How ethical are organic chemists?

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

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