A common theme in movies involving time travel is that if you meet yourself in the past, you’ll upset the time-space continuum, and cause all sorts of problems. Well, a group of materials scientists in Hong Kong seems to have invented a time machine, and learned that if if you publish a paper that appears … Continue reading Researchers invent time machine! (But too late to avoid retraction for duplication)
A pair of mathematicians from Egypt has lost their 2012 article in the Journal of the Egyptian Mathematical Society because they reused some of the material from a previous publication. The article, with the Nabokovian title, “On Humbert matrix functions,” was written by A. Shehata and M. Abul-Dahab. According to the introduction:
A pair of researchers at the University of Maryland have retracted a paper in Cell Death & Differentiation after it became clear that one of the figures had been duplicated from an earlier paper. Here’s the notice, dated December 13, 2013, for “INrf2 (Keap1) targets Bcl-2 degradation and controls cellular apoptosis,” by Suryakant Niture and … Continue reading Figure duplication kills cell death paper
Does anyone know how to say “thrown under the bus” in Italian? A group of researchers in Italy has retracted a paper after it became clear that they had duplicated some of their previous work. Or, as one of the senior authors put it, as a “young coworker” had reused their material. Here’s the notice … Continue reading Author blames “young coworker” for duplication as paper is retracted
More than two years ago, we wrote about a retraction for duplication in Biophysical Journal prompted by an email from pseudonymous whistleblower Clare Francis. That post generated a robust discussion, including one comment from someone calling himself or herself “Double Dutch.” This past weekend, the last author of that paper, Rienk van Grondelle, left a … Continue reading “Stupid, it should not be done that way”: Researcher explains how duplications led to a retraction
The Dutch papers are reporting that Peter Nijkamp, one of the leading economists in The Netherlands, has been embroiled in what looks like a self-plagiarism scandal following the cancellation of a thesis defense by one of his graduate students because of plagiarism. We say “what looks like” because it’s tough to figure out what’s alleged … Continue reading Dutch economist Nijkamp embroiled in plagiarism and duplication scandal
Drug Design, Development and Therapy has retracted a 2013 paper by a group from Italy for duplication. The retraction notice for the paper, “Drugs in development for treatment of patients with cancer-related anorexia and cachexia syndrome,” fairly bristles with indignation:
A group of researchers from Egypt and the United States has lost their 2010 paper in the journal Toxicology in Vitro for recycling many of their own words from a previously published manuscript. The article, “Bacterial lipopolysaccharide-induced oxidative stress in adult rat Sertoli cells in vitro,” was written by Hamdy A.A. Aly, Hany A. El-Shemy … Continue reading Duplication leads to recall of toxicology paper
The editor of a psychology journal has had seven papers in a different psychology journal retracted, for either plagiarism or duplication, although the notices are vague. Here are the seven articles by Paraskevi Theofilou, editor of Health Psychology Research, in Europe’s Journal of Psychology:
When you think of drones, you probably think of deadly strikes in faraway lands. But what about studying crops? Take “Use of digital photography from unmanned aerial vehicles for estimation of leaf area index in onion (Allium cepa L.),” a study published earlier this year in the European Journal of Agronomy by researchers from Spain: