post, we’re going to try a new feature: Ask Retraction Watch. What we really mean by that is ask Retraction Watch’s readers, who time and time again have shared their expertise and made us smarter. So if you have questions you’d like posed in this space, find our contact info here.
Here goes. A reader asks: Continue reading Ask Retraction Watch: Is this plagiarism?
If 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
We’ve come across some odd examples of plagiarism in this job, from the fellow who tried to build a CV on the back of another researcher’s work, to the education researcher who, from what we can tell, preferred lifting the work of others to writing her own papers. Here’s another odd one for the pile.
A group of Iranian scholars has lost a paper in Brain Injury because they lifted it wholesale from a previously published article. What’s harder to get one’s mind around, however, is that the two papers were looking at culturally-specific aspects of brain injury. Except that one wasn’t.
The retracted paper, “Frontal acquired brain injury, substance abuse and their common psychological symptoms in the Iranian population,” appeared in 2011. Here’s the abstract, which is still available on the journal’s website (we’ll note that although the abstract is free for all, the retraction notice was behind a pay wall — an error, according to the publisher, which they remedied when we contacted them): Continue reading The brains in Spain fall mainly on…Iran?
The South African Review of Sociology has retracted a 1989 paper by an author who must have figured the source — a 1975 article — was sufficiently well removed from institutional memory to catch anyone’s eye.
Evidently that was a safe bet for a generation. But we’re guessing the Internet permitted the detective work that eventually brought the theft to light.
The article was titled (oddly), “Doing the Knowledge in Literature and Sociology,” and its author was P.N.G. Beard, who since 2008 has been group chief education officer at Educor, “the largest provider of private education in Southern Africa.” Beard seems to have written an academic text or two, with titles including “Problems of Pedagogics: Pedagogics and the Study of Education in South Africa,” and “The Child Is Father of the Man: Inaugural Lecture.”
Here’s the retraction notice: Continue reading Journal retracts a 24-year-old sociology paper for plagiarism–of a 1975 article