An engineer in South Korea has lost 30 papers, at least seven of which for duplication and plagiarism. He has also been fired from his university position. Soon-Gi Shin, whose affiliation was listed as Kangwon National University in Gangwon, is the sole author on the majority of the papers, published in four journals between 2000 … Continue reading Journals retract 30 papers by engineer in South Korea
Title: Bioethics and Medical Education What Caught Our Attention: As we’ve said before, you can’t make this stuff up: An article on bioethics had its own ethical issues to deal with. It turns out, the authors had “substantial unreferenced overlap” with another article, that “overlap” including the article’s title. Here’s a side by side comparison … Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Bioethics article retracted for…ethics violation
A researcher who is facing a criminal investigation in Italy for research misconduct has seen five more papers retracted, for a total of 16 15. Molecular and Cellular Biology has retracted four papers published between 1987 to 2001 by Alfredo Fusco, a cancer researcher in Italy; the Journal of Virology retracted one 1985 paper. Fusco was … Continue reading Retraction count for Italian researcher swells to 15 as five papers fall
One of the most common reasons for retractions is image manipulation. When searching for evidence of it, researchers often rely on what their eyes tell them. But what if screening tools could help? Last week, researchers described a new automated tool to screen images for duplication (reported by Nature News); with help from publishing giant … Continue reading New tool looks for signs of image doctoring
Our readers will likely know that the site has been having significant trouble for more than two weeks. Thanks for your patience, your offers to help, and for sticking with us during that time. We’re happy to say that we seem to have identified all of the various issues involved, and have solved them. Some … Continue reading Retraction Watch is back at full speed. Here’s what you need to do to make sure you’re seeing our content.
Here’s an unusual way to allege plagiarism: Do it in the reference list. That’s what Brian Levine, a professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, did when he came across a paper he wanted to cite but suspected of plagiarism. When Levine published his 2017 paper, he … Continue reading Unusual: Author uses a reference list to accuse a paper of plagiarism
We’ve been having some technical issues with the site, which may have kept some readers from accessing our content this week. We think we’ve figured out what was wrong, and fixed it, but in the meantime here’s what we were up to this week, in case you missed it:
The U.S. National Institutes of Health is closing PubMed Commons, the feature that enabled readers to post comments on abstracts indexed in PubMed. NIH announced it will be discontinuing the service — which allowed only signed comments from authors with papers indexed in PubMed, among other restrictions — after more than four years, due to … Continue reading PubMed shuts down its comments feature, PubMed Commons
Title: Does repetition help? Impact of destination promotion videos on perceived destination image and intention-to-visit change What Caught Our Attention: At times we get to just appreciate the moment: A paper focused on repetition — specifically, linking repeated exposure to travel videos and actual visits to the location — got retracted for duplication. The notice … Continue reading Caught Our Notice: An article about repetition is duplicated? Priceless
In March 2017, Christopher Blanford received an email from an editor at the Journal of Crystal Growth. Blanford had been named as a suggested reviewer for a manuscript, and the editor, Arnab Bhattacharya, wanted to verify that the Gmail account the authors provided was legitimate. It was not. Blanford—a senior lecturer in biomaterials at the … Continue reading After Elsevier knew an author faked reviews, it kept accepting his papers for more than a year