Enlarge By Chung Sung-Jun, Getty Images South Korea's stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk speaks to reporters at the Seoul National University on December 23, 2005 in Seoul. Woo-Suk resigned from his position as a university professor after his school stated that he had damaged the scientific community by fabricating the results of at least nine of 11 stem-cell lines he claimed to have created. Scientists don't often turn the microscope on themselves, and when they do, the results sometimes prove disappointing. "It's just too easy to cut and paste these days," says Harold Garner of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, an expert of scientific plagiarism. In a report in the current journal Science, his team lists excuses offered by "potential" plagiarists, authors of studies in which the text was, on average, 86.2% similar to previously-published work. Last year, the same team reported in Nature that a sample of the federal government's PubMed database of studies suggests about 1 in 200 papers is plagiarized. "Over time, the responses just got crazier and crazier," says Tara Long, Garner's colleague at Texas Southwestern. "There's every excuse in the book, from 'my hard drive crashed' to 'the other guy did it.' " The team used a computer program they wrote called "eTBLAST" (available online) to detect about 9,000 suspicious duplicates from PubMed. The team then sent out 163 questionnaires to potential plagiarists and authors of copied works on the list, and to editors of the journals that published the studies. They received 144 replies. "The reactions by the respondents were intense and diverse," notes the study, with 93% of the plagiarism victims unaware and "appreciative." Potential plagiarists were "more varied" in their responses: •28% denied plagiarism •35% admitted wrongdoing and expressed remorse •22% were from co-authors "claiming no involvement in the writing of the manuscript." •Others claimed they didn't know their names were on the studies. "It was a joke, a bad game, an unconscious bet between friends, 10 years ago that such things ... happened. I deeply regret," was one duplicate paper author's response. "That's my favorite," Long says. The team found the regretful jokester had eight other duplicate papers and was the head of an ethics committee in his country. "The truth is that it's an equal-opportunity offense," with researchers from all over the world implicated, including a case at Harvard, Long says. However, China and Japan had slightly elevated rates, and some responses complained of lax plagiarism standards overseas. "The most alarming thing was papers that could affect doctors and patients," Long says. About 42% of the duplicates also contained botched data, calculations or images. Doctors make decisions about treatment, and researchers make decisions about experiments based on the scientific literature, adds Garner, making fudged data in plagiarized studies a concern. "(My) major concern is that false data will lead to changes in surgical practice regarding procedures," was one response from an original paper's author. The biggest plagiarism concern is self-plagiarism, says Garner, researchers who copy their work again and again, republishing old data in varied journals. The team found those cases about eight times more common than authors ripping off other researchers. "Plainly, scientists are human and they get into desperate situations," he says, likely due to the "publish or perish" requirement for keeping a job at many schools. A survey in Naturelast June led by Sandra Titus of the federal Office of Research Integrity, which polices federally-funded research, found about 3% of researchers observed scientific misconduct each year, largely faked data but also plagiarism. High-profile cases, such as stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-Suk's faked data or the Bell Lab's prodigy Jan Hendrik Schön's discredited results, have rocked science labs in the last decade. "Although our numbers can sound like a lot, you have to remember there are 18 million papers in PubMed and more than 95% of studies are painstakingly high-quality efforts," Garner says. "We just need the culture of science to have the same high standards everywhere." Some potential plagiarists' responses to the questionnaire (from Science): •" I was not aware of the fact I am required to take such permission." •"There are probably only 'x' amount of word combinations that could lead to 'y' amount of statements. ... I have no idea why the pieces are similar, except that I am sure I do not have a good enough memory —and it is certainly not photographic — to have allowed me to have 'copied' his piece .... I did in fact review (the earlier article) for whatever journal it was published in." •"I know my careless mistake resulted in a severe ethical issue. I am really disappointed with myself as a researcher." Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more