Fraudulent Research in Science: The Responsibility of the Peer Reviewer

Abstract

For the past 15 years, I have frequently served as a reviewer of scientific articles for a number of different journals. In this capacity I have judged the manuscripts which have been sent to me, on the basis of originality, significance, contribution to science, data presentation, and the quality of the writing. Although I often critique experimental design and interpretation of results, I have never been forced to question the actual validity of the data within the manuscript being reviewed. I was thus confronted with an unusual and difficult problem, when I received an article from Cancer Investigation to review that I recognized had to be fraudulent. A third of the manuscript contained data that were incorrectly derived from work which I had previously published. In the cover letter to Cancer Investigation I conveyed my concerns and asked the editors to obtain opinions on the validity of the remainder of the data in the manuscript. After consulting with other expert reviewers it was felt that my concerns about the validity of the data were well-founded. However, all that could be done by Cancer Investigation was to reject the manuscript and indeed, the report was not published.