2006

An online post-publication literature evaluation service aiming to highlight the best papers in medicine, received an evaluation of a basic science study funded by an NIHM grant. The evaluator declared in his/her competing interests that he/she is the director of a project that included the evaluated study as one of its components. The overall project was funded by an NIHM grant and paid the salary of the study’s first author. The evaluator did not supervise the study or write the paper. As competing interests were declared, the editor decided to publish the evaluation.

The editor presented the case in an editorial meeting, raising the following concerns:

Can we accept this evaluation considering the evaluator is the director of the overall project and may gain from promoting this study’s results?

The meeting made the following decision:

As competing interests were declared, the meeting felt we could go ahead with publishing the evaluation.

Competing interests declaration:
I am the director of the grant that paid some of the expenses for the conduct of this study, including the first author’s salary. I did not supervise the work or write the paper, as you can see I am not a co-author. If you look at the paper, it indicates the financial support of a NIMH grant. I am the director of the overall project that included a component directed by the first author that conducted this study.

Would you have taken a different course of action? In particular, do you think it was right to publish the evaluation and is the declaration of interests sufficient in its current form?

Seeing that approximately 1% of evaluators declare any competing interests when probably 90% (again, a rough guess) have interests with regards to the articles they evaluate, would you have any suggestions on how we could improve the situation?

We had a presubmission enquiry from a group regarding a paper reporting what seemed to be an uncontrolled trial in infertile women who were given soft tissue physical therapy. The authors wanted to know if we would be interested in their paper; if it was a problem that the trial had not been registered (because, they claimed, it was not a trial as no control group was used); and if it was a problem that ethical approval had not been gained (apparently, because the intervention was not a “medical” one).

We replied that they should have registered the trial (and could do so retrospectively) in line with new WHO policies on all interventional studies and that the Helsinki Declaration would require ethical approval for research which examines the effects of an experimental procedure on human health. We asked the authors to tell us which ethics body would provide oversight for their research. The authors thanked us but did not provide the information we asked for.

We were worried that human research had been done without ethical approval and tried to find out more about the research study. (Because this was only a presubmission enquiry, not very much information was included.) Three of the authors were located at a private company in the US carrying out physical therapy and did not seem to be qualified doctors. The affiliation of one author was not clear. Two other authors were qualified doctors. The research seemed to have been carried out at the private company on women referred by themselves or by doctors.

We are not sure who to write to with our concerns. We can write to the medical board(s) and hospitals for the two doctors who are involved but have no idea what body is responsible overall for such a study. We cannot identify an ethics body at the private company.

Who is the company accountable to with respect to the human research it carries out?

An online post-publication literature evaluation service aiming to highlight the best articles in medicine has received evaluation of articles published in supplement issues of journals. Given that many supplements are funded by pharmaceutical companies, should we have a different policy on how to handle such evaluations? If so, what suggestions do you have?

Author X recently published a paper in Journal Y and has asked for the paper to be retracted. The reason given is that part of the data presented in the paper was published without the permission of a colleague, who is not listed as an author of the paper (and probably does not qualify for full authorship). This colleague is now seeking to publish the data in another journal and it is implied that Author X is also a co-author on the second paper (which has been submitted, not yet accepted). During correspondence with Journal Y, Author X has confirmed that the data presented in the published paper are 'accurate and reproducible in all respects' and the conclusions of the paper are not affected. Author X acknowledges that this is a dispute regarding the use of data without permission, and understands that retraction is a serious matter. However rather than publish a correction, Author X prefers to retract the published paper in order to maintain a good relationship with colleagues. The decision to retract was reached through discussion with the researchers involved, and has not been requested by the authors' institution. As far as Journal Y knows, the institution has not been involved. Can and should Journal X refuse to publish a retraction on these grounds?

This is regarding a case of suspected plagiarism in our journal. I as editor have received a manuscript which was published by me in our January 2006 issue and on subsequent follow up after availability of plagiarism detection software the manuscript - a review article - seems to have a lot of similarities to another article written in a website and though the language is not the same -the flow of the article and the subheadings and the text is too similar.It was pointed out to me by my associate editor.There have been no complains yet but does that mean one  should not investigate?Is the editor entitled to conduct investigations without complaints.Can plagiarism detection software be applied retrospectively?What action can be taken if only ideas are copied in the same sequence though the article is not copied verbatim.The photographs seem to be same but captions different.Should this be investigated further?How?

We had a paper submitted reporting results of a randomized trial. The trial seemed to look at immune responses in lung fluid in participants receiving either a particular vaccine or placebo. We got a copy of the trial protocol before going to peer review as per our normal editorial policy, and made sure the trial was registered.

One reviewer pointed out major discrepancies (principally in sample size and outcome measures) between the trial report, and the protocol document and registration record. We asked the authors to revise and to explain why these discrepancies had happenned. The authors explained that that the protocol and registry record originally sent were actually for a totally different study, and they had now separately registered the trial reported here. They also sent a new protocol document apparently now corresponding to the study in question.

This revised paper then went to re-review and the reviewers were happy. However in house journal staff were still worried about differences between the new protocol and the study reported in the paper. The new protocol did not seem to describe the conduct of a trial but rather a case-control study. There were also differences in the number and timing of invasive procedures being used to assess outcomes in the study, and there seemed to be more of these in the study report than in the protocol.

We went back to the authors to say we were very concerned about this and would need their explanation. If they weren't able to provide an explanation then we would alert their ethics committee.

The authors wrote back to us, cc'ing the heads of their two research ethics committees, to say that indeed, the manuscript did not match the two different protocols they sent us. They explained that there was a fault in the manuscript and not in the work carried out. They explained that the paper they sent us did not describe a single study but rather parts of 4 different approved studies taking place over the same time frame and being carried out on overlapping study populations. They then detailed aspects of these studies and explained that the different interventions, assessment of outcomes, etc, that were reported in the paper indeed corresponded to sections of approved protocols. (Although, no single protocol explained all of the aspects reported in the paper).

At this point we are very concerned about the following things:

(1)  

Individual participants being recruited into many different ongoing studies - were the ethics committees aware of this and is it wise?

(2)  

Selective reporting of findings. Presumably the main outcomes for the protocol describing a trial (ie the one involving randomization to vaccine or placebo) have gone unreported. Why? We are also very worried about validity of the data and analyses (even to the point of suspecting fabrication, of a sort), because of this level of selectivity.

(3)  

Misrepresentation in the original manuscript. Our assumption when we see the report of a trial is that, unless it is presented as a secondary, follow up, or other type of ancillary or nested analysis, then the report describes all of the main aspects outlined in the approved protocol. This wasn't the case here, but how serious is this? Is it a form of scientific misconduct and if so who should we report it to? (The ethics committee may not care - are there any "rules" that a trial, once approved, has to be published in the form it's approved?)

At this point we are considering rejecting the paper essentially on the grounds of protocol deviations, and sending all relevant documents and correspondence to the ethics committees (who are already aware of the issues raised).

After peer-review, a general medical journal published a household survey of violence following a coup against the country’s elected President. The survey revealed high levels of violence and human rights abuses, only a small minority of which were attributed to supporters of the deposed regime. The manuscript stated that none of the interviewers had political affiliations and the authors declared that they had no conflict of interest.

Within days of publication the Editor was contacted by an expatriate from the country and by a local aid worker who expressed incredulity over the fact that the findings attributed so little of the violence to supporters of the deposed President’s political party, It was also pointed out that one of the authors was acquainted with the deposed President and had previously published pieces under a different name which were supportive of him. Some of these pieces were cited in the manuscript.

The author admitted that she had done this and the co-author, her thesis supervisor, stated that he was aware of these facts and did not consider them a conflict of interest.

Not satisfied by the responses from the authors, the Editor asked the Dean of the authors’ institution to undertake an internal investigation to verify that the data had been coded accurately. Results are expected by the end of 2006.

An article was submitted simultaneously to our journal and another journal (who is a member of COPE) on the same date. Both journals received letters saying that the article had not been submitted to another journal. When they received a favourable response from the other journal, and the article was published, we were informed by the authors that they wished to withdraw the paper from our journal. The authors claim that this was a result of a misunderstanding and poor communication between the authors.
I believe this is a poor excuse and I am not sure that I believe the authors. What do the committee think would be a proper reaction?

An article by a Far Eastern group was published in our journal in November 2005. We were later alerted by an interested reader that the same article, slightly changed, was published in an American journal. I contacted the American journal and the article will now be officially retracted from that journal. Part of the explanation could be poor communication between the authors, but I am not sure this is the whole truth. Two of the authors accept guilt but are now asking that the others not be “punished”.

I would appreciate the committee’s advice on this matter as I have no experience regarding how to react to such situations. What is “the accepted way to react/punish”?

A Middle Eastern author submitted four papers on different subjects at around the same time (two single author, two with other authors). During in-house assessment, it was noted that two of the papers were very similar to previously published papers. Fuller inspection of the complete papers indicated unequivocally that plagiarism had taken place—in one of the papers even the figures have been copied from the published paper. Software was not used. The key was the fact that the plagiarised papers were quite recent and so appeared prominently on Pubmed.

We contacted the author asking him to confirm that the submitted papers do indeed represent original research but received no reply. The papers are now on hold as we contact the head of the institution in question.