Investigation Begins in the Korean Plagiarism Case

An investigation has been initiated in the case of suspected plagiarism first reported on CardioBrief. The Editor-in-Chief of Korean Circulation Journal, where the suspected article was published, wrote me to say that the article is now being investigated by the publishing committee of the Korean Society of Cardiology and that an additional investigation has been requested from the Ethics Commission of  the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors.

As we wrote last month, an article in Korean Circulation Journal appears to plagiarize from a similar article in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC). In 2009, Franz Messerli, a well-known hypertension expert at St Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, and Gurusher Panjrath, at Johns Hopkins Hospital, published a Viewpoint and Commentary in JACC: The J-Curve Between Blood Pressure and Coronary Artery Disease or Essential Hypertension: Exactly How Essential?  Less than two years later, two Korean physicians, Chang Gyu Park and Ju Young Lee, published an article with striking similarities to the JACC article: The Significance of the J-Curve in Hypertension and Coronary Artery Diseases.

Here is the relevant text from Dr. Youn’s email message. Although he is clearly not a native English speaker, his message is clear:

We’ve found the possibility of plagiarism, although the article was published through an appropriate evaluation with peer-review. Currently, we have begun to investigate and reveal the truth of the case-under the discussion in Publishing Committee of KSC(Korean Society of Cardiology) while requesting examination at the Ethics Commission of Kamje(Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors). In accordance of the result, we’ll cope with the situation.