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Citation debate hits Cell The general issue highlighted in the post "Critics rip Cell paper"1 and many of the comments that followed is one of "selective citation," in which papers fail to include all relevant prior art. I believe that this example reached the current level of scrutiny because the complainant, Peter Lawrence, is a well-known scientist and he was willing to raise a

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The general issue highlighted in the post "Critics rip Cell paper"1 and many of the comments that followed is one of "selective citation," in which papers fail to include all relevant prior art. I believe that this example reached the current level of scrutiny because the complainant, Peter Lawrence, is a well-known scientist and he was willing to raise a public fuss when he felt that his work had been overlooked in a paper published in a prominent journal.

I believe that this problem is a systemic one. Authors practice selective citation to inflate the importance of their work and to avoid contrary data that would make their "story" more complicated. Editors, especially some professional editors of high profile journals, are not sufficiently knowledgeable to choose reviewers with expertise in the specific topic addressed by the paper under review. Reviewers, who may be sticklers for the scientific validity of the ...

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