Scientific Misconduct and Editorial and Peer Review Processes

Abstract

During last fifteen years, hardly a year has gone by without surfacing of a notorious case of misconduct in science: Soman's fabrication of data and his retraction in 1979 of twelve papers, majority published in collaboration with holder of an endowed chair at Yale University Medical School; biologist, Alsabti's rash of plagiarized papers, which came to light in 1980; Spector's unreplicable explanations of virus as a unified cause of cancer, aired in 1981; unfolding in same year of Darsee's fabrication of data which resulted in of over one hundred papers while at Emory and at Harvard; 1986 announcement of a University of California-San Diego committee that nearly half of 147 articles (137 published) of a rising radiologist, Slutsky, were found to be fraudulent or questionable; cases of Glueck's misrepresentation of data on cholesterol and heart disease and Bruenig's articles, based upon nonexistent experiments of psychotropic drugs to control behavior of mentally retarded within institutions, both of which came to light in 1987; seemingly endless (1986--92) affair of disputed paper in Cell by Imanishi-Kari with Nobel laureate David Baltimore as one of five other coauthors; and most currently, federal Office of Research Integrity's (ORI) 1992 finding that Gallo, codiscoverer of cause of AIDS, had falsely reported a critical fact in his (1984) scientific paper in order to gain credit for himself, followed in 1993 by its dropping charges because of more stringent standards for assessing misconduct in Department of Health and Human Services under which ORI operates. Yet despite surfacing of these cases of misconduct and volley of responses and counterresponses between principals, federal government, and scientific community at large, few new mechanisms are in place to identify and correct scientific misconduct. To a large extent, scientists continue to rely upon routine processes of self-correction in [(6) p. 134]. Chief among these are editorial and peer review of journals. If peer and editorial processes are relied upon as the linchpin of science [(32) P. 148], then it is critical to analyze roles of editors and peer reviewers in detecting and sanctioning misconduct, structural problems inherent in review, and best means of enabling peer and editorial roles as corrective processes in scientific misconduct. These are concerns of this article. In addressing them, I argue that editorial and peer review process can play a part in responding to misconduct, but that it is a limited corrective role. At onset, it is important to recognize roots of scientific publishing. Before middle of seventeenth century, scientists communicated through correspondence, exchange of findings, and private printing of results. The communication was informal, haphazard, and without editorial intervention or authority. In 1655 first scientific journals, Journal des Scavans and Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society, appeared. Journals provided wider access to new scientific work, helped verify findings, laid claim to priority and credit for discoveries and advancements, and provided permanence (archiving) of contributions (33). In this way, mere printing of scientific work was transformed to publication [(33) p. 462]. These original functions of have been retained and provide a basis for as central social process of (8). Because journal is central to normative conduct of science, it is understandable that it might be regarded as a means for addressing misconduct as well. It is here that editorial and peer review practices come into play. Since time that first journals were published by scientific societies, articles have borne some authority of scientific community.(34) Consequently, from beginning, editors and reviewers performed a role in published work. …