iThenticate Blog

Dr. Zaid Mahmood, a professor at Punjab University’s (PU) Institute of Chemistry, which is located in Pakistan, has been forced to retired after a ruling from the PU Syndicate, which found that Mahmood had plagiarized in earlier works.

The case began in 2011 when another professor atthe Institute ofChemistry filed a complaint against Dr. Mahood saying that he had plagiarized in several research articles. An inquiry committee was formed and it compared Dr. Mahmood’s work to its original sources and found that most of the material was plagiarized.

Dr. Haruko Obokata recently became the talk of the stem cell research community. The lead author of a paper published in the journal Nature claimed that mouse stem cells could be created by soaking blood cells in a weak acid.  If those results could be replicated and reproduced in humans, it would pave the way for new treatments for a variety of ailments.

Last month, Richard Van Noorden at Nature reported that two major publishers were removing some 120 papers from their subscription services after it was revealed that the papers were computer-generated.

The American Medical Writer's Association (AMWA) hosted a panel of three experts at their Annual Conference in the Fall of 2013 to discuss plagiarism in medical research, titled "The Rising Tide of Plagiarism in Medical Research". Panel members included Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, Jason Chu from Plagiarism.org and Sandra R. Distelhorst, ELS, Senior Editor at Northwest Health Communications.

Together the panelists provided insights that raise awareness of various plagiarism issues, offered best practices to help researchers and writers avoid plagiarism, and suggested ways for editors and journal management to prevent plagiarism. Examples mentioned during this session may be found in a related paper published by iThenticate.

In comparison to 2012, 2013 was a very busy year for plagiarism-related news. It was a year with a slew of political scandals, developing issues in research plagiarism and even a few beloved celebrities finding themselves caught up in allegations of unethical writing.

However, much of the focus changed in 2013. Where 2012 was very journalism-oriented with the “Summer of Sin” and Jonah Lehrer, 2013 was much more diverse and featured plagiarism scandals from a variety of fields including politics, religion and filmmaking.

All in all, this made it very difficult to pick just five stories to cover. This list easily could have been a top 20 or more. However, the below were the five plagiarism scandals that had everyone talking in 2013 and will be remembered for a long time to come.

Top 5 Plagiarism Scandals of 2013

Actor Shia LaBeouf is best known for his roles in the Transformers movies as well as other major Hollywood films. But while his career in front of the camera has been overwhelmingly successful, his foray into being behind the camera has hit a fairly significant speed bump.

Chris Arnold is a radio personality well known among sports fans in the Dallas area. Having been on the air since 1980, Arnold, along with his co-hosts run the show “The Fan’s G-Bag Nation”, a popular midday sports program on a CBS affiliated station and he is also a game night emcee for the Dallas Mavericks.

Recently, The Star in Toronto published a note from the paper’s public editor, Kathy English, drawing attention to a case of plagiarism committed by one of the paper’s interns. However, what made the case unusual was that the intern was not accused of lifting content from another paper, but rather, from an earlier article at The Star.