Clinical studies and research integrity

Excerpt

Editors and reviewers of neurosurgical journals encounter bizarre articles from time to time. Articles can be bizarre in many ways. For an editor of a neurosurgical journal, articles that are out of scope can appear bizarre. I have rejected papers on general surgery or proctology submitted to Acta Neurochirurgica. Occasionally, bizarre articles can reflect ailing mental health. Lately however, we have encountered a new phenomenon: articles that address core neurosurgical themes and contain terminology, results, and a discussion that appear professional at first glance. At second glance, however, one wonders if one is subject to a practical joke. The pieces do not fit. We can see examples in articles available on-line. Some, but not all, were retracted. One example is [6] where authors seem to have made up a universe of data and parameters where terminology includes Fisher grades I–V and differentiates between “single” and “multiple shots” aneurysms— their numbers do not add up. Moreover, data were not traceable at all. Sources were described as “the data of 125 aSAH cases admitted to a hospital.” Another example of a bizarre concoction is [7] traceability is absent; background description is faulty and results incomprehensible and internally contradictory. For example, deeply comatose patients were described to have Bartel Indices compatible with “moderate need of assistance” for activities of daily living. These examples are retracted articles, where the publisher “could not guarantee the integrity of the articles.” Importantly, the literature on research fraud deals with retracted articles [3] while many problematic articles are detected and rejected during editorial work. …