抄袭因抄袭问题论文而被撤稿的论文的论文，不用撤稿？

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4月14日，撤稿观察，即Retraction Watch，发布了一条有趣的消息：

A paper plagiarizes an article retracted for plagiarism and other sins — but it isn’t being retracted.

简言之，抄袭因抄袭问题论文而被撤稿的论文的论文，没被撤稿。

原来，这不是一段绕口令。4月10日，Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology 发表了一条如上所示的关切表达，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 Concern has been raised that there are textual and formatting similarities to this retracted article [2].

关切中所提到的这篇[1]是2014年发表的，与[2]在文字和格式存在相似，因此主编表达关切。而[2]呢，是2012年发表的，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).

换言之，这篇文章被撤稿，是因为其与Byrne and Labbé发现的一系列问题论文存在相似。2017年，Byrne and Labbé在Scientometrics 发表论文，披露了一系列关于某一基因敲除实验的中国论文存在引人注目的相似性。Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention这篇论文虽然没被Byrne and Labbé点名，但与被Byrne and Labbé点名的论文相似，因而被撤稿。

Byrne and Labbé的分析显示，相当多的论文存在相似错误，结果可靠性存疑：

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.

看到这里，不知道大家被绕晕没，我反正晕了。简单总结一下：