Research misconduct, retraction, and cleansing the medical literature: Lessons from the Poehlman case
Research misconduct, retraction, and cleansing the medical literature: Lessons from the Poehlman case
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DOI：
10.7326/0003-4819-144-8-200604180-00123
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发表时间：
2006-04-18
影响因子：
39.2
通讯作者：
Rennie, D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Sox, HC;Rennie, D
科学文献是探索真理的记录。伪造数据的发布转移了这一搜索。科学界有责任警告人们忽略含有伪造数据的文章，并必须设法防止无意中引用它。科学界通过发布撤回声明并将其与医学文献电子索引（如PubMed）中的欺诈性文章引用链接来完成这些任务。这种机制远非完美，正如Eric Poehlman博士所犯下的科学欺诈案例所示。他所在的机构通知3家期刊，他们发表了受污染的文章。两个日志无法收回。第三篇期刊立即撤稿，但其他作者继续引用撤稿的文章。科学界的另一项职责是核实欺诈文章作者发表的其他文章的完整性。这项任务福尔斯落在作者所在机构的肩上，要求合著者通过说服机构调查人员，怀疑作者不可能改变他们研究的原始科学数据，来保证他们文章的完整性。两所大学目前正在调查PoehIman发表的研究。维护科学文献的完整性需要政府机构有权调查和惩罚有罪的科学家，并要求研究机构调查涉嫌欺诈。它要求期刊编辑在得知他们的期刊发表了一篇受污染的文章时发布撤回声明。它要求研究机构承担责任，对发表哪怕一篇欺诈性文章的科学家发表的每篇文章进行调查。最后，它要求作者尽力避免引用被撤回的文章，并在无意中引用被撤回的文章时发布更正。
The scientific literature is a record of the search for truth. Publication of faked data diverts this search. The scientific community has a duty to warn people to ignore an article containing faked data and must try to prevent inadvertent citation of it. The scientific community accomplishes these tasks by publishing a retraction and linking it to the fraudulent article's citation in electronic indexes of the medical literature, such as PubMed. This mechanism is far from perfect, as shown by a case history of scientific fraud perpetrated by Eric Poehlman, PhD. His institution notified 3 journals that they had published tainted articles. Two journals failed to retract. The third journal retracted immediately, but other authors continued to cite the retracted article.Another duty of the scientific community is to verify the integrity of other articles published by the author of a fraudulent article. This task falls to the author's institution and requires coauthors to vouch for their article's integrity by convincing institutional investigators that the suspect author could not have altered the raw scientific data from their study. Two universities are currently investigating PoehIman's published research.Maintaining the integrity of the scientific literature requires governmental institutions that have the authority to investigate and punish guilty scientists and requires that research institutions investigate alleged fraud. It requires journal editors to issue a retraction when they learn that their journal has published a tainted article. It requires research institutions to accept their responsibility to investigate every article published by a scientist who has published even 1 fraudulent article. Finally, it requires authors to take pains to avoid citing retracted articles and to issue a correction when they inadvertently cite a retracted article.