Some experts claim that plagiarism is rampant in the scientific literature. Others say that it's a serious but relatively rare occurrence. The trouble is it's hard to put one's finger on exactly how prevalent plagiarism, duplication, improper citation, and other less tractable taboos have become in scientific publishing. It's even harder to unearth the reactions of the interested parties -- original and secondary authors and journal editors. A new survey appearing in this week's issue of __Science__ does just that. linkurl:Harold Garner,;http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/findfac/professional/0,2356,12465,00.html a physicist-turned-biochemist and software engineer, along with colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, identified more than 200 pairs of manuscripts that had "signs of potential plagiarism" from the millions of biomedical research citations listed on MEDLINE, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's bibliographic database. Garner then contacted and compiled responses from anonymous plagiarizers, those they plagiarized, and the journal editors who published the manuscripts. "What...

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