Search Results for: duplication

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

Authors dispute ethical lapse in case of double physics publication that wasn’t

Plasma Processes and Polymers has retracted a paper it published in March 2012 for what it describes as a “possible breach of ethics.” That certainly sounds bad — if inconclusive — but the authors maintain the whole thing was a simple misunderstanding. The article, “Plasma Acid: Water Treated by Dielectric Barrier Discharge,” came from the … Continue reading Authors dispute ethical lapse in case of double physics publication that wasn’t

Pseudo amino acid paper pseudo new — and now retracted

The Journal of Computational Chemistry is retracting a 2011 paper by a group of Chinese researchers for duplication. The article was titled “Predicting Protein Folding Rates Using the Concept of Chou’s Pseudo Amino Acid Composition.” According to the notice:

Physics paper retracted because authors wrongfully claimed they got there first — in the same journal

Here’s a tip: If you’re going to claim you were first to discover something, even though you know you weren’t, don’t publish your claim in the same journal where the first finding appeared. Oh, and don’t ask the researchers who made the first discovery for help along the way. Those, perhaps, are the cynical lessons … Continue reading Physics paper retracted because authors wrongfully claimed they got there first — in the same journal