Misrepresentation of scholarly works by integrated plastic surgery applicants

Many authors report alarming rates of false or questionable claims of scholarly achievement among residency applicants. The authors sought to further elucidate the authenticity of such inappropriate declarations by simultaneously conducting an investigation of a selected pool of integrated plastic surgery applicants. The authors' hypothesis is that the percentage of citations claimed by many authors to be false was erroneously high because of failure of an adequate search or prolonged time from submission to publication for many journals.

Applications received by the University of Michigan Integrated Plastic Surgery Residency Program for the 2008 National Residency Match Program match were reviewed 2 years after being submitted by the applicants. Scholarly works listed as published, accepted, or in-press, including journal articles, abstracts, and book chapters, were investigated. Those listed as submitted were excluded. An exhaustive search was conducted that included PubMed, Google Scholar, Ovid UM-MedSearch, hardcopy journals in the authors' medical library, and phone calls to regional societies.

The authors' sample represented 63 percent of all integrated plastic surgery applicants for the 2008 National Residency Match Program, which included 102 applicants citing 342 scholarly works. Of these, 319 (93 percent) were verified. Of the remaining 23 citations, 15 (4 percent) by seven applicants (7 percent) were unverifiable, whereas eight (2 percent) by seven applicants were confirmed as misrepresentations.

The majority (93 to 98 percent) of integrated plastic surgery applicants are truthful regarding scholarly achievement. Applicants should be given the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to confirm their claims when we cannot.