A biologist was shocked to find his name was mentioned several times in a scientific paper, which references papers that simply don’t exist.
A biologist was shocked to find his name was mentioned several times in a scientific paper, which references papers that simply don’t exist.
Sure, let’s make this about China when 4 out of 5 of the authors credited for the original article are from Africa.
While only one of which was from China. This doesn’t even address the fact that the republished paper came from Mawcha which describes a study on millipedes in… Africa. Guess what, Wenxiang Yang wasn’t even credited in this version. Was your reply carelessness or dishonesty and lack of integrity? I don’t care where the misinformation and carelessness comes from as long as we’re making efforts to stop it, but this is highly ironic.
In academic publishing you look at the order of authors and the author contribution statement to determine the hierarchy of the research group. In this case the Chinese author is the most senior, and was the member who approved the submission. In such niche areas as this most senior academics will know most of the relevant authors and literature. Thus carelessness is too kind a word where negligence and lack of integrity would be more fitting.
Further, with regards to the primary author my assertion still stands, it was not carelessness but rather brazen academic misconduct, as demonstrated by the resubmission (not republication as you suggest).
FWIW, last author is not automatically most senior. That is the way some fields do it, but others do it strictly by amount contributed to the paper. I have been both first and last author on different papers during my first post-doc.