By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
A Korean professor of a regional medical school is suspected of having plagiarized papers by other foreign professors.
John H. McDonald, biological sciences professor at University of Delaware in the U.S., is claiming via his blog that Han Jin, medical professor of Inje University has ``stolen’’ some paragraphs from at least six recent biology papers.
Prof. Han of the university, located in South Gyeongsang Province, and Mohamad Warda of Cairo University in Egypt co-published a paper entitled ``Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul’’ in Proteomics, an international journal on Jan 23.
The case is the latest in a series of plagiarisms by Korean medical professors. Last year, one Seoul National University professor and another at University of Seoul were implicated in such cases.
Prof. McDonald said he cannot believe how the paper could have been published in such a respected, peer-reviewed journal. ``Proteomics is a decent, mid-level journal; not the place you would send your very best work, but not some place you would be embarrassed to publish in, either,’’ McDonald was quoted as saying by The Harvard Crimson, daily college newspaper in the U.S.
McDonald said that at least 13 paragraphs from six other papers were copied verbatim in Prof. Han’s paper.
Joshua LaBaer, the director of the Harvard Institute of Proteomics, also expressed disbelief that the international journal failed to discover the plagiarism.
``Usually you would think with peer reviews the people who reviewed would have picked up on this,’’ LaBaer was quoted as saying by the newspaper. ``Plagiarism can be very subtle.’’
Prof Han told a local newspaper that there might have been ``some errors’’ in the process of working with Prof. Warda online. He said he had already requested Proteomics to retract the paper from the journal.
Han was not immediately available for comment when contacted by the Korea Times.
kswho@koreatimes.co.kr
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