In February, Steffen Barra Googled his name. A clinician working in the field of forensic psychiatry, he was in the habit of periodically checking if anything negative had been written about him. What he didn’t expect to find was a plagiarized paper with his name attached to it.
Barra, a researcher at the University of Saarland in Germany, told Retraction Watch the 2023 article, “Introducing the Complexities of Forensic Psychology: Decoding the Mind Behind the Crime,” plagiarized from an information page from a company offering online courses.
Concerned he might be blamed for the misconduct, Barra immediately contacted the publisher, Hilaris. A company representative responded to Barra the same day, February 29, with one phrase: “We will remove the link.” But Hilaris’ author page for Barra is still live, as is the link to the PDF of the article.
Barra also reached out to Hjördis Czesnick, head of Office of the German Research Ombudsman, for help investigating the case. Czesnick told us the journal in which the article appeared, Abnormal and Behavioural Psychology, is “known for dubious practices” and is “probably fake.”
