- Case
Refusal to give details of a competing interest
A journal published a paper on passive smoking in which the authors failed to declare financial support from the tobacco industry. A subsequent letter highlighted this failure, and the authors responded in a letter in which they offered some explanation, admitting funding from one source. The editor then published an editorial in which he detailed the extensive involvement of this group with th… - Case
Duplicate publication
Sixteen randomly chosen papers were examined from a PubMed search of 370 publications between 1995–2000 by the same author. Two papers were virtually identical, differing only in the form of the introductory paragraph and the list of authors. Neither publication acknowledges the other. Another paper reported a “second ever published case”, and two subsequent papers reported the same “second” ca… - Case
Attempted redundant publication
A group of authors submitted a paper to Journal A, but the editor noticed that it was very similar to a paper already published in Journal B. Neither paper made any mention of the other in the text, references, or the covering letter. The editor of Journal A sent a copy of the submission to the editor of Journal B who compared the two papers and decided there was substantial overlap. More worry… - Case
Duplicate publication
The editor of Journal A drew the attention of the editor of Journal B to two articles published in their journals which were remarkably similar. The editor of Journal A believed that certain passages of text suggested duplicate publication of results. The dates of publication indicated that these data were accepted first by Journal A. Should it turn out to be duplicate publication, the authors… - Case
Redundant publication
Journal A received letters from two readers pointing out that the female component of a cohort the paper published was identical with that in a paper published in Journal B earlier that year. The two papers were sent to two independent reviewers, one of whom felt that there was a great degree of overlap between the two papers. The other agreed, but suggested that the paper submitted to Journal… - Case
Authorship without the author’s knowledge
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… - Case
Suspected data fabrication
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. He had scanned Medline 1997–2001 and found seven other papers… - Case
Dual submission due to discordant action of two authors
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… - Case
Doubts over the exact nature of a drug being used in a study
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 singl… - Case
No ethics committee approval or informed consent
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? … If the data came from an audit/q… - Case
The doctor with a very strange theory
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.… - Case
The incomplete retraction
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… - 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…