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Materials Today comments on stripes »

Well over the line: an update

January 16, 2013 by ferniglab


The discussions on what constitutes plagiarism continue. One side, which I belong to, believes simply that the rules we establish for our students are the same rules we should be using in our professional life. In the specific context of the publications that claim evidence for ligands self-organising into stripes on the surface of nanoparticles, I have posted on this issue previously, due to the re-use of unattributed data in five of the papers from the Stellacci lab (here).
I used the University of Liverpool rules on plagiarism and collusion as the basis of my argument, and then made the broad claim that the same rules apply across all universities. Since the papers in which data are re-used were published whilst the group were at MIT, it is of interest to look specifically at the rules at that Institution. These are described in an excellent document entitled “Academic Integrity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: A Handbook for Students“. To quote from page 6 of this document “If you use charts, graphs, data sets, or numerical information obtained from another person or from published material, you must also cite the source.”. Of course, if one is publishing, then there is also the legal issue of copyright and formal agreement has to be obtained from the publisher for the reproduction of the original data.
This seems pretty clear cut to me and it will be of interest to see what will be the response from the relevant institutions considering this matter. It is perhaps naive, but it would seem reasonable to expect that if there is no response, then a student violating these rules could simply hire a lawyer and get their full marks. This would be a bad day for higher education.
Update 3 November 2013 the re-used figures have been the subject of corrections, see here and here.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Nanotechnology, Research integrity | Tagged Nanotechnology, Research integrity | 7 Comments

7 Responses

  1. on January 24, 2013 at 12:21 am Stripy revisited posts; where to start… « Rapha-z-lab

    […] Well over the line: an update […]


  2. on February 5, 2013 at 11:08 pm The last resort of the scoundrel? « Ferniglab's Blog

    […] is common to all journals) and the rules on plagiarism and collusion. I recently highlighted the rules in force at MIT. For my Francophone audience, here is an excellent set of rules in French, from EPFL, which are a […]


  3. on February 7, 2013 at 12:01 am Responses to evidence of self-plagiarism « Ferniglab's Blog

    […] discussed the rules for students at MIT in an earlier post, “Well over the line: an update”. To recapitulate, it is stipulated that if data are secondary (so derived from a source other […]


  4. on March 10, 2013 at 2:26 pm Data re-use warrants correction at Nature Materials | Ferniglab's Blog

    […] Well over the line: an update Well-over-the-line-when-does-minor-become-major […]


  5. on March 10, 2013 at 8:58 pm Data re-use correction at Nature Materials: whodunit? | Ferniglab's Blog

    […] is, signed by all the authors. Moreover, since data re-use is a form of misconduct (for example, see here), one might have expected some sort of apology for this and the other instances of data […]


  6. on March 22, 2013 at 9:59 pm Five cases of data re-use | Rapha-z-lab

    […] issues of data re-use/self-plagiarism has already been discussed here and in a number of posts at David Fernig’s […]


  7. on March 22, 2013 at 11:42 pm Re-use of “stripes” | Ferniglab's Blog

    […] are the same as those at other research-led universities, something that I have posted on before (here and here). Now we wait and see what the response is. The response will understandably take time, […]



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  • Places of interest

    The one and only PhD comics, the guide to being a graduate and to mentoring.

    Improbable Research and the Ig Nobels

    Retraction Watch provides updates on retractions of articles.

    Office for Research Integrity, their video should be compulsory for all.

    Centre for Alternative Technology

    Lateral Science, has some quite stunning information - well worth a browse.

    Fascinating places that have been closed by lawyers

    Science Fraud, shut down due to legal threats on Jan 3 2013. and Abnormal Science

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