How much self-plagiarism, aka duplication, is too much?

copeDuplication is a frequent reason for the retractions we cover. Such duplication retractions are so common that we don’t get to most of them. While many have argued that duplication pollutes the literature, and can bias meta-analyses when the same study ends up being counted more than once, others say the need to come up with new ways to say the same thing is a waste of time. (That doesn’t explain why some scientists don’t just put their old words in quotes and cite them, but we digress.)

Appropriately, the Committee on Publication Ethics is taking up the issue at their regular forum tomorrow, using new guidelines produced by BioMedCentral as a starting point. Here’s an excerpt: Continue reading How much self-plagiarism, aka duplication, is too much?

Study plagiarizes so many other papers, retraction notice can’t list them all

j controlled releaseIn a new retraction notice, the Journal of Controlled Release is living up to its name.

The editor-in-chief has retracted a study that plagiarized “a large number” of papers, but only three are listed in the notice. Here’s the notice for “In situ-forming hydrogels for sustained ophthalmic drug delivery,” by Basavaraj K. Nanjawade, F.V. Manvi, and A.S. Manjappa, three researchers at India’s KLES’s College of Pharmacy, JN Medical College Campus, Karnataka: Continue reading Study plagiarizes so many other papers, retraction notice can’t list them all

Double dipping on exercise/cardiac risk paper leads to retraction

intjneurosciThe International Journal of Neuroscience has retracted a September 2005 paper by a group from Turkey who published the same article in the same month in a different journal.

The research involved looking at concentrations of blood fats in athletes and less vigorous folk, “and to examine the risks of cardiovascular diseases.”It found that:

… medium and high level of exercises did not cause significant differences in lipid and lipoprotein levels, but the sex differences were very pronounced” with “lipid and lipoprotein profile of female subjects was found to be better than that of males”.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Double dipping on exercise/cardiac risk paper leads to retraction

Oh, the irony: Business ethics journal paper retracted for plagiarism

jabeIs this the new business ethics?

In January, we reported on a paper retracted from the Journal of Business Ethics for duplication. That earned the author a five-year publishing ban. This week, we learned of a case of plagiarism in another journal in the field, the Journal of Academic and Business Ethics. Here’s an email editor Russell Baker — no, not that Russell Baker — sent to his contact list on Wednesday: Continue reading Oh, the irony: Business ethics journal paper retracted for plagiarism

“What I find offensive is not that they plagiarized us, it’s that they did it so badly”

studies sociology scienceRetraction Watch readers may be familiar with the work of Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist who has taken a tough stance about many of the problems in his field and coordinates the Reproducibility Project. So it must have seemed quite ironic for Nosek and his co-authors to learn today that one of their papers had been outrageously — and badly — plagiarized.

Here’s the abstract of the work by Nosek, Jesse Graham, and others, which hasn’t been published in a journal yet but is posted at Nosek’s website: Continue reading “What I find offensive is not that they plagiarized us, it’s that they did it so badly”

Wash U psychologist sheds light on inquiry against former psychology grad student

Adam Savine
Adam Savine

On Tuesday, we reported on the case of Adam Savine, a former graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have committed misconduct.

Today, Blythe Bernhard, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has an illuminating Q and A with Todd Braver, whose lab Savine worked in. Savine’s former mentor offers a few interesting details about the investigation into his former student.

Braver tells the paper that he’d had doubts about the integrity of Savine’s data as the student was preparing for his dissertation defense in August 2012: Continue reading Wash U psychologist sheds light on inquiry against former psychology grad student

Smoking cessation paper pulled for “almost word-for-word” similarity to authors’ previous work

jmfnmThe Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine has retracted a 2008 article on smoking cessation by a group from Sweden which they had published not many months before in a different journal.

The retracted paper was titled “Quitting smoking is perceived to have an effect on somatic health among pregnant and non-pregnant women.” The authors, from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, had published a similar paper — “Perception of Smoking-Related Health Consequences among Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Women” — in the American Journal of Addictions in 2007.

How similar?

Continue reading Smoking cessation paper pulled for “almost word-for-word” similarity to authors’ previous work

Copy editor, stat! PNAS spells its editor-in-chief’s name wrong — on a piece he co-authored

pnas 3 5 13With apologies in advance to the good folks at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) for making a joke about something that could very well happen to any of us, we note the following correction: Continue reading Copy editor, stat! PNAS spells its editor-in-chief’s name wrong — on a piece he co-authored

IRB issues force retraction of ulcer bug bacteria paper

jpgnA group of Turkish researchers has had a paper retracted on how to treat the bacterium that cause ulcers after the journal’s editors found “issues related to the institutional review board approval” of the project.

Here’s the retraction notice from the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition: Continue reading IRB issues force retraction of ulcer bug bacteria paper

You plagiarized? No problem, says journal, we’ll retract so you can rewrite, and we’ll republish

mol cell biochemHere’s something we haven’t seen before: A group of researchers plagiarize, are called on it, and are then allowed to resubmit a new version that’s published, while their offending paper is retracted.

A reader  flagged the plagiarism in the original paper, “Protein domains, catalytic activity, and subcellular distribution of mouse NTE-related esterase,” by Ping’an Chang and colleagues, which led the research team to revise and resubmit the manuscript. After the journal Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry — a Springer title — published the plagiarism-scrubbed paper, the original paper required retraction.

The retraction refers to a dispute between labs, but not plagiarism: Continue reading You plagiarized? No problem, says journal, we’ll retract so you can rewrite, and we’ll republish