Peer review lacks consistent standards. A peer reviewer often spends about four hours reviewing research that may have taken months or years to complete, but the amount of time spent on a review and the expertise of the reviewer can differ greatly.
Recent disclosures of fraudulent or flawed studies in professional medical journals have called into question the merits of their peer-review system. Passing peer-review is not the scientific equivalent of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. They do not control the world's information flow.
The power of the internet is amazing. All papers can be viewed on internet websites, not just those that would selectively be handled by so-called peer-reviewed journals. Papers are sent to so-called first rate journals. Get it peer-reviewed. If they are accepted, great. If not, up it goes on the internet. And the information gets out there even more quickly and effectively than it would have been had the journal done the right thing and publish what are very good and important papers.
Release of news about medical findings is among the most tightly managed in the country. Journals control when the public learns about findings by setting dates when the research can be published (if they allow them published at all). They impose severe restrictions on what authors can say publicly, even before they submit a manuscript, and they have penalized authors for infractions by refusing to publish their papers.
Journal Editors are the "gatekeepers" of information (only information that they allow). What's that saying, "if peer-review were a drug, it would never be marketed." Peer-review is nothing but a form of vetting (whether it be anger, jealousy, or whatever). Reviewers are in fact often competitors of the authors of the papers they scrutinize, raising potential conflicts of interest.
Such problems are far more embarrassing for journals because of their claims for the superiority of their system of editing. Journal Editors do not routinely examine authors' scientific notebooks, they rely on peer reviewers' criticisms.
Then there is the problem with respected cancer journals publishing articles that identify safer and more effective treatment regimens, yet few oncologists are incorporating these synergistic methods into their clinical practice. Because of this, cancer patients often suffer through chemotherapy sessions that do not integrate all possibilities.
These are the major flaws in the system of peer-reviewed science. All the more reason why journalists should avoid relying on the latest studies for medical news coverage.
Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing?
R Grant Steen
Background:
Scientific papers are retracted for many reasons including fraud (data fabrication or falsification) or error (plagiarism, scientific mistake, ethical problems). Growing attention to fraud in the lay press suggests that the incidence of fraud is increasing.
Methods:
The reasons for retracting 742 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Reasons for retraction were initially dichotomised as fraud or error and then analysed to determine specific reasons for retraction.
Results:
Error was more common than fraud (73.5% of papers were retracted for error (or an undisclosed reason) vs 26.6% retracted for fraud). Eight reasons for retraction were identified; the most common reason was scientific mistake in 234 papers (31.5%), but 134 papers (18.1%) were retracted for ambiguous reasons. Fabrication (including data plagiarism) was more common than text plagiarism. Total papers retracted per year have increased sharply over the decade (r=0.96; p<0.001), as have retractions specifically for fraud (r=0.89; p<0.001). Journals now reach farther back in time to retract, both for fraud (r=0.87; p<0.001) and for scientific mistakes (r=0.95; p<0.001). Journals often fail to alert the naïve reader; 31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted in any way.
Conclusions:
Levels of misconduct appear to be higher than in the past. This may reflect either a real increase in the incidence of fraud or a greater effort on the part of journals to police the literature. However, research bias is rarely cited as a reason for retraction.
J Med Ethics 2011;37:249-253 doi:10.1136/jme.2010.040923
http://jme.bmj.com/content/37/4/249....4-5f0509a6b599