- Case
Plagiarism
On review of a paper for Journal A, a referee recognised entire paragraphs of the manuscript from two published review articles that he himself had written. Both reviews were referenced in the manuscript with regard to particular topics, but the verbatim paragraphs were not attributed to the previously published reviews. The editor rejected the paper and pointed out the apparent plagiarism to… - Case
Nuisance author
…You can listen to the podcast of this case from the menu on the right An author submitted a paper which went through the review process and was rejected. He is now sending abusive emails to me, the editor, and spamming an enormous number of people in his research area and the government (he even tried to contact the royal office) as a protest. He continues to submit his paper (over 20… - Case
Dispute over plagiarism
A review article, written by two authors, was spontaneously submitted to Journal X and accepted for publication after favourable comments from the referees. A few weeks later, and before the paper had been published, Author A withdrew authorship because he could not guarantee the originality of the text. Apparently, Author A had recently discovered that another review paper, co-authored with… - Case
Should editors get involved in authorship disputes?
…interpretation of the data. This letter was forwarded to the authors, who acknowledged that the American author had highlighted some major errors which they corrected in a further revision of their paper. But they disputed his interpretation of their data. The Finnish authors acknowledged the advice given by the US author, but did not declare any financial input from him. They denied that he should have been… - Case
A surgical series that is scientifically meaningless, has no ethics committee approval, and does not mention informed consent
A study from a foreign author was submitted in which he describes a series of patients whom he has operated on to treat their migraine. The operation is something that he has devised himself and consists of suturing a superficial temporal artery. The surgeon has operated on over 1200 patients. There is no clear definition of how the diagnosis was made and no control group. There is no mention… - Case
Conflict between two authors
An article was published in a journal. Seven months later an email was received from an author declaring that he was invited by the lead author of the article to help with statistical analysis and had made significant contributions to the paper. To his surprise, he realised that the article was published and he was not listed as a coauthor. The editor asked the complaining author… - Case
Patients with vitiligo treated with anti-fungal drugs by a general practitioner
A letter was submitted for publication in which a general practitioner described how he treated patients with vitiligo “simultaneously with an anti-fungal and anti-bacterial medicament over a prolonged period.”He has done this because:“As is now known,a fungus resembles the human being genetically and there is a possibility that a fungus can hide in the melanocyte (analogically as is being… - Case
The discontented and abandoned contributor
A paper was rejected after peer review. Some time later a researcher wrote to say that he had been involved at the beginning of the study, but had withdrawn his name because he felt the study was defective. He had heard that the study had been submitted for publication, and thought it better that the editors were made aware of his doubts before publication rather than afterwards. As the paper… - Case
Authorship conflict
Author A contacted our journal following publication of a manuscript claiming that he was the rightful author. We asked the author for proof and he said that he had all of the data concerning the patient because he received the operative specimen and made the diagnosis. Author A said he also collaborated in writing the article with author B and hence was surprised that neither his name nor his… - Case
Retraction or correction?
…X. I could not find similar information for the institute of Dr Y (I later learned that Dr Y is the president of that university). I presented the evidence I had received and requested an explanation. Dr X contacted me to say that he had started to investigate the issue a few weeks earlier (presumably after being contacted by one of the other journals). He said that it appeared that all… - Case
Disagreement between a reviewer and an author
We sent a paper to a reviewer, who suggested that we should reject the paper, principally because he thought it “virtually identical to a paper in press by the same authors”. We rejected the paper with these comments. The author came back to us saying that he did not believe that he had had a fair review of his paper because, he thought, the reviewer had a conflict of interest. He wrote:… - Case
The case of a physician in private practice offering an experimental intervention
A physician in private practice wrote to our journal asking if we were interested in a paper discussing his experience of offering a novel intravenous therapy to his patients. He hoped we wouldn’t discriminate against him for being an author in private practice. He had given this therapy to nine patients with a variety of acute and chronic illnesses, including himself. The physician says that… - News
Obituary: Patrick Barron, COPE Council member
…poorly for a little while. Patrick was an active and committed member of the Facilitation & Integrity subcommittee and he was always very thoughtful with his contributions. Patrick was born in Scotland but based in Japan for the past 4 decades where he pioneered the idea of medical communications centres, and of in-house support for medical writing and the flow of information from inside… - Case
Retraction of article from 1994
Professor A and professor B has been in a dispute over a certain type of treatment for over 15 years. Professor A has accused professor B of killing a patient while he was (in professor A’s view) doing research on the patient without consent. Professor B has accused professor A of research and publication misconduct because he published a paper in journal X in 1994 that included a selected… - Case
Plagiarism of published paper
My subeditor handling this case told me he had found similarities with the protocol of a paper published elsewhere. The subeditor decided to send the paper for review to one of the authors of this published paper. The reviewer reported that the manuscript had the same figures and conclusions as a second paper he had published. All figures and the conclusions of the manuscript were the same as…