Intellectual property lawyer loses papers for … plagiarism

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 … Continue reading Intellectual property lawyer loses papers for … plagiarism

Poetry, politics, plagiarism, and erotics add up to a retraction

Here’s a new category for us: Poetry. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a comparative studies journal, has retracted a paper on gender roles in Middle Eastern poetry due to plagiarism. Nizar Kabbani was a famed Syrian poet who wrote frankly about feminism, love, and sex. He’s well worth a read, … Continue reading Poetry, politics, plagiarism, and erotics add up to a retraction

Recursive plagiarism? Researchers may have published a duplicate of a study retracted for plagiarism

Sometimes plagiarism, like an onion, has layers. That appears to be the case in a paper brought to our attention by sharp-eyed reader Vladimir Baulin, whose work was copied in a 2006 paper that Journal of Biological Physics retracted for plagiarism. But you can’t keep a good thief down: the plagiarizing authors just popped up in a new … Continue reading Recursive plagiarism? Researchers may have published a duplicate of a study retracted for plagiarism

Retractions arrive in plagiarism scandal involving economist Nijkamp

Retractions have arrived in the case of Peter Nijkamp, a leading Dutch economist accused of duplication and plagiarism. The Review of Economic Analysis has removed two of Nijkamp’s articles for self-plagiarism. According to the NRC Handelsblad website (courtesy of Google translate): The affair university economics professor Peter Nijkamp and his PhD student Karima Kourtit has … Continue reading Retractions arrive in plagiarism scandal involving economist Nijkamp

Don’t walk this way: Stalking paper halted for plagiarism

Pro tip: If you’re going to write about stalking, it’s probably best if you don’t get too close to your material. That’s a lesson a group of researchers in Italy was forced to learn the hard way. They lost their 2013 article in Medicine, Science and the Law for being too similar to a 2008 … Continue reading Don’t walk this way: Stalking paper halted for plagiarism

Terrorism journal retracts paper on Boko Haram for plagiarism

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism has retracted a 2013 article about Boko Haram, the Nigerian extremist group accused of massacres and, recently, the kidnapping of approximately 276 schoolgirls in that country. Here’s the notice, which pretty much says it all:

Plagiarism spells demise of complementary medicine paper

The Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary Medicine (JEBCAM) has retracted a 2013 review on probiotics by an author from Turkey who patched the paper together from a variety of other sources — and then appears to have reused his own work elsewhere without attribution. The article was written by Öner Özdemir, a pediatric allergy specialist at … Continue reading Plagiarism spells demise of complementary medicine paper

De-coli: Plagiarism leads to retraction of highly cited recombinant protein paper

The authors of a 2005 article on E. coli in Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology have lost the paper because they recombined it from previous work. The article, titled “Strategies for efficient production of heterologous proteins in Escherichia coli,” came from a pair of biochemical engineers from the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, in New Delhi, India. According to … Continue reading De-coli: Plagiarism leads to retraction of highly cited recombinant protein paper

Plagiarism (and plenty of it) fells Crohn’s paper

A group of researchers from Italy has lost their 2010 paper in the Journal of Cellular Physiology for having plagiarized — in style. The article, “Early Years of Biological Agents Therapy in Crohn’s Disease and Risk of the Human Polyomavirus JC Reactivation,” was led by Valeria Pietropaolo, of Sapienza University in Rome and the Sbarro … Continue reading Plagiarism (and plenty of it) fells Crohn’s paper

Weekend reads: Self-plagiarism and moral panic; sexism in science; peer review under scrutiny

Another busy week at Retraction Watch, which kicked off with our announcement that we’re hiring a paid intern. Here’s what was happening elsewhere around the web: