Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science
I have encountered something similar to this for a submission that I reviewed for a scientific journal.  I will not list any names or give much detail past those generalities, but I pointed out that the authors were misusing a particular technical term. In my review I defined the term and explained it briefly.  I asked the authors to revise their submission accordingly.  The paper was not bad but the authors did not know English very well, so it was quite difficult to read.  That was its main problem.  However, when I received the revised submission, I noticed that the authors plagiarized my definition and explanation almost word for word (from my <i>confidential</i> review). I pointed this out to the editors and they said to just reject the paper with the stated reason being plagiarism, which I did.  The journal ended up rejecting the article, but I discovered it a few years later in a different journal.  The plagiarized section remained, but the authors swabbed out a lot my phrases for these kind of &quot;tortured phrases&quot;.<p>That said, the authors did not fabricate their research (as far as I can tell).  They just did not know English well, so it was easier to just copy things that you know are phrased well than to learn to write English well.  As the saying goes, do not attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance or laziness. That does not excuse it but it makes it more understandable.<p>I agree with the article that this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.  There are likely many more lesser evils being committed with similar tools that are just much more difficult to spot.  I would not have noticed my particular example if I were not a reviewer for the paper, for example.  It makes me wonder how big the problem really is.