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Here’s a head-scratcher: A 2017 paper examining why long space flights can cause eye damage has been taken down, with a brief note saying NASA, which sponsored the research, asked for the retraction because of “security concerns.” According to the first author, the paper included information that could identify some of the astronauts that took […]
The post A paper about eye damage in astronauts got pulled for “security concerns.” Huh? appeared first on Retraction Watch.
Sometimes we run across retraction notices that are vague, and others that are contorted, but we’ve just found one that gets highest marks for being completely inscrutable. The article, “Bayes Clustering and Structural Support Vector Machines for Segmentation of Carotid Artery Plaques in Multicontrast MRI,” was written by a group from China and Cambridge University […]
The post Opaque retraction notice for imaging paper appeared first on Retraction Watch.
Posted by in acta radiologica, china retractions, duplication retractions, freely available, radiology, sage
Posted by in cureus, oncology retractions, radiology, unhelpful retraction notices, united states
Posted by in orthopedics, radiology, studies about retractions
The British Journal of Radiology has retracted a 2006 paper reporting a case study of an unusual primary cancer. Trouble is, their information was second-hand.
Here’s the notice for the article, titled “Primary extragonadal retroperitoneal teratoma in an adult”:
This article has been retracted at the request of our honorary editors. The honorary editors have taken the decision to retract this paper owing to similarities in the text to a previously published article [1].
A condition of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare that their work is original and has not been published elsewhere in the same or similar format. This article is therefore not in accordance with our publishing ethics: bjr.birjournals.org/site/authors/Publishing_Ethics.xhtml. Apologies are offered to the authors of the plagiarised work and readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.
The retracted study has been cited six times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. The plagiarized article, with the title “Primary retroperitoneal teratoma in an adult,” had appeared in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association in 2003.
Although the cribbing of a case report might seem like relatively trivial, it artificially inflates the perceived incidence of a particular disease.
The editors of Acta Radiologica have retracted a study of patients with lung cancer, with a notice that tells the whole story:
The manuscript “Measurement of tumor volume by PET to evaluate prognosis in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated by non-surgical therapy” was submitted to Acta Radiologica on November 3, 2010 and, after a review, accepted for publication on February 26, 2011 (1). The article was published in Acta Radiol 2011;52:646–50. Authors were: Honjiang Yan, Renben Wang (corresponding author), Fen Zhao, Kubli Zhu, Shumei Jiang, Wei Zhao, and Rui Feng, from the Department of Radiation Oncology and Department of Nuclear Medicine, Shandong Tumor Hospital, Jinan, China.
After the publication of this article, we have been made aware of a very similar publication originally published in Annals of Surgical Oncology (Chung MK, Jeong H-S, Son Y-I, et al. Prognostic value of metabolic tumor volume measured by 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in patients with esophageal carcinoma. Ann Surg Oncol 2010;17:115–22) (2). After a detailed survey of the two articles a most likely plagiarism was detected. It is most likely that the authors of the article in Acta Radiologica wrote their manuscript based on the article in Ann Surg Oncol. More than half of the sentences are exactly identical to those in the article published in 2010, and there is no reference to the 2010 article. In particular, some numerical results data are identical, in spite of different subjects and cancer type.
After having confronted the corresponding author of the 2011 article in our journal, we received the following response: “We would like to apologize sincerely to readers, reviewers and editors for this serious error on our part and the article therefore should been withdrawn. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
Based on our investigations and the statement from the corresponding author of (1), the article is hereby retracted.
© 2012 The Foundation Acta Radiologica
REFERENCES
1. Yan H, Wang R, Zhao F, et al. Measurement of tumor volume by PET to evaluate prognosis in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated by non-surgical therapy. Acta Radiol2011;52:646–50
2. Hyun SH, Choi JY, Shim YM, et al. Prognostic value of metabolic tumor volume measured by 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in patients with esophageal carcinoma. Ann Surg Oncol2010;17:115–22
The study has been cited five times, according to Google Scholar, and the notice is among the most detailed we’ve seen for likely plagiarism, which we of course appreciate. Our only bone to pick is with the fact that it’s behind a paywall, which goes against guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics.
