Don’t feel so bad, The Aging Male: It happens to lots of journals

The Aging Male (the journal, not the demographic) is retracting a 2013 paper by a group of Chinese researchers who’d published the plagiarized same work — more or less — in from a Chinese title.

The article, “Testosterone therapy improves psychological distress and health-related quality of life in Chinese men with symptomatic late-onset hypogonadism patients,” came from a group at Peking University People’s Hospital, in Beijing.

But as the retraction notice explains:

One-too-many authors scuttles paper on mouse metabolism

Regulatory Peptides is retracting a 2010 paper by a group of five authors in China and one in Texas — and the presence of that last one was the problem.

The article, “Erythropoietin as a possible mechanism for the effects of intermittent hypoxia on bodyweight, serum glucose and leptin in mice,” had as its last (dare we say, senior) author Susan T. Howard, a mycobacterium expert at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Tyler. Trouble was, Howard disavowed any role in the paper.

According to the retraction notice:

Another correction for Rui Curi, whose legal threats helped force shutdown of Science Fraud site

The Journal of Endocrinology has run a correction for a paper by Rui Curi, the Brazilian scientist whose lawyers threatened Science-Fraud.org after the site ran a number of posts critical of Curi’s work.

Here’s the notice for “Non-esterified fatty acids and human lymphocyte death: a mechanism that involves calcium release and oxidative stress”:

Shigeaki Kato notches fifth retraction

Shigeaki Kato

An endocrinologist who resigned from the University of Tokyo last March as the university was investigating his work has retracted another paper.

Here’s the notice for the paper by corresponding author Shigeaki Kato and colleagues in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research:

Authors retract Diabetes paper after submitting it “without knowledge of inherent errors”

A group of neuroscientists has retracted a paper published earlier this last year in Diabetes after realizing that a figure that took up a whole page of the paper may not have been quite right.

Here’s the notice for “Blockade of receptor for advanced glycation end products in a model of type 1 diabetic leukoencephalopathy”:

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 remains untouched in the literature.)

That record has now been broken. Congratulations to the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the authors of a December 1985 paper, “Increasing the response rate to cytotoxic chemotherapy by endocrine means.” Here’s the notice, which appears in the January 2013 issue of the journal, making 27 years — and a month, if you’re counting:

I will not plagiarize, I will not plagiarize, No plagiaré…: When a journal requires a public apology

This one is an oldie but a goodie.

We’ve published a few accounts of what it feels like to have your work plagiarized. But often absent from accounts like that are the views of the plagiarists. So here’s one.

In 2009, the Cuban Journal of Endocrinology retracted a 2000 paper by a researcher who acknowledged plagiarizing the work from a previously-published book chapter by other authors. And how.

As a letter from the editors explains (with the help of Google Translate):

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

photo by Mark Turnauckas via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/marktee/

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 that skews what’s represented here — boy, are there a lot of duplication retractions we haven’t covered! — and we might as well be more comprehensive. Plus, our eagle-eyed readers may find issues that we won’t see on a quick scan.

So with this post, we’re inaugurating a new feature here at Retraction Watch, “You’ve been dupe’d.” Every now and then, we’ll gather five of these duplication retractions at a time, and post them so they get into the mix, and into our category listing (see drop-down menu in right-hand column if you haven’t already). Here are the first five:

Shikeagi Kato, who resigned post in March, retracts Nature paper

Shikeagi Kato, an endocrinologist formerly of the University of Tokyo who resigned on March 31 amidst an investigation into his work, has retracted another paper, this one in Nature.

Here’s the notice for “DNA demethylation for hormone-induced transcriptional derepression,” which was the subject of a correction last October:

Endocrinologist Shigeaki Kato resigns amidst University of Tokyo misconduct investigation

Shigeaki Kato

Shigeaki Kato, an endocrinology researcher at the University of Tokyo who retracted a paper late last month, has resigned amidst an investigation into whether he committed misconduct, Japanese media outlets are reporting.

According to the reports, the university has been investigating Shigeaki Kato and his group, affiliated with the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, for scientific misconduct. The investigation was prompted by an outside whistleblower’s allegations in January about 24 of Kato’s papers. The whistleblower claimed that the papers manipulated and reused data improperly, and created a YouTube video to spread the word, as ScienceInsider reported earlier this year.

One of the 24 papers,