Suspect author

Author A has published approximately 150 original articles since ~1994, with ~100 on one particular topic. Since some of these events were up to 16 years ago, and there are no formal records from then relating to these studies, the only information we have is the memory of the editors of the affected journals in post at the time. According to their accounts, suspicions were aroused over the validity of the data, in particular the similarity between baseline data of some of the different studies. When author A was pressed to provide raw data, he stopped responding and stopped submitting papers to the specialty journals, switching to general journals where he continues to publish. The editor of one specialty journal raised concerns with the author’s institution (in another country) approximately 12 years ago; it responded saying it saw no reason to investigate further. A letter, published in one of the specialty journals in 2000 by an independent researcher, asked the question “Why are author A et al’s data so nice?”, pointing out that the probability of such results occurring by chance were infinitesimally small, but as far as we know there have been no formal investigations of author A’s work

Following an April 2010 editorial in one of the specialty journals about research fraud in general, that mentioned this particular author by name, a correspondent raised the lack of investigation into author A, stating that his update of a systematic review was being hampered by the (suspect) influence of author A’s work in this area. The current editor-in-chief of that journal contacted the current editors of seven other affected specialty journals, who until this point were largely unaware of the problem, or its extent, having not been in post at the time the papers were submitted to their journals. We have since been discussing the problem and possible courses of action. The points raised are:

(1) Regarding the older papers:

(i) the journals themselves do not have the ability to mount an investigation;

(ii) it is unlikely that an investigator, bona fide or not, will still have original data from the older studies;

(iii) it is unlikely that author A’s institution will be interested in investigating studies so old, and we think he might have moved universities since then;

(iv) currently we do not have any firm data of wrongdoing, just suspicions. Options for gathering more data include asking the original correspondent and the systematic reviewer to provide a more formal commentary, although we have not done that yet. Meanwhile, one of the editors has gathered data on all author A’s studies: there are 135 in which author A is the first author, reporting almost 12,000 randomised patients in 17 years. Most are with one of the same three co-authors. The largest group of papers (by topic) are all very similar in design, with very little variability in baseline placebo event rates, and generally similar results although the outcome measures differ and there are one or two ‘surprising’ (at best) findings. One particular drug features in 71 studies. Dropouts are hardly ever reported.

(2) Regarding the newer papers:

(i) these may be easier to investigate since the data should still exist;

(ii) we could contact the editors of the non-specialty journals (there are many, publishing just 1-2 of A’s articles each) to alert them but the problem of having only suspicions remains (compounded by the relatively large number of journals, each with a small number of papers);

(iii) we could ask a respected academic in author A’s country to make discreet enquiries of author A’s co-investigators, some of whom may not realise what is going on, or they may have concerns themselves. However, this could be a delicate situation for such a person.
We would welcome COPE’s advice on how best to proceed.