- Case
The single authored, unbelievable, randomised controlled trial
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 a… - Case
The incomplete systematic 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. The reviewer… - Case
Alleged plagiarism
Journal A published a review paper. About a year later, the author of a paper published in 1997 in Journal B wrote to say that he had come across the paper in Journal A during a literature search. He pointed out that parts of this paper were virtually identical with his paper in Journal B. Although the author of the article in Journal A had made one reference to his article, this was only to on… - Case
The cheating medical students
An editorial was published on cheating at medical school. The medical school concerned had allowed a cheating student to graduate. The article attracted over 100 responses, many of them in support of the decision. But an anonymous email response from two students claimed that an exam paper had been seen in the dean’s office prior to an examination and that some 60 per cent of the students had s… - Case
Possibly unethical plastic surgery
A paper was submitted in which a plastic surgeon described what we thought was a very strange and unconventional operation. We asked the opinion of another plastic surgeon, who described the procedure as “very dangerous. ” He said that there was no consistent evidence that this operation could possibly work. The operation had been conducted in a private clinic, and we are sufficiently concerned… - Case
Clinical malpractice
A case report was submitted in which the authors described a patient who had a poor outcome, and where many mistakes had been made during treatment. The authors of the paper were from a tertiary care centre. The poor practice had happened in a secondary care centre. One of the reviewers of the paper thought that the level of practice was so poor that action should be taken. The other reviewer t… - Case
Duplicate publication: how much is too much?
A paper (hypothesis) was submitted and sent out for peer review. One of the reviewers pointed out that large parts of the paper had been published, almost word for word, in a previous publication not cited by the authors. We rejected the paper voicing concern about the previous publication of largely similar material. The authors have appealed against our decision to reject the paper and said t… - Case
Authorship dispute
Two manuscripts were received by Journal X, from author A. Both were accepted and sent to the publisher. On receipt of the galley proofs, the corresponding author removed the name of the last author from both manuscripts. Shortly before the page proofs arrived, the journal editors received a request that author A be allowed to remove author B from the authors’ list and instead make a suitable a… - Case
Plagiarism or redundant publication?
A manuscript was submitted with a covering letter clearly stating the originality and unpublished nature of the work. The authors stated that the results had already been orally presented at a meeting the previous year. Before sending the manuscript for review the editors discovered that the manuscript contained 60% of the Materials and Methods text and 90% of the Results section of a previousl… - Case
The undeclared competing interest
An author wrote us a letter for publication on the importance of doing research on a long established drug. He did not declare any competing interest, but we were later informed that he was conducting a trial of the drug funded by a pharmaceutical company. We approached him and asked him to declare his competing interest. Have we done the right thing? Should we do more than simply ask him to de… - Case
A paper which discloses confidential material
In March 2000 author A submitted a research letter to journal X, on behalf of a national screening programme. He also submitted a commissioned editorial to journal Y, relating to the same subject. At the same time, author A sent copies of both articles to B, a recognised authority on the subject. He made it clear that they were confidential and in press and asked for some information on a test… - Case
Duplicate publication based on conference proceedings
A paper was submitted to Journal A and concern was raised by a reviewer that a substantial part of the paper had been previously published in two other journals. This point was taken up with the authors, who denied any lack of originality and maintained that their manuscript contained previously unpublished data. They did admit that part of the work had been presented as an invited lecture at a… - Case
Retrospective correction: how far back do we go?
In 1990 a case report was published in which it was alleged that the use of a particular endotracheal tube had led to tracheal damage, requiring the child to have a tracheostomy and a tracheal reconstruction. This paper was from a specialist surgical unit, and a letter was subsequently received from the paediatricians who had cared for the baby at the referring hospital before and after the tra… - Case
Scientifically meaningless research without consent
A private practitioner submitted a paper in which he had treated a series of patients without ethics committee approval. Many people would regard the treatment used as scientifically dubious. Furthermore, some of the patients had been treated with increasing doses of a new treatment that randomised controlled trials have shown to work. In effect, therefore, the study was a dosage study of the n… - Case
Duplicate submission of a paper
A paper concerning the prevention of coronary disease in primary care was received. This examined the practical consequences of following some recent national recommendations and suggested that the recommendations were unrealistic. A few weeks later another paper from the same authors was submitted, which the editor who first read it thought was probably an inadvertent duplicate submission of t… - Case
The dubious scientist
A scientist wrote to a medical journal asking if it was interested in receiving an editorial from him. The editorial would criticise current HIV vaccine research. The scientist is the senior partner of a technology company, and he printed his company’s website in his communication to the journal. The home page of the website advertises a patented toxin, and the site claims that this toxin can “… - Case
Reviewer submitting for publication material that had been removed from a paper he had reviewed
The paper was sent to two reviewers and published after modification. Between acceptance and publication, some modelling that had been included in the original paper was removed. Some time after publication one of the people who had reviewed the study submitted a letter for publication that included this model. The original authors were rather surprised by this and they sent us a letter pointin… - Case
Research involving unethical animal experimentation
A manuscript was submitted which described an intervention that partially corrected the results in stress injury in an animal model. Two reviewers drew attention to the fact that the stress model used in these experiments would not be ethically acceptable in the UK. The editor raised this with the senior author, who responded promptly stating that the work had already been presented at an inter… - Case
Developing novel approaches to improve the assessment of absolute risk among patients with cardiovascular disease
The possibility of dual publication of two papers with almost identical titles and an identical list of authors emerged in the course of appointing a short-listing panel for an NHS award. The potential duplication was spotted in the publications list of an applicant for the award, who was not the first author on either paper. The editor of Journal A, in which one of the papers was in press, was… - Case
Clinical misconduct(?), incidentally discovered
An author submitted a speculative article offering a new explanation for the aetiology of premenstrual syndrome, and a new suggestion for its treatment. The paper was wholly based on a priori reasoning, rather than evidence. It was rejected. The authors appealed, citing as evidence in favour of publishing their paper that they had had successful results treating two patients with the proposed m…