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EDITORIALS: Fiona Godlee Dealing with editorial misconduct BMJ 2004; 329: 1301-1302 [Full text]

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What about spin?

Clive D Bates   (5 December 2004)

editorial self governance

R E Laube   (7 December 2004)

Editorial misconduct or a glitch in medical publications

Farah Asad Mansuri   (8 December 2004)

What about spin? 5 December 2004
Clive D Bates, Personal capacity London N16 5UF Send response to journal: Re: What about spin?	I would like to have seen a commitment to apply the same standards of rigour to press releases and media commentary that announce the published research. Don't blame hype all on the press, journals have been known to feed the frenzy by: Allowing generalisations to be made from narrow and specific results; Giving undue prominence to a single 'contrarian' result, when many others suggest the opposite; Allowing purely theoretical constructs to be interpreted as reality and empirically based; Allowing evidence-free assertions about long term promise of things like cures for cancer; Interpreting statistical insignificance as evidence of no effect rather than insufficient power or a demand for excessive though arbitrary confidence thresholds. And, I'm sure there is more...! Competing interests: None declared
editorial self governance 7 December 2004
R E Laube, consultant clinical psychologist Sydney, Australia Send response to journal: Re: editorial self governance	I would like to add another category of editorial responsibilities to the list considered for a code of conduct: the relationship with reviewers & authors. In my experience, editors of even the most prestigious journals exchange e-mails and phone calls with friends and other associates regarding accepting submissions and "invited" articles and editorials. This is within the rightful purview of their role. The problem arrives when this network [unintentionally] serves to promote a particular group or way of thinking in favour of a competing group or an alternate approach to an issue. I have experienced situations where acceptance was facilitated by a quick call or message from a supervisor to a friendly editor, where reviewers rejected material that would have beaten their work into press, [other reviewers should have been selected], where reviewing was passed-on to the graduate assistant rather than done by the professor, and where liberal courtesies have been extended to authors and reviewers because of their positions rather than their contributions. Academic, clinical, legal, and administrative bodies foist an authoritative role on peer-reviewed professional journals. Much of this is driven by the perception that the journals are “impartial”. If a journal wishes to reject this role, then the editors should decline loudly. If the editor and publisher wish to capitalise upon the presumption of anonymous impartiality, then they should be honourable about it and move beyond the “old mates network” approach to the job. Competing interests: always entertained reader and occasionally frustrated author
Editorial misconduct or a glitch in medical publications 8 December 2004
Farah Asad Mansuri, Associate Professor Community Health Sciencces Karachi Medical and Dental College Send response to journal: Re: Editorial misconduct or a glitch in medical publications	The author has rightly pointed out the self regulations for the editor and its staff. But one should not overlook the non existence of the gold standard tools for qualifying an article as an original one and other constraints of the editor hampering him to be on the pedistal. Competing interests: a toddler in the field of biomedical editing, a keen researcher and active public healh physician