How ethical are organic chemists?
by mitch on Aug 13 2009 (6857 Views)In a recent commentary in the Journal of Organic Chemistry the editor-in-chief, C. Dale Poulter, frets about the shenanigans of some authors.[JOC]
In 2008, 15 manuscripts were deactivated because the authors were unable to provide original copies of reports for high-resolution mass spectra or combustion analyses. By June of 2009, 13 of these manuscripts had been published in other journals. In seven publications, the inconsistent data were left unchanged, were removed, or were replaced with another set of inconsistent data or data obtained by another analytical technique was substituted.
...it is deeply disturbing that about a third of those authors chose to ignore the problems pointed out by JOC and submitted their manuscripts to other journals without adequately resolving the issues surrounding the data they originally reported. The responsibility for this behavior clearly rests on the senior authors, who are setting a horrible example for their young colleagues.
I thought it would be informative to assess what percentage this is compared to the total output of JOC. There are 1900 articles, more or less, published in JOC in any given year from my best estimates using ChemFeeds. Seven out of 1900 is ~0.4% of authors displaying truthiness. These hooligans would seem to represent a vanishingly small percentage, smaller than I would expect from other human endeavors. Although they can not be excused their misdemeanors, the numbers as a whole are comforting.
Link to commentary: Reporting Analytical Data
Mitch
Small but disturbing in other ways. First off, this happens before a reviewer even sees the paper. That it is not 0 is concerning, and that the papers are published elsewhere unchanged is even more disturbing.
I imagine that the smallness of the number is in part due to the reputation/quality of JOC which leads to a self-policing. If you have doubts about the quality of the research, you're not even going to take a flyer and see if it will go through, and the publication of this article will further this effect.
This said, I would have to conclude that this percentage is going to be much higher in less quality publications. Beware.