»...Darsee and Slutsky cases in the 1980's«

In the 1980s, two cases of misconduct brought the issue of authorship problems to the attention of the research community. One case involved Dr. John R. Darsee, a young clinical investigator in cardiology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (a teaching affiliate of Harvard University), who published many research studies and included faculty members as authors on them although they had minimal or no direct involvement in the papers that bore their name. In May 1981, Dr. Darsee’s associates and supervisors at Harvard caught him fabricating data. Other investigations took place at Harvard (1981-1982); the National Heart, Blood, and Lung Institute (1981-1982); and the National Institutes of Health (1983). Ultimately, Darsee was found to have fabricated research articles starting when he was a biology student at Notre Dame, continuing through his medical residency and cardiology fellowship at Emory University, and ending at Harvard. More than 10 primary journal articles and more than 45 abstracts were retracted because of the investigations.

The Darsee case highlighted the problem of using so-called "gift authors" on papers. Gift authors have little or no contact with the person giving them the authorship, but the presence of well-known names may influence an editor to consider a paper for publication. The co-authors in the Darsee case either did not know they were on the papers or had no direct involvement in the papers. Eventually, they were found not to have participated in the fraud, having been unaware of the fabrications. But the case pointed to the need for co-authors to have responsibility for information in papers on which their names appear. The case also revealed that the peer-review process could not be relied upon to find the fabrication.^1,2

Soon after Darsee, the case of Robert A. Slutsky, working in radiology at the University of California, San Diego, also brought to light the problem with co-authors. Slutsky apparently was publishing one paper every 10 days for years and including names of many co-authors to mislead editors and cover up for what was later found to be a false output. His behavior continued until 1985, when a reviewer noted duplicated data in two of Slutsky’s articles. At the time, he was up for promotion. Slutsky resigned, but an investigation later found that, of his 137 publications, 77 were valid, 48 were questionable, and 12 were fraudulent.³

Although researchers acknowledge that supervisors and colleagues cannot be accountable for the output of fellow workers, most agree that it is important for someone who is listed as an author to have more responsibility for a paper than what occurred in the Darsee and Slutsky cases. Soon after these cases became known, in 1985, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors issued authorship guidelines, which continue to undergo revisions. Today, certain journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and Lancet, require all authors, as part of the manuscript submission process, to account for their role in a paper. The British Medical Journal asks that authors be either guarantors of research or contributors. The guarantor/author takes full responsibility for the published work, while the contributor, listed at the end of an article, is someone who participated in the research to some degree and may not be an author.

1. Wilson J. Research Ethics: Mini Rounds, Module II: Responsible Authorship and Peer Review, North Carolina State University.
2. Jones AH and McLellan F, eds. Ethical Issues in Biomedical Publication, 2000, pp. 7-12.
3. Ibid.