Ethical behaviour of authors in biomedical journalism

Biomedical journals communicate new information that changes health-care decisions. If authors ignore the fundamental values of honesty and trust, that information becomes flawed, and society or patients may be harmed.

By describing two cases of unethical behaviour by authors, and using them as a focus to review acceptable ethics in publication, this article aims to educate readers who have not considered the ethical implications in writing manuscripts for biomedical journals.

Two cases of unethical behaviour by authors occurred when the results of new drug trials were reported. They were discovered after publication in a biomedical journal, and in the review process after the submission of a manuscript for publication respectively. In the first case, duplicate publication was identified because the same control data were used, but not acknowledged, in three publications by the same investigators. In the second, ghost writing by a pharmaceutical company writer was suspected because of the atypical presentation of a senior author's work.

The editor consulted with the authors of both reports. In the first case, the authors concurred about the duplication, and the editors of the three journals wrote editorials to record the duplicate publications. The second case of ghost writing was unconfirmed by the authors, but the submission was withdrawn, and the article was later published in another journal.

These cases draw attention to recently recognized types of scientific misconduct that influence the perception of scientific work. Duplicate publication and ghost writing not only deceive the reader, but may also conceal flawed study design and conflict of interest.