2001

A paper was rejected on the reviewer’s recommendation. The editor met one of the senior authors at a conference and out of politeness apologised for rejecting his paper. He was surprised to learn that the senior author had no knowledge of this paper and that the corresponding author had written papers using the senior author’s name without his knowledge in the past. This prompted the editor to write to all the authors.

A manuscript was received from a group of authors who had not submitted to the journal in question before. The review was extremely critical and the paper was rejected. In a covering letter the reviewer said that not only was the experimental design flawed, but he was also convinced that the experiment described had never been done.

A paper was submitted describing observations in patients with symptoms confined to one area of the body. The paper was sent out to two expert reviewers, one of whom produced an unfavourable report and suggested rejecting the manuscript. The second reviewer, however, reported promptly to the editor that he knew this manuscript had also been submitted to another journal. The editor wrote to the authors to confirm whether this was indeed the case.

A journal editor received a letter from a pharmaceutical company questioning a large study reported in his journal. The study, carried out in two different countries, involved treatment with a relatively new formulation in a strength of 2%. The pharmaceutical company were concerned because the formulation was only sold in strengths of 5%, and in individual treatment packs sufficient for a single application only, for stability and sterility reasons.

A study was submitted that required the active participation of nearly 500 patients from a local hospital. The paper made no mention of ethics committee approval or informed consent by the patients, and an enquiry revealed that the authors had not obtained these. The chief executive at the hospital was alerted. Have the editors done the right thing?

A doctor submitted a letter for publication describing a strange theory. This theory included treating patients with a particular chronic disease with just a foodstuff. The letter was completely unsuitable for publication in the journal and was also rather disordered. The editor was worried that the doctor might be putting patients at risk, and therefore notified the national regulatory agency. Was this the right thing to do?

A journal published a paper several years ago that subsequently had to be retracted, on the advice of the university where the work had been conducted. The university provided no further details but promised to do so. Two years later they confirmed that the paper should be retracted, but gave no information on exactly what had gone wrong and whether anybody had been punished. Subsequently, one of the authors wrote to the journal expressing concern that no fuller explanation had been offered.

A randomised controlled trial submitted to a journal showed that a nutritional supplement could dramatically improve one aspect of the health of the elderly. The study was a follow up to a trial reported in an international journal eight years previously. Why had there been so much delay? Why were the results reported in this study not reported in the previous study? There was only one author and, if true, the results were extremely dramatic. The paper was sent for statistical review.

A systematic review on the effectiveness of a comparatively new group of drugs was submitted. The review had originally been for an independent body, so the submission was an abridged version. A reviewer pointed out that the review made no reference to a Cochrane review and the trials it cited, which had been published some four months before submission of the paper to the journal.