举报人, responding to

A meta-analysis was published in a journal ahead of print, and then subsequently in print. Several months later, the journal was contacted by a faculty member at a university not connected with the study. The reader outlined three general concerns with the meta-analysis. The concerns were discussed by the editorial team, including the statistical editor, and it was decided that the overall results of the meta-analysis were not affected. The complainant persisted in the critique, which was relayed to the authors of the original article. The first author provided a detailed response to the issues raised; the journal did not request an erratum at that time.

申诉人和编辑部之间的讨论涉及提出的问题的程度是错误或“意见问题”。一个错误清晰，并被错误纠正。在期刊的观点中，提出的其他问题是开放的解释。申诉人被邀请向编辑写一封信，但他们拒绝并持续存在错误，或者应该出版错误，或者期刊应该考虑撤回这篇文章。

由于一些批评点对该领域的普遍感兴趣，而且还努力解决申诉人持续批评的问题，期刊决定发布主编和统计编辑的编辑评论。该编辑评论涉及申诉人的担忧，并增加了与荟萃分析的解释相关的一些额外考虑因素。申诉人有机会审查编辑评论，而期刊还要求承认他承认将问题带来了期刊的注意力。申诉人提供了他的反馈意见，该反馈是纳入的，也是他允许承认的。该期刊还给出了原始文章的作者有机会回应编辑评论。作者编写了一个学术回答，并在不包括有争议的研究时重新分析数据。编辑评论发布，以及承认作者的答复和错误。

Before the publication of the editorial comment, the journal held a conference call with the complainant. The complainant had published a paper on a related issue in the preceding year, but the study published in the journal was different from the previous meta-analyses from the complainant’s own group. This had not been disclosed to the journal previously. It became also clear that the complainant had not contacted the authors of the article to share his concerns, and the journal encouraged him to do so.

随后，申诉人提出了与作者讨论的原始Meta分析的新问题。申诉人坚持需要额外的错误;Meta分析的作者现在正在准备第二个错误。申诉人再次邀请邀请给编辑函，再次拒绝。

期刊担心第二次错误不满足申诉人，除非“期刊”同意撤回原始文章，否则这个问题不会结束。对期刊的评估是撤回本文的理由不足。申诉人最近给作者的电子邮件表示，他们将联系提交人的大学和同事以及支持这一研究小组工作的资助机构关于该团队所作的据称错误。申诉人还要求期刊涉及出版商的“伦理委员会处理出版过程”。

Question(s) for the COPE Forum

• What is a journal’s responsibility to minimise potential damage that readers can do to the reputation of the author where the reader disagrees with the editorial team and the authors of the original article on whether an error has been made versus a difference in opinion?
• What are the options for a journal to respond to (unreasonable) requests from readers regarding the content published in the journal and/or request to retract a paper if the editorial team considers the concern not sufficiently problematic to result in retraction?
• What could the editorial team have done to better respond to the reader’s concerns?

A journal received an allegation of scientific misconduct from an anonymous individual stating they were from the group that had written the paper (Institution-1, there are two institutions involved in this research). The email stated that the scientific bases of the article were unreliable. The paper was currently with the authors who were revising the paper after the first round of review, and additional experiments were required.

编辑随访举报人，要求更多信息及其身份。录音机通过电子邮件发送回来，隐瞒他们的身份，但提供了其他信息，突出了研究的特定组成部分作为不可靠的。

Institution-2 (the one that was not claimed by the whistleblower) was informed of the whistleblower. Institution-2 responded by saying that the authors believed there was an initial problem with the data used, but these had been updated and were not fabricated. Institution-2, however, was not the institution that carried out the experiments in question.

The editors made the decision to obtain more information. On resubmission of the paper, the three original reviewers looked at the manuscript but were not told about the whistleblower. All three were satisfied with the changes made to the paper and approved publication. A fourth reviewer was asked to look at the paper and told about the anonymous whistleblower. This reviewer found no clear evidence of fraud, but he could not assess the experiments in question. This reviewer did, however, raise new concerns about technical deficiencies in the work. Aside from fraud, these new issues made it unsuitable for publication in the journal.

The editors requested outside assessment from researchers with knowledge of the work to redo the informatics analyses to see if the raw data (included with the paper) gave the same results as the processed data. Again, there was no clear evidence of fraud, but there was difficulty in complete reproducibility due to poor methods descriptions and lack of access to all of the data.

At this time the whistleblower sent an email recanting his/her original statement and saying they have assessed the work and the authors have made the appropriate changes to fix everything. This was an odd email as there had been no change in the manuscript since the resubmission.

The editors ultimately decided to reject the paper based on remaining concerns of misconduct and the heavy criticism of the fourth reviewer.

The authors from Institution-1 requested a meeting with the editors. At this meeting the authors: expressly denied misconduct; showed the editors pages of data from the experiments of concern; and provided the editor with a copy of an email from an anonymous whistleblower that the leader of the group had received 2 days before the journal editor had received their anonymous email. This anonymous individual claimed to be from Institution-1, and stated that one of the authors (from Institution-1) had visited their institution and removed data.

An additional oddity is that the email addresses from the whistleblower to the editor and to the authors were created to indicate they came from the institutions claimed. Investigation of the email origins showed that the two anonymous whistleblower emails came from the same individual, not two different individuals as claimed.

Question(s) for the COPE Forum
• How should editors act on a tip from an anonymous whistleblower, where there is uncertainty about the unknown person's goals and that, should institutions take punitive action without investigation of the whistleblower’s intent, careers could be heavily impacted.
• If the institutions, when informed, decide to take no action, do the editors have a responsibility to investigate to get a better sense of whether they should further push the institution given the authors can simply submit a paper elsewhere where those editors will not know about the potential for misconduct.
• Due to the importance for the career of individuals on this paper, can the editors aid the authors submitting elsewhere, given that the whistleblower lied, but there is no way to disprove fraud. Or should the editors provide the information about the whistleblower to the institution.