DATABASES :
WRITING AND WRITERS: PLAGIARISM:
UT Southwestern Finds Possible Plagiarism in Scientific Database
UT Southwestern Finds Possible Plagiarism in Scientific Database
UTSW scan of scientific database finds recycled work, likely plagiarism
12:00 AM CST on Thursday, January 24, 2008
By SUE GOETINCK AMBROSE / The Dallas Morning News
sgoetinck@dallasnews.com
<http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/
stories/DN-utswpubs_24met.ART.North.Edition1.37f8090.html>
A shorter URL for the above link:
The nation's premier database of biomedical research contains as many as
200,000 questionable publications, ranging from possible outright
plagiarism to researchers recycling their own work, Dallas scientists have
found.
A team at UT Southwestern Medical Center came up with that number after
using a computer program to scan summaries of nearly half of 17 million
scientific and medical publications in the database. Originally developed
as a way to search for information in the massive biomedical literature,
the computer program has now resulted in investigations of possible
scientific misconduct. The researchers say that between 1 percent and 2
percent of all publications in the database include duplicated text.
"I think this has a high probability of being a very good deterrent in the
future," said Harold "Skip" Garner, the professor of biochemistry and
internal medicine at UT Southwestern who led the study, "and ultimately
improving the quality of all of the scientific literature."
A commentary on the computer program, written by Dr. Garner and colleague
Mounir Errami of UT Southwestern, appears in today's issue of the journal
Nature.
The word crunching from the UT Southwestern computer analysis highlights
for scientists what most high school and college professors already
grapple with in the Internet age, copying and pasting is easy and can go
unnoticed. But until now, Dr. Garner and Dr. Errami said, there was no
efficient way to scrutinize the biomedical literature. Duplications were
noticed primarily when researchers or journal editors read something they
remembered reading before.
So far, UT Southwestern scientists have inspected 75 instances of
duplications by different authors. Some Dallas researchers may be victims
of plagiarism, the database indicates.
The article continues, covering these topics:
Distinct Similarities
Gray Area
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The complete article may be read at the URL above.
Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@temple.edu
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