A material science journal has retracted a paper after learning the authors took most of the content from a master’s thesis – and added the author as a co-author without his knowledge. The authors must have really liked this thesis – they lost another paper in 2015 for copying from the same document. Both retracted … Continue reading Lesson not learned: Researchers copied a master’s thesis — twice
Not all retractions result from researchers’ mistakes — we have an entire category of posts known as “publisher errors,” in which publishers mistakenly post a paper, through no fault of the authors. Yet, those retractions can become a black mark on authors’ record. Our co-founder Ivan Oransky and Adam Etkin, Executive Editor at Springer Publishing Co … Continue reading Dopey dupe retractions: How publisher error hurts researchers
“Deeply disturbing,” “heinous intellectual theft,” erosion of the “public’s trust in medical research:” These are just a few words used to describe a rare type of plagiarism reported in this week’s Annals of Internal Medicine. Although we’ve only documented a few cases where peer reviewers steal material from manuscripts and pass them off as their … Continue reading Dear peer reviewer, you stole my paper: An author’s worst nightmare
The week at Retraction Watch featured a refreshingly honest retraction, and a big win for PubPeer. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
This summer, Ottawa Citizen reporter Tom Spears was sitting by a lake on vacation when he opened a spam email from a publisher. Amused to see the sender was a journal focused on bioethics, he got an idea. I thought, what if I just throw something outrageous at them? The situation should sound familiar to readers who … Continue reading Surprise! Paper retracted after author tells journal it’s a “pile of dung”
The week at Retraction Watch featured the story of a graduate student who fought back after being caught in the middle of a fraud case, and the retraction of a hotly debated paper from Nature Cell Biology. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A publisher in the Netherlands has retracted 13 published studies and withdrawn 52 that were under consideration (but not yet published) after learning that someone illegally accessed its workflows to add fake authors and manipulate text. According to Seyyed Mohammad Miri, the founder, CEO, and managing director of Kowsar Publishing, the 13 retracted papers all included extra authors … Continue reading Scientific publisher hacked, affecting 65 papers
Earlier this month, BioMed Central and Springer announced that they were retracting nearly 60 papers for a host of related issues, including manipulating the peer-review process. Recently, we were contacted by one of the reviewers who was impersonated by some of the authors of the retracted papers. The scientist wants to remain anonymous, but provided … Continue reading How fake peer review happens: An impersonated reviewer speaks
The week at Retraction Watch featured the retraction of a physics society’s press release quoting U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, and an apparent blow for clairvoyance research. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
A new analysis of more than 30 clinical trials co-authored by a bone researcher based in Japan is casting doubt on the legitimacy of the findings. Yoshihiro Sato, based at Mitate Hospital, has already retracted 12 papers, for reasons ranging from data problems, to including co-authors without their consent, to self-plagiarism. Most of these retracted papers are … Continue reading Analysis casts doubt on bone researcher’s body of work