James BenjaminMay 4, 2025

So, here is something I noticed after not really looking at Pubpeer for over a year:

https://pubpeer.com/publications/D621D1C36C4A4717314D56604F12A3

The person who posted on Pubpeer found more evidence of Brad Bushman self-plagiarising in an editorial article published in Current Opinion in Psychology (Bushman, 2018). That is troubling.

PubPeer - Editorial overview: Aggression and violence

There are comments on PubPeer for publication: Editorial overview: Aggression and violence (2018)

Show threadJames BenjaminMay 4, 2025
Why do I find this latest bit of digging into self-plagiarism troubling? This would mark the second of five articles authored or co-authored by Bushman in a special issue on aggression for that journal - an issue in which Bushman was the guest editor. The first article to be flagged was the one coauthored with me that was fairly promptly retracted - something I'm not proud of, but which I won't hide either.
Show threadJames Benjamin

The question I have is if the coauthors of the other three articles in that special issue of Current Opinion in Psychology need to look over their shoulders as well.

Here are the links to those remaining articles:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.03.034

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.04.010

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.03.014

Where there's smoke, there is often fire. Just sayin'.

May 4, 2025 at 7:39pmWeb
Show threadJames BenjaminMay 4, 2025

For those wanting more background, here was a blog post from September 2018 I published with my take of the events that led to my own retraction experience. At the time, posting anything publicly was highly risky as Bushman was obsessively following my blog for any posts that might be seen as putting him in a deservedly bad light.

https://ajbenjaminjrbeta.blogspot.com/2018/09/research-confidential-lets-just-get.html

Research Confidential: Let's Just Get This Out of the Way

In many respects, I am a flawed messenger when it comes to understanding what business as usual means in my corner of the scientific univers...

Show threadJames BenjaminMay 4, 2025
One pattern you will notice in the articles Bushman authored or coauthored for that special edition of Current Opinion in Psychology: Bushman claimed VU University as one of his affiliations, even though VU University did not claim him as anything more than a contract worker (as Elson documented in a timeline regarding another problematic paper) and as I would find out through an email chain I unwittingly got included on (and in which I learned VU had been asking him to stop for some time).