THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO EVIDENCE OF FRAUDULENT PUBLICATION - THE SLUTSKY,ROBERT CASE

Objective.-To determine whether scientists can detect fraudulent resul ts in published research articles and to identify corrective measures that are most effective in purging fraudulent results from the literat ure. Design.-Retrospective case-control study comparing articles by an author known to have published fraudulent articles, Robert A, Slutsky , MD, to a set of control articles. The number of non-self-citations r eceived by each article during each calendar year (1979 through 1990) was counted. The citation numbers were transformed into scores. Each S lutsky article was assigned a score between 1 and 3 based on the numbe r of citations received by the Slutsky article and each of its assigne d control articles. Average citation numbers and scores were tracked f or each year during the 11-year study period. Results.-Before Slutsky' s work was publicly questioned (1975 to 1985), scientists cited his ar ticles as frequently as they cited control articles. After Slutsky's w ork was questioned and reports were published in the news media (1985) , scientists cited his articles less frequently than they cited contro l articles. Citations decreased further after the University of Califo rnia-San Diego published a review of the validity of Slutsky's work in 1987. Citations did not decrease after the appearance of retractions in print or in MEDLINE. Conclusion.-Scientists do not, and probably ca nnot, identify published articles that are fraudulent. However, when a lerted to the presence of fraudulent results in the literature, the sc ientific community responds by reducing the number of citations of the tainted articles. In the Slutsky case, general news articles and the three reviews published by the University of California-San Diego were most effective and retractions were least effective in purging fraudu lent results from the literature.