- Case
Possible deception because of omission of important information
A large study—parts of which have been published in several major journals— purported to show that a drug may reduce side effect X without acting through an important intermediate process Y. This suggests that the drug may have important advantages over similar drugs in its class, and indeed it had been marketed as such. But a critic thinks that the drug may indeed act through the intermediate… - Case
A problematic obituary
A short obituary for a recently deceased doctor was received. Just before the issue went to print, one of the editors recognised the deceased as having been at the centre of disciplinary proceedings for having had a sexual relationship with a patient. As a result, he had been removed from the medical register for professional misconduct around two years before his death. This was not mentioned… - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraud
The authors of a paper published in another journal wrote to the editor of Journal A, complaining of apparent blatant plagiarism of their work by N et al. , whose paper had been published in the journal earlier in the year. Further investigation revealed that the text of the two papers was almost identical. S et al. had used one drug and N et al. had used a different one of the same class. The… - Case
Sloppiness or deception?
A case control study that links miscarriage to a particular event was published in Journal A. The paper says that most women were pregnant when interviewed. Whether or not they had miscarried when interviewed matters because of “recall bias.” In fact, most of the women who miscarried had already miscarried and so were not pregnant. The statement that most of the women were pregnant is “true” be… - Case
Unauthorised use of questionnaires
A journal had two incidences in which a questionnaire was used in studies without permission of the originators of the questionnaires. Both manuscripts originated in different countries, and used different questionnaires. 1. A manuscript was submitted which addressed quality of life issues. The referees had various concerns about the data and methods, and the authors were invited to revise the… - Case
Possible plagiarism and fabrication
A group of six authors published a study in a peer reviewed journal, comparing the efficacy of the same class of two drugs (A and B) with a placebo and with each other. One year later the lead author of that study was searching in Medline for new evidence on the efficacy of drug A and found a study that had been published in another peer reviewed journal the year after his by three authors from… - Case
Co authors’ unwillingness to support retraction of a review
A review by three authors, with Dr X as the lead author, was published in Journal A. Five months later, the editor of Journal A was informed by Professor W that a figure in the review by Dr X had originally appeared in a research paper, co-authored by Professor W in Journal B in 1990. The professor also said that Dr X had published the same or very similar figures in journals C, D (research pap… - 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The wrong standard deviations, the over stringent selection criteria, and the overt attempt at advertising
A randomised controlled trial raised three aspects of concern: 1. The participants’ physical characteristics at entry to the study were listed in a table. For the two groups—intervention and control—one physical characteristic was given as a mean ± the standard deviations (SDs). However, the SDs for both groups were much smaller than they should have been. 2. The inclusion criteria were unusual… - Case
The study that may or may not already have been published
A study purported to have been stimulated by a systematic review that had already been published in the journal. The new study included 15 patients who had been treated in one arm of a study and 15 who had been treated in another arm. The peer reviewers noticed that the original systematic review included 31 patients from the same authors. The editor contacted the authors asking them to make cl… - Case
The single author, randomised controlled trial
After a randomised controlled trial from a single author had been published, a letter was received in which the correspondent suggested that the original trial might be fraudulent. Firstly, the writer claimed that it was highly unlikely that just one author could perform a prospective, randomised, double blind, placebo controlled trial, especially in a small district hospital. The correspondent…