Journals Slow to Retract Slutsky Research Errors

SAN DIEGO-Three U.S. journals still have not published retractions or clarifications on nine articles by Robert A. Slutsky that 18 months ago were declared fraudulent or questionable. One small journal is waiting for its publishing house to obtain permission from Slutsky. A second publication has withdrawn only research retracted by Slutsky himself. The third journal has printed no corrections because neither Slutsky nor his co-authors have requested retractions. All said they feared litigation by offended co-authors. At least 11 scientific journals have printed retractions for most of the 48 questioned and 12 fraudulent articles Slutsky wrote. And many of the journals that published his valid research have reaffirmed the integrity of those articles. In 1984 the University of California-San Diego concluded that Slutsky, a radiology trainee, had produced 60 research papers in which the data were fraudulent or questionable. The work involved dozens of colleagues, many of whom had been listed as co-authors without their knowledge. Last November UCSD officials involved with that internal probe of Slutsky published an unprecedented article (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 317, no. 22, p. 1383-9) in which they described their investigation. They classified Slutsky's bibliography of 137 articles into three types: valid, questionable or fraudulent. The UCSD officials wrote in that article that "journals must be responsible for publishing the results of appropriate investigations. Not to review the work and not to publish the results of this review is, in our opinion, an abrogation of responsibility" (see accompanying story). Such a review raises difficult issues for many journals, however. A case in point is the response by Circulation, a peer-reviewed American Heart Association journal with 23,000 subscribers. UCSD's ad hoc committee investigating Slutsky determined that three Slutsky papers published in Circulation from 1980 through 1983 were questionable and one article printed in 1983 was fraudulent. But Circulation has never printed a retraction or a clarification of these articles, say journal officials. UCSD authorities have tried toget the journal to publish a statement regarding the four papers. Circulation officials, attorneys and physician consultants have steadfastly refused to do so—and engaged UCSD authorities in a testy exchange of letters on the subject. When UCSD authorities notified Circulation's officials about the questioned Slutsky work in September 1986, editor Burton E. Sobel responded that he could take no action unless a co-author formally requested a retraction. (Sobel, a professor at Washington University School of Medicine, de nied to be interviewed for this article.) As of last month, according to Vicki A. Sullivan of the Ameri- can Heart Association, no such request had been received. Sobel argued in a November 1986 letter to UCSD officials that the AHA policy “protects authors from institutions that could arbitrarily initiate retractions, thereby defaming authors and violating their due process.” But associate dean Paul J. Friedman doesn’t buy that argument. “We regard the onus of proof as being on the authors of a paper, not on those who believe it to be invalid,” he replied. The AHA policy is also inconsistent, Friedman added, because an institution can seek a retraction for work done under an AHA grant but not research funded by another source. “How do you justify this?” Friedman wrote. “I guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored.” Another heated exchange occurred in January after Friedman asked Sobel if the AHA had reconsidered its policy. Sobel called Friedman’s correspondence “disquieting,” and accused UCSD of misrepresenting the policy in the NEJM article. “I do not believe it is appropriate for you to attack directly or by innuendo guidelines of another organization, namely the American. Heart Association, which have been developed after very thorough consideration of numerous aspects of the problem of which the Slutsky episede is but one example,” wrote Sobel. David Livingston, the Heart Association’s in-house general counsel, said a journal must balance the interests of an individual scientist against the desire to correct any erroneous information. A journal “is not the ultimate referee,” he said, noting that the scientific community as a whole fills that role overtime. Officials at the peer-reviewed journal Radiology face the problem of what to do when a questioned scientist won’t discuss his work. In 1985, as UCSD’s committee began to examine Slutsky's work, Slutsky resigned and his attorney withdrew 15 published papers. Four had appeared in Radiology. The committee eventually determined that there were problems with four additional articles in Radiology. Three were found to be questionable and one fraudulent, UCSD officials said. The journal’s editors ran into two problems when they sought to correct the errors: Slutsky wouldn’t respond to them, and a co-author on one questionable paper insisted there was nothing wrong with it. Radiology editor Stanley S. Siegelman of Johns Hopkins University said that “it was the recommendation of our attorney not to take any further action” to avoid the possibility of a suit from either the reluctant co-author or Slutsky. who didn’t answer the journal’s repeated inquiries. Siegelman said it was not urgent to run a retraction because the questioned Slutsky articles dealt with basic research rather than patient care. But Siegelman also felt the process had worked as well as it could. “We all know that Slutsky's work has been discredited,” he said. “It is only natural after the retractions that all Slutsky's work be questioned. There is no way for an editor to judge truth, no way to detect if someone is lying.” Friedman disagrees. His “good friend” Siegelman, he said, is “putting his head in the sand.” A similar situation exists at Computers and Biomedical Research, a 2,000-subscriber journal which in 1983 published a single questionable Slutaky article. Editor Homer R. Warner, head of the department of medical informatics at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, at first said in an interview that a retraction for the Slutsky articles wasn’t needed. “It was primarily the idea we published,” Warner said. “We thought the idea was still interesting enough. No one was misled by it. A retraction wouldn’t have accomplished much.” However, later in the same interview Warner reversed himself and said a retraction was printed in 1986. But he wouldn’t provide a citation. Utah officials then said the matter was referred to Academic Press of San Diego, which publishes the peer-reviewed journal. Felice Kay of Academic Press said the company is awaiting a response from Slutsky’s attorney before printing a clarification. But she was unable to say when this would be forthcoming how long ago the request was made or who was representing Slutsky. UCSD officials have tried without success to contact three small journals in Europe that printed articles considered questionable. They are Cardiovascular Research, the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine, and the Journal of Surgical Research. Slutsky couldn’t be reached for comment. Two attorneys who have represented him in the past didn’t return telephone calls. He is believed to be living in Connecticut and working at an AIDS clinic in New York City, according to officials of the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance. The board is considering an accusation filed by the state against his medical license because of his research conduct. Dalton is a staff writer at The San Diego Union.

Journals Slow to Retract Slutsky Research Errors

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of