发表在另一期杂志上的论文的作者写信给A&A的编辑,抱怨N等人的工作表观抄袭。,谁的文件在今年早些时候发表过。进一步调查显示,两篇论文的文本几乎相同。S等人。使用了一种药物和N等人。使用了不同的班级。第二篇论文的已发布结果与第一个相匹配。本文还似乎已完全从第一篇论文复制,包括道德委员会批准。编辑写信给n等人。要求解释,原始数据证据,以及伦理委员会批准的副本。 The time line of ethical approval, submission, and publication meant that it would have been difficult to have recruited for, and completed, an eight week treatment study. N responded, stating that ethical approval was not required even though it was a double blind, placebo controlled study in children, and so had not been sought. The author also claimed that the lack of response from the ethics committee was synonymous with approval. The author then claimed to have sought ethical approval retrospectively, and a letter from the ethics committee was sent to the editors. When the editors attempted to contact this committee they were passed onto another ethics committee in a different area. The letter was sent to the author’s institution head. Unsigned letters and emails, purporting to be from the co-authors’ head of institution, were sent to the journal, and the author supplied an Excel spreadsheet detailing data from just 15 patients. A review of the author’s publication history revealed that s/he had changed “routes” over the past 5-6 years, publishing only fairly brief reports.