4月14日，撤稿觀察，即Retraction Watch，發佈了一條有趣的消息：
A paper plagiarizes an article retracted for plagiarism and other sins — but it isn’t being retracted.
簡言之，抄襲因抄襲問題論文而被撤稿的論文的論文，沒被撤稿。
原來，這不是一段繞口令。4月10日，Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology 發表了一條如上所示的關切表達，Expression of Concern:
The Editors-in-Chief would like to alert readers that there are some concerns related to this article [1]. Concern has been raised that there are textual and formatting similarities to this retracted article [2].
關切中所提到的這篇[1]是2014年發表的，與[2]在文字和格式存在相似，因此主編表達關切。而[2]呢，是2012年發表的，如上所示，在2017年已被撤稿：
Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention has retracted the article titled “siRNA mediated silencing of NIN1/RPN12 binding protein 1 homolog inhibits proliferation and growth of breast cancer cells”(1) for reason of similarity with a series of articles identified by Byrne and Labbé (2).
換言之，這篇文章被撤稿，是因為其與Byrne and Labbé發現的一系列問題論文存在相似。2017年，Byrne and Labbé在Scientometrics 發表論文，披露了一系列關於某一基因敲除實驗的中國論文存在引人注目的相似性。Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention這篇論文雖然沒被Byrne and Labbé點名，但與被Byrne and Labbé點名的論文相似，因而被撤稿。
Byrne and Labbé的分析顯示，相當多的論文存在相似錯誤，結果可靠性存疑：
We identified 48 examples of highly similar papers describing single gene knockdowns in 1–2 human cancer cell lines that were all published by investigators from China. The incorrect use of a particular TPD52L2 shRNA sequence as a negative or non-targeting control was identified in 30/48 (63%) of these publications... Overall, these results suggest that some publications describing the effects of single gene knockdowns in human cancer cell lines may include the results of experiments that were not performed by the authors. This has serious implications for the validity of such results, and for their application in future research.
看到這裡，不知道大家被繞暈沒，我反正暈了。簡單總結一下：
- A論文被Byrne and Labbé發現存在問題；
- B與A存在相似，被撤稿；
- C與B存在相似，被表達關切。
據稱，C的作者們沒有對關切表達做出回應。
最後上一幅圖，大家娛樂一下：
這段繞口令，您怎麼看呢？不妨留言與大夥分享。
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