- Case
Duplicate publication?
The editors of this journal check all articles against Medline for possible redundant publications. Two very similar articles from an author were retrieved when the name of the author was searched. The titles were very similar, except for the name of the disease. The abstracts had almost 50% identical wording. The two articles were not related to the article submitted to the editors, but as the… - Case
No ethics approval or informed consent?
A thesis published by a student was submitted by his guide for publication. One of the journal editors found the research unethical and asked for confirmation of ethics committee approval. The editor received a verbal commitment that the approval had been given prior to the research being started and the approval letter would be submitted in due course. However, on further investigation by the… - Case
Ethical approval for a study
We had a presubmission enquiry from a group regarding a paper reporting what seemed to be an uncontrolled trial in infertile women who were given soft tissue physical therapy. The authors wanted to know if we would be interested in their paper; if it was a problem that the trial had not been registered (because, they claimed, it was not a trial as no control group was used); and if it was a pro… - Case
Suspected plagiarism
This is regarding a case of suspected plagiarism in our journal. I as editor have received a manuscript which was published by me in our January 2006 issue and on subsequent follow up after availability of plagiarism detection software the manuscript - a review article - seems to have a lot of similarities to another article written in a website and though the language is not the same -the flow… - Case
A case of scientific misconduct?
We had a paper submitted reporting results of a randomized trial. The trial seemed to look at immune responses in lung fluid in participants receiving either a particular vaccine or placebo. We got a copy of the trial protocol before going to peer review as per our normal editorial policy, and made sure the trial was registered. One reviewer pointed out major discrepancies (principally i… - Case
Consideration of publishing raw data
Our journal has received a submission regarding clinical trial results. The authors wish to include the “raw data” as an appendix to the manuscript. The study was completed several years ago and was controversial at the time. The authors wish to publish the raw data to allow the public to view the findings and make their own decisions about the trial. We do not know the best way to handle this… - Case
Possible fabricated data: a conspiracy of silence?
I became involved in this issue after reports from doctors in a developing country that three papers in a systematic review published by my company may have been fabricated. The papers in question had co-authors in two other countries and so I contacted them. One co-author replied that he had concerns, but as none of the studies was conducted in his country, he had no data. He sai… - Case
Ethics approval for audit 2
A group in a developed country performed an audit of pregnancy and its outcome in a group of 250 women with congenital heart disease. There were four maternal deaths of women in the series. It was decided to write up the audit. The paper reports aggregated statistics classified by diagnosis, but also contains a brief account of the factors associated with the four deaths (an account of one of t… - Case
Ethics approval for audit 3
In this case, an international organisation wished to study the use of various regimens for medical termination of pregnancy in a developing world setting where termination of pregnancy is not supported by the state. They have performed an audit and have obtained data which will be of considerable value in other similar settings around the world. However, they are not willing to state the ident… - Case
Ethics approval for audit 1
A group in a developing country decided to do a survey of maternal mortality in relation to the available local facilities in the various regions of their country. They set up a small committee to look at the incidence and causes. They obtained the permission of the local authorities, including the local elders, community leaders, and local health care providers, to scrutinise records and asses… - Case
Request for a retraction of a retraction
In October 2000, a journal published a retraction of a February 2000 publication of a research paper. In the same issue the dean of the corresponding author’s medical school reported the findings of an investigational committee that found, contrary to what was stated in the paper: · There was no ethics committee… - Case
Authorship dispute
The paper in question describes a collaborative study of several datasets (not all previously published). A putative referee was asked to review the paper and declined. However, this led to a written complaint asserting that (s)he should be an author as (s)he had made a significant contribution to some of the work described in the paper. After promising comments from referees, the existi… - Case
Ethical approval and parental consent
A journal received a paper from a single author, attributed to a UK institution, in which 10 children were operated on using two techniques, each child having one technique to one side and one to the other side, at the same operation. The paper went to review, and neither reviewer spotted that this was a prospective surgical study on children, with no mention of consent or ethical approv… - Case
Ethical approval for retrospective study
A paper reported the clinical outcomes of patients suffering from a neglected disease before and after a change in the national treatment policy which raised the threshold of one laboratory parameter before a more toxic, but more effective drug could be used. The authors did a retrospective cohort study of patients treated under both policies, to see how this change affected outcomes. They did… - Case
Problem with figures
(1) An article was published after peer review. Shortly after online publication we received a message from a reader (an academic who works in the same field as the authors) notifying us of a major concern with one of the figures in the article. “I am writing with regard of manuscript XXX recently published in XXX. These studies raise significant expectations in XXX patients, because the… - Case
Author dispute over need for retraction
The authors of a paper are in disagreement over whether the paper should be retracted. One group of authors (group 1) wishes to publish a correction, and another group (group 2) feel that is inadequate, and the paper should be retracted. Group 2 is concerned that one of the authors, author X, in group 1 is guilty of scientific misconduct. The remaining group 1 authors do not support this clai… - Case
Patient consent
The journal received a case report for a patient presenting with a particular syndrome in which patients give approximate answers to simple questions. This syndrome has been considered as a dissociative condition but others have argued that it reflects simulation of psychiatric symptoms. The case report was an individual who had crashed his car and, following that, developed complaints of memor… - Case
Allegations of scientific fraud and unethical conduct of experiments with attempts to silence the whistleblower
…The allegations of fraud A paper reported a radioisotope test for diagnosis of a speci?c,acute,neurological disease with 100% accuracy. Replication studies failed to con?rm the ?ndings and suggested that the test is positive in a… - Case
Dual submission
A referee’s report on a paper informed this editor that the authors had submitted a very similar paper to another journal. Both papers analyse the same 30 cases of an unusual neoplasm, and the tables and five of the photomicrographs are identical. There is also considerable duplication of text in the article. We have written to the authors requesting them to clarify how this has arisen a… - Case
Ethics, institutional review and studies from private practice
A manuscript was submitted to our journal regarding a chart review of a novel treatment of a musculoskeletal disease, done at a private clinic in a western country. The patients had given informed consent for the novel treatment, but there was no ethical approval. We contacted the authors, who have replied that ethics approval could not be obtained, and indeed was not needed, because the…