BMJ  2006;333:706 (30 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7570.706

Letter

Detecting plagiarism

Current quality control systems don't work

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Chalmers highlights serial plagiarism, the inability of current quality control mechanisms to detect it, and the comparatively light way in which it is dealt with once discovered.¹ Systematic reviews could be used to enhance the quality of editorial peer review.

Their lengthy process has several spinoffs. The most experienced and single minded reviewers quickly build in their minds and files a catalogue of what has been written on a topic, who the main authors are, and what their work is like. They become adept at spotting redundant publication, plagiarism, and invented data. In addition, they learn to treat each newly identified study as a new entrant into the family (represented by the studies already in the review).

Often the data "speak": they may ask, for example, why the new entrant is acting as an outlier compared with the family or why its precise estimates are very close to . . . [Full text of this article]

Cochrane Collaboration jefferson.tom@gmail.com

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