Trust us...well OK, maybe not

[Update: Science mag runs a piece saying Academia operates like drug cartels]

While conducting an internal audit of publications between January and June 2012, BioMed Central discovered a number of apparent major irregularities in the content and editorial handling of the journal Head & Neck Oncology. In order to maintain the integrity of the BioMed Central portfolio of journals, we decided to cease publication of the journal with effect from 9th August 2012...

The RetractionWatch breadcrumb trail put me onto another related tale of sordidness detailed in this fellow's dissection and documentation of http://www.integrity-ethics.com. They performed a RatherGate style investigative journalism document comparison of text on the PIE website and found that major portions had been stolen directly from other genuinely reputable outfits like Elsevier. "Ethical" behavior apparently involves blatant cut/past plagiarism. This is the new normal I suppose.

A whois lookup of this freshly minted "integrity" and "ethics" group, which appears to be focusing on medical/sciency stuff shows 99.999 pure reagent grade NOTHING. They've hidden all their shit behind a domain cloaking service.

There's something significantly sketchy afoot here, the nature of which isn't entirely clear at this point. Stay tuned. There's sure to be more.

...From Chemistry – A European Journal, “the paper was constructed by copying a number of passages from the paper entitled…The authors apologize for this approach.” As we wrote on Retraction Watch, plagiarism is an “approach” to writing the way bank robbery is an approach to banking...

posted by Purp at 11:45 AM

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