BMJ  2005;331 (30 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7511.0-c

Who will investigate suspected research misconduct?

A story of suspected scientific misconduct that has lasted for over a decade is told by White on p 281. In 1992 the BMJ published a study by Dr Ram B Singh. When he submitted further studies to the BMJ peer reviewers started to voice doubts about the data. The article tells the story of the BMJ's attempts to resolve these doubts and find an authority able to investigate the suspicions. Having failed to find such an authority the BMJ decided to tell the story of its attempts to get at the truth. One outcome is the BMJ's decision to publish an Expression of Concern about the 1992 paper (p 266).

Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ, discusses the need to investigate previous studies of an author whose work has been retracted (p 288). He suggests that the ideal might be an international body, together with a way of marking studies that are under suspicion in databases such as PubMed.

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