- Case
Possibly unethical report on the safety and efficacy of a minor operation
Two companion papers from a single author, a paediatric surgeon working in a secondary/tertiary unit, were received. He had performed the same minor operation on 420 babies and 60 children over two years. His paper purported to report safety and efficacy. From the hanging committee’s own knowledge, and after checking with a surgical board member, a paediatric surgeon might be expected to do fou… - Case
Dual publication
It was brought to the attention of Journal A that a paper published in 2002 was similar (title, summary, introduction, case, survey, results, discussion) to a paper published in Journal B. Journal A is a very technical journal that reports conference proceedings and is not peer reviewed. Furthermore, Journal B had received a letter from the authors of another paper, published in a very prestigi… - Case
Order of authors changing between a submitted manuscript and a published paper
A paper was submitted to an online journal with the order of authors A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. After review, the manuscript was accepted for publication, subject to the authors making some minor changes. While making the formatting changes, the submitting author changed the order of the authors to B, A, C, D, E, F, G. This change was not noticed by the editors and the manuscript was published on… - Case
Contacting Research Ethics Committees with concerns over studies
A paper was submitted, detailing a small overseas trial of a drug treatment of a politically controversial disease. The treatment was moderately toxic. The paper was seen by two referees (A and B), who had considerable criticisms of the methodology used. Comments were also received from C, who was invited to review but refused, because s/he did not want his/her name known to the authors under t… - Case
The author not affiliated to an institution
A contribution about training in family medicine training was published in a journal. Subsequently, a letter from the chairman of the department of family medicine at the university with which the author claimed to have been affiliated, said that the author did not work there. The author was asked for an explanation. He replied that he had done it involuntarily and that he would be happy for an… - Case
Arm twisting an editor
A paper was accepted, pending a revised version, which made use of official government information on reported health reactions in a particular age group over a 20 year period. Two of the authors were academics and two worked for the government’s health department. When the revision arrived, the names of the latter two authors were missing. One of them explained that they could not reach agreem… - Case
Arm twisting an editor
A paper was accepted, pending a revised version, which made use of official government information on reported health reactions in a particular age group over a 20 year period. Two of the authors were academics and two worked for the government’s health department. When the revision arrived, the names of the latter two authors were missing. One of them explained that they could not reach agreem… - Case
An unethical ethics committee?
A paper was submitted, detailing a double blind placebo controlled food challenge to a group of children. The reviewer considered the study unethical because he was concerned consent could not have been properly informed. He believed there was a very small risk of anaphylaxis—even death—and had this been explained to the parents, they would not have consented. The editor considered that the rev… - Case
Consent from relatives for genetic tests
A paper described a problem of two women who wanted their fetuses to be tested for a genetic condition, but where in both cases their partners had refused to give consent. Should the journal publish such a paper without obtaining consent from the partners? The editors think not, but the authors are unconvinced. … _ It would be impossible to completely anonymise the case even if mention was… - Case
Late reinterpretation and a new author
Authors A, B, and C submitted a paper about the behaviour of a group of doctors. All the authors came from one institution, where the doctors’ behaviour had been studied. Author A did the data collection under the supervision of author B, who was obviously responsible for the design of the study and acted as guarantor. Author C was an official at the institution. The journal accepted it after r… - Case
New commercial cure for a common but incurable problem, role of sponsor
A randomised controlled trial was submitted, showing that a new treatment, which is a combination of familiar compounds, is highly beneficial in a common but largely untreatable problem. The authors came from several different countries and included people from the company that manufactures the treatment. The editors had great difficulty finding reviewers for the paper as many simply returned i… - 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 t… - Case
Duplicate submission to two journals and previous duplicate publication uncovered
An identical paper was submitted simultaneously to two journals. Both editors had received a signed statement from the authors declaring that their paper had not been submitted elsewhere. Duplicate submission became evident only when the associate editor of one of the journals was sent the paper to review by the editor of the other journal. The author also cited two papers within this submissio… - Case
Duplicate publication
Journal A received a letter from a reader claiming that a figure in a paper published in the journal had appeared in various guises in three other learned publications over the course of 12 years. The origin of the figure was disputed and the reader believed the original source was not the authors. The authors of the paper in Journal A were asked to comment. They refuted the claim. The primary… - Case
New surgical technique without evidence of either ethics committee approval or patient consent
A study was submitted in which the authors describe a new surgical technique, which includes radiofrequency coagulation, to treat complete prolapse of the rectum. They say in their paper that: “in the treatment of complete rectal prolapse, no operation stands out in comparison to the others.” The authors do not seem to have received either ethics committee approval or consent from the patients.… - Case
Referee with a conflict of interest
A paper was received by Journal A in August and sent to Dr X for comment. Dr X advised that the paper was not original in the light of a publication by his own research group earlier in the year in another journal, and that furthermore, this study contained over twice as many patients as the paper the journal had sent to him to referee. The journal decided to reject the paper on the strength of… - Case
Difficulty in obtaining patient consent
An article describing three similar cases was submitted to Journal A. The author was asked to provide evidence of the patients’ consent for their details to be used in the paper. The author replied that all the patients’ personal details in the report had been anonymised and that signed consent would destroy this. Also, two of the three patients had since died and correspondence could be distre… - Case
Stolen data and omission from the authorship list
An author wrote to the editor of a specialist journal, indicating that a paper had been published without appropriate recognition of himself as an author. In his letter he stated that he had contributed more than 50% of the cases reported. The first author had “not only stolen my data and published it without my consent, but also omitted my name. ” The editor has written to the authors of the p… - Case
Plagiarism
The reviewer of a paper contacted Journal A to point out that a significant proportion of a review paper, on occupational stress measures, was a near verbatim copy of a longer review in a journal of a different, though related, speciality. The editor of journal A confirmed this was the case. Not only were the descriptions of the measures lifted from the previous publication, but also comments a… - Case
Randomised controlled trial without ethics committee approval
A paper reported a randomised controlled trial relating to a common investigational procedure. There are two different postural positions into which a patient may be put while the procedure is carried out, and individual operators may have a preference for one or the other, but both are in routine use. The purpose of the randomised controlled trial was to find out whether the procedure is techn…