ESH statement on detection and punishment of abstract fraud and poster plagiarism

The European Meeting on Hypertension was organized for the 15th time in Milan in June 2005. Every second meeting takes place in Milan; after the record turnout of more than 8000 delegates at the 14th meeting in Paris the year before, the 15th meeting in Milan almost reached the same number of participants.

The European Meeting on Hypertension has established itself as the most important hypertension congress in the world, and about 1500 abstracts are received for consideration before every meeting. The abstracts are from all over the world though the majority comes from European countries. The quality is generally high and most contributions reach such a standard that they can be accepted as oral or poster presentation. After an initial assessment and scoring by four reviewers, the abstracts undergo a final judgment at a program committee meeting consisting of 20 of the most distinguished researchers and investigators in Europe. An extensive body of knowledge of ongoing research is always included in the decision‐making for those abstracts that eventually make it into the scientific program. Abstracts are rejected if the quality is poor, or if they are out of the scope for a hypertension meeting.

Despite this thorough review process, it has occurred that false abstracts have twice been submitted and, in one case, accepted for poster presentation. First, an abstract by Chatellier et al. [1], originally published in 2003, which included important prognostic data on home blood pressure in the elderly (the SHEAF Study), was identically copied by Solomou et al. [2]. Except for the study acronym (the SHEAF Study) being removed, the copy contained the original text and data word for word, and was published in the Journal of Hypertension[2]. Second, Stosic et al. [3], [4] copied two previously presented abstracts [5], [6] for the same meeting. In this case, abstract fraud was detected during the reviewing process, resulting in termination of his ESH membership.

A number of opinions and reactions arise from these episodes. First, it is disgraceful that certain colleagues in our profession supposedly possessing the highest credentials find it necessary to stoop to the level of unprincipled university undergraduates who scan the Internet for a term paper they can steal. It is immature, to say the least. Furthermore, submitting such a text to a team of reviewers demonstrates a lack of respect for those evaluators who subsequently find themselves wasting time and effort reading fraudulent research.

Despite the positive irony that certain previously written abstracts receive renewed attention under a different authorship, nothing more can be gained from this practice. Certainly, those who plagiarize for some short‐term acknowledgment find themselves consequently unable to defend “their” research upon closer scrutiny from their colleagues during poster presentations. Worse yet, they show little regard for those co‐authors of theirs who are not a part of this act and thereby suffer equally when the fraud is discovered. This in turn opens a whole dilemma: Did the primary authors circulate “his” abstract for co‐author approval (as they should!), or did they not? Can it be proved that the co‐authors share complicity, or not? Do such co‐authors and their associated institutions exist, or not? And most intriguing of all, is the primary author, by including certain innocent co‐authors in the game, concluding a vendetta against such unwitting “accomplices”? One has to wonder.

The society needs to find better ways to detect and deal with such offenders. Besides initiating more extensive reviewing of submitted abstracts by a larger panel of experts, the policy of anonymous authorship before assessment might be abandoned. In particular, abstracts related to large clinical trials should probably not be made anonymous before assessment because established author name or acronyms of studies indicate quality and no plagiarism.

However, if certain people believe they can sin undetected, they will try and maybe they will succeed in the short‐term. A fair and firm system of sanctions should await those guilty, so that in the long‐term, membership in the society can remain a source of pride for all its associates. Therefore, because of the importance of this communication, it is published in two journals endorsed by the European Society of Hypertension, i.e. in both Blood Pressure and Journal of Hypertension.