- Case
Attempt at multiple plagiarism
In January 2004 a submission was made to Journal A from a laboratory in a different country. In April 2004 it was bought to the editor’s attention that the manuscript was a verbatim copy of a paper published in 2003 in another journal, Journal B. The only difference between the manuscripts was that the names and affiliations of the authors on the second paper were different to the first paper.… - Case
Potentially unethical publication
A new Editor was appointed to a society journal in a minority medical specialty. An officer of the society immediately handed him an anonymous letter from a reader of the journal complaining that an article recently published was unethical. The Editor is a personal friend both of the previous editor who accepted the paper, and the author of the paper. The paper is by a single author who gives n… - Case
Undeclared competing interests
A journal published an animal study on the use of drug X for the treatment of clinical condition A. The authors did not declare any competing interests. A few months after publication, a journalist contacted the editors to say that the corresponding author had several patents on drug X, was listed as an inventor of the drug, and that the public charity of which he is the director recently annou… - Case
Research on volunteers without informed consent or ethics committee approval
An experiment on a volunteer in hospital was written up. The volunteer was an asthmatic who was stable at the time and given a combination of intravenous magnesium sulphate and salbutamol to observe the pharmacological effects. The drugs were given under supervision in intensive care as they carry some risk of cardiovascular side effects. The paper reports: "After discussion with colleagues, a… - Case
Retraction of false authorship
Dr X asked for a statement to be published to the effect that the letter he had published in the journal with two co-authors was not based on any work that he had done, but on that of his colleagues. The editor asked the other two authors why they had signed a copyright form in these circumstances. Both authors stated that they had not signed any such form, and when presented with a copy, state… - Case
Dispute between authors and a reviewer
A concise report on a rare disease was submitted and sent out to an internationally renowned reviewer in the field. He felt that some of the data had been obtained in his unit, and this had not been acknowledged by the authors. The authors responded that the tests had been performed in their own laboratory, but that the scans had indeed been done elsewhere. The editor suggested that perhaps the… - Case
Multiple submissions of a paper
A paper suggested that a cluster of symptoms, signs, and tests could be combined to diagnose pneumonia in general practice. The paper was rejected after being read by two editors, because it was preliminary and had not been validated in an independent population. The authors submitted a new manuscript the following year, describing the same patients and focusing on the accuracy of individual sy… - Case
Undeclared conflict of interest
Several years after a case series was published, a journalist with serious allegations of research misconduct contacted the editor. These allegations were that: - Ethics approval had not been obtained, contrary to a statement in the paper; and that the reported study was completed under the cover of ethics approval granted to a different study - Contrary to a statement in the paper that the par… - Case
CV study: was ethics approval and consent required?
A submitted paper detailing the negative experiences of overseas doctors applying for a training post in a district general hospital was poorly presented and scientifically weak, but on a topic of great interest and importance. The study consisted of an analysis of the CVs of the applicants and an analysis of responses to questionnaires sent to them with their rejection letters. Over a third of… - Case
Attempts to draw attention to potential duplicate publication
A medical student brought a case of duplicate publication in two journals in the same specialty to the attention of an editor of a third journal. The article in Journal A was published in 1997 and the article in Journal B was published in 1999. The editor wrote to both journals and asked them to investigate. The editor wrote several times over two years before he retired. The editor received a… - Case
Dual publication and attempted retraction by the author
An author who published an article in Journal A at the end of the year wrote to advise that it would have to be retracted on the grounds that his PhD tutor, Professor X, had already submitted a similar manuscript more than a year earlier to another journal. In the absence of any contact from the tutor, the author had assumed that this manuscript had not been accepted and went ahead with her own… - Case
Wholesale plagiarism
A review article was submitted by three authors from three separate institutions to Journal A. It was sent out to two referees. One of the referees noticed an apparent similarity with a review published a year earlier in Journal B, but written by two completely different authors. An electronic copy of the published article from Journal B's website indicated that the whole of the submitted manus… - Case
The disappearing authors
Some time after a single authored research article was published a journal received a letter pointing out that the same article had been rejected by another journal because of unresolved authorship and acknowledgement issues. At that time the paper had 12 authors. The correspondent said that the single author had a patent application related to the topic of the paper. This was declared as a com… - Case
Duplicate publication in a foreign language
A published article was subsequently republished in a foreign language journal, with exactly the same results and text. Just a few extra references were added. The senior author had written to apologise for the foreign language publication, but argued that the second publication was a different paper. But the editor disagreed: the foreign language publication had not referenced the origi… - Case
The disgraced author
An editorial was commissioned from a distinguished doctor who was subsequently found guilty of research misconduct overseas. There was a lack of consensus in the journal’s country as to whether this judgment was correct. The author continues to work, but is awaiting a judgment from his regulatory body. - Should the editorial be published? - Should the editorial be published with a footnote refe… - Case
Authorship dispute
A paper submitted to an international medical journal was reviewed externally and the authors were subsequently invited to submit a revised version. The initial submission included authors from two different research institutions and one author from a corporate sponsor. The initial submission was accompanied by an appropriate description of the individual authors’ contributions, a negative conf… - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraudulent publication
An article written by eminent doctors on a subject of great public interest, with implications for public health policy, was published in Journal A. They subsequently wrote to Journal A, indicating that an article had been published in Journal B, which heavily plagiarised theirs. The editor of Journal A wrote to the authors of the second paper, but has received no satisfactory replies. The seco… - Case
A highly critical obituary
A journal published a highly critical obituary, which provoked uproar and prompted the deceased’s family to complain to the national body responsible for regulating the media. The journal believed that the basis of the criticisms were accurate and acknowledged that it had not cited sufficient evidence in the obituary. The journal was considering whether to publish the evidence in full. The jour… - Case
An accusation of fraud in a rejected paper
A paper was reviewed by two referees. The associate editor dealing with it recommended rejection as both reviews were critical of the methods, results, and reproducibility of the experiment. After the authors were informed, the editor-in-chief received an email from someone in the same laboratory, expressing relief that the manuscript had been rejected. The writer went on to say that s/he had m… - Case
Going public on potential fraud
A research article published some time ago detailed an invasive test. The authors obtained informed consent from the patients, but did not seek ethics committee approval. Subsequently, the journal published correspondence from X, detailing the article’s problems. X and others had attempted to replicate the study and had failed to achieve the accuracy levels as described. X stated that this was…