Imitation may be a form of flattery, but plagiarism hurts

Originally posted on Common Sense Family Doctor on December 13, 2016.

**

I don't envy Dr. Michael Dansinger, whose scientific paper on the effects of commercial diets on surrogate markers of cardiovascular disease, originally submitted to the Annals of Internal Medicine, was stolen by one of the paper's external peer reviewers and published as the reviewer's own research in another medical journal. But unlike others whose work has been plagiarized, he had the satisfaction of not only seeing the plagiarized article retracted with an apology, but being able to publicly call out the plagiarist in a letter published yesterday in the Annals. As further explained in an accompanying editorial from editor Christine Laine, the plagiarist, Italian researcher Carmine Finelli, invented an imaginary cohort of European patients to replace those in Dansinger's U.S. study and recruited seven co-authors to play supporting roles in this scientific charade: "They allowed their names to be used, apparently without contributing anything of value - not even verification of the study's existence."