Search Results for: duplication

Clare Francis scores a bullseye: Journal of Cell Biology paper retracted for image manipulation

If you’re a journal editor or publisher, there’s a good chance your email inbox has seen its share of emails from “Clare Francis,” who has been crusading against text and image duplication in papers for some years now. Some editors have grown quite weary of those emails, sometimes because they don’t want to deal with … Continue reading Clare Francis scores a bullseye: Journal of Cell Biology paper retracted for image manipulation

Publisher wants $650 to retract duplicated study

We’ve heard about a lot of barriers to retraction — author and editor stubbornness being the most frequent. But now there’s a new one: A publisher that wants to charge authors $650 to retract. University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall — who produces a frequently updated list of predatory publishers — first wrote about the … Continue reading Publisher wants $650 to retract duplicated study

Serbian scientists decry systematic plagiarism, predatory publishing

An open letter to the Serbian science ministry – coinciding with the new government’s first 100 days in office – and an accompanying petition signed by 850 scientists so far, makes for pretty dim reading on the state of research ethics in Serbia. The systematic and apparently state-endorsed practice of artificially boosting one’s ratings in … Continue reading Serbian scientists decry systematic plagiarism, predatory publishing

Quantum physicists learn about Heisenberg’s (publishing) uncertainty principle the hard way

As Werner Heisenberg famously conjectured, you can’t measure an atomic particle’s momentum and position at the same time. But perhaps the principle named for the German physicist and godfather of quantum mechanics should be applied to another important scientific truth: you can’t publish the same article in two different but competing journals. Just ask a … Continue reading Quantum physicists learn about Heisenberg’s (publishing) uncertainty principle the hard way

Why aren’t there more retractions in business and economics journals?

A new paper has catalogued retractions over the past few decades in business and economics journals — and hasn’t found very many. In “Retraction, Dishonesty and Plagiarism: Analysis of a Crucial Issue for Academic Publishing, and the Inadequate Responses from Leading Journals in Economics and Management Disciplines,” which just went online in the Journal of … Continue reading Why aren’t there more retractions in business and economics journals?

A new record: A retraction, 27 years later

In October, we noted the apparent record holder for longest time between publication and retraction: 25 years, for “Retention of the 4-pro-R hydrogen atom of mevalonate at C-2,2′ of bacterioruberin in Halobacterium halobium,” published in the Biochemical Journal in 1980 and retracted in 2005. (Although an author requested that another 52-year-old paper be retracted, it … Continue reading A new record: A retraction, 27 years later

Giving thanks for plagiarism detection software: Catching up on retractions for the sincerest form of flattery

Today, on Thanksgiving in the U.S., Retraction Watch is taking a bit of a holiday as we dig into some turkey — not to be confused with retractions from Turkey. We’d like to give thanks for the thousands of Retraction Watch readers all over the world who’ve helped us shine a spotlight on the scientific … Continue reading Giving thanks for plagiarism detection software: Catching up on retractions for the sincerest form of flattery

Image correction in Current Biology for Harvard’s Sam Lee

The work of Sam W. Lee, a cancer biologist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, has come under fire at Science Fraud lately over concerns about the possible reuse of images in his group’s published studies. Turns out there’s some there, there after all. The journal Current Biology has issued a pretty thorny correction for … Continue reading Image correction in Current Biology for Harvard’s Sam Lee

You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again

As we’ve noted before, we generally let duplication retractions make their way to the bottom of our to-do pile, since there’s often less of an interesting story behind them, duplication is hardly the worst of publishing sins, and the notices usually tell the story. (These are often referred to — imprecisely — as “self-plagiarism.”) But … Continue reading You’ve been dupe’d: Catching up on authors who liked their work enough to use it again

Most retraction notices don’t involve research misconduct or flawed data: new study

October, apparently, is “studies of retractions month.” First there was a groundbreaking study in PNAS, then an NBER working paper, and yesterday PLoS Medicine alerted us to a paper their sister journal, PLoS ONE, published last week, “A Comprehensive Survey of Retracted Articles from the Scholarly Literature.” The study, by Michael L. Grieneisen and Minghua Zhang, … Continue reading Most retraction notices don’t involve research misconduct or flawed data: new study