A paper about combating cyberterrorism is coming under fire after allegations of plagiarism sparked on social media. Soon after the paper was published by the journal Computer Technology and Application in 2015, Orgnet LLC, a network analysis software company, announced on Twitter that the paper took content from its webpage. The firm tweeted:
Last Friday, WIRED editor Adam Rogers got a direct message on Twitter that no journalist wants to see. Christina Larson, a freelance writer in China, told him she had seen overlap with her own work in a few WIRED stories, and included links to the relevant pieces. “She was gracious, just asking for a link … Continue reading “That was a really bad Friday for us:” WIRED warns four stories were plagiarized
A BMC journal has added an expression of concern to a paper on firefly genes after a University of Queensland investigation determined a table should be credited to a different source. According to a representative of the university, the investigation found no evidence of misconduct. The university submitted an erratum that the journal chose not … Continue reading Firefly paper flagged following Queensland investigation
The week at Retraction Watch featured a peer review nightmare come true, and a look at why publishing negative findings is hard. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A peer reviewer apparently thought portions of a manuscript he was reviewing were so good he wanted them for himself. Substantial sections of a paper that Junwei Di reviewed appear in his own paper on a method for making tiny particles of silver to precise specifications. Di is a chemist at Soochow University in China. The … Continue reading Peer reviewer steals text for his own chemistry paper, gets sanctioned by journal
A journal is Journals are retracting three papers after a biomaterials researcher duplicated his own work, sometimes using the same figures to describe different experiments. Two of the papers are on bone regeneration; one is about targeting tumors. In addition to issues with figures, two one of the retraction notes explain that the papers contain “widespread plagiarism of text” … Continue reading Journals retracts three bone papers for duplication by same author
A journal has pulled a paper about the molecular details of different types of adipose tissues after learning the researchers had plagiarized much of a Ph.D. thesis. The researchers copied from former Ph.D. student Bettina Meissburger’s doctoral thesis in a 2013 paper in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry. The retraction note for “Adipose stromal-vascular fraction-derived paracrine … Continue reading Researchers plagiarized chapter of doctoral thesis in mol bio paper
The week at Retraction Watch featured a paper on reincarnation being retracted because it was plagiarized from Wikipedia, the swift retraction of a paper claiming that women’s makeup use was tied to testosterone levels, and a lot of news about trachea surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
If audits work for the Internal Revenue Service, could they also work for science? We’re pleased to present a guest post from Viraj Mane, a life sciences commercialization manager in Toronto, and Amy Lossie at the National Institutes of Health, who have a unique proposal for how to improve the quality of papers: Random audits of … Continue reading Do scientists need audits?
The week at Retraction Watch featured a case of a disappearing journal, lots of bad news for Olivier Voinnet, and advice on what to do when you make a mistake. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: