- 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
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
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
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
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
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
A patient was given an experimental course of complementary medicine when a standard treatment was available
A case report was submitted to a journal, describing a patient with a very serious, curable infectious disease who had been given complementary medicine (plant extract) rather than the standard treatment. A search of the literature indicated that the authors were known to support complementary therapies. The alternative treatment was not evidence based. The case took place in a country were the… - Case
An author thinks that a journal’s decision not to publish is ethically incorrect
A submitted paper reported on the investigation and management of an outbreak of a disease in a work environment (Company A). The authors acknowledged the referring physician from the workplace—who had declined on legal advice to be listed as an author—and also declared that the lead author had provided medical advice for remuneration to Company A during legal proceedings related to the outbrea… - Case
An attempt to bribe an editor
Somebody—possibly a representative of a drug company or a PR acting for the company—rang an editor on behalf of study authors to say that she would guarantee to buy 1000 reprints if the journal would continue to consider for publication a study that conflicted with a policy that the journal had just introduced. “And”, she said, “I will buy you a dinner at any restaurant you choose.” The paper w… - 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
Revised version different from original version submitted
A paper was submitted and reviewed by one referee, who recommended that the paper be revised and then refereed again. The authors submitted the revised version which went back to the initial reviewer. In his second report the reviewer raised concerns that the revised version was fundamentally different from the first paper. The number of patients and the inclusion criteria had changed. This was… - Case
Duplicate publication
An author published a paper in Journal A that looked extremely similar to one already published as guidelines in Journal B. Of 48 paragraphs of text, 41 were almost identical. It has since transpired that several authors who were involved in the writing of the article published in Journal B have not been acknowledged. Prior publication elsewhere had not been acknowledged in the Journal A paper.… - Case
Undeclared conflicts of interest and potential author dispute over signed letter for publication
A letter was published that provides guidance on prescribing a particular drug in children. There are anxieties about the use of this drug in children, and sometime back a letter from essentially the same group on the same subject was published in the same journal. The electronic version of this original letter included a conflict of interest statement, but the paper edition did not. This was a… - 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
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
Retrospective correction: how far back do we go?
In 1990 a case report was published in which it was alleged that the use of a particular endotracheal tube had led to tracheal damage, requiring the child to have a tracheostomy and a tracheal reconstruction. This paper was from a specialist surgical unit, and a letter was subsequently received from the paediatricians who had cared for the baby at the referring hospital before and after the tra… - Case
Undeclared conflict of interest
A paper on a controversial topic from three authors was published. All three authors completed forms to say that they did not have competing interests. This was stated at the end of the paper. A reader subsequently contacted the journal to say that she had clear evidence that one of the authors did have competing interests. He had, she said, been involved in legal cases and received substantial… - 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…