Quantity does not equal quality: Scientific principles cannot be sacrificed.
(2020) International Immunopharmacology — Vol. 86, p. 106711 [1-3] (2020)
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- (en) A recent retraction of two coronavirus papers in the Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine, one of which led to the World Health Organization halting a clinical trial, represents an unfortunate example of scientific misconduct that is axiomatic of deeper challenges, which are occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic [1]. These embarrassing events are representative of mounting problems currently faced by academic, publishing and clinical communities. Academics, overwhelmingly judged by their ‘productivity’, are impacted by the lack of key resources and access to research laboratories (lock-down), severely limiting their research efforts. This has disproportionately affected students, fellows and early-career researchers who have insufficient unpublished data, resulting in the writing of reviews and opinion pieces that are poorly supported by facts and knowledge. The topics for these efforts have focused on an enthusiasm for the novel pathobiology of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections and the need for novel therapeutic strategies. These efforts, combined with the opportunity of rapid and open scientific publishing, often as ‘prepublications’ and, unfortunately, with minimal/insufficient peer-review, has flooded editors and reviewers. We posit that it is critical to avoid the devastating collateral effects of these problems, which will not be possible without self-restraint and restoring rigorous scientific standards and practices.
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Rzymski, P., Nowicki, M., Mullin, G. E., Abraham, A., Rodríguez-Román, E., Petzold, M. B., Bendau, A., Sahu, K. K., Ather, A., Naviaux, A.-F., Janne, P., Gourdin, M., Delanghe, J. R., Ochs, H. D., Talmadge, J. E., Garg, M., Hamblin, M. R., & Rezaei, N. (2020). Quantity does not equal quality: Scientific principles cannot be sacrificed. International Immunopharmacology, 86, 106711 [1-3]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intimp.2020.106711 (Original work published 2020)