Tuller: Trial By Error: Our Exchange of Views with BMJ Open

Andy

Andy

Senior Member (Voting rights)
Last week, Professor Racaniello e-mailed a letter of concern signed by more than a dozen experts to Dr. Trish Groves, editor-in-chief of BMJ Open. The letter involved Professor Esther Crawley’s school absence study, which the journal published in 2011. As I’d documented in a post last fall, the study exempted itself from ethical review based on the false claim that it was “service evaluation” and not “research.”

The next day, Dr. Groves sent the following e-mail:

Dear Professor Racaniello and colleagues
Thank you for your letter.

We assume that you know this case has been thoroughly reviewed by BMJ Open and has been considered by the Committee on Publication Ethics.

If you would like us to also consider posting an eletter to the paper at BMJ Open, please submit it by clicking the link next to the article.

With best wishes
Trish Groves

**********

Needless to say, this was not a satisfactory answer. Professor Racaniello e-mailed the following response today:
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http://www.virology.ws/2018/02/26/trial-by-error-our-exchange-of-views-with-bmj-open/
 
What a weird reply from Groves. And a good one from Racaniello & co. Thanks so much to all the signatories.

What is going on here? It's so odd that this is a pretty simple, matter of fact issue, but BMJ Open want to try to ignore that. Are they just confident that they can go on bluffing it out?
 
Esther12 said:
What a weird reply from Groves. And a good one from Racaniello & co. Thanks so much to all the signatories.

What is going on here? It's so odd that this is a pretty simple, matter of fact issue, but BMJ Open want to try to ignore that. Are they just confident that they can go on bluffing it out?
Click to expand...

I think journals just seem to make up rules but never expect to take the difficult decisions to enforce them. They saw a get out with the response from Bristol so went with it.
 
From the COPE forum:

“The Forum suggested that perhaps the issue is not whether or not the service evaluation is research, but was the evaluation carried out in human subjects (which would require a sound ethics approach) or were the data contained in registries where the patient data were anonymised. It would appear that the latter is the case and that this is a secondary data analysis, but the editor could ask for clarification from the author on the methodology as it needs to be adequately described...''
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Racaniello et al respond:

As far as we know, BMJ Open has not yet complied with the Forum’s suggestion that the journal seek “clarification” of the school absence paper’s methodology. As our letter noted, obtaining such clarification would only require that you and other BMJ Open editors read the actual paper. The investigators themselves provided definitive evidence in their description of the methodology that this was not “service evaluation” but “research.”
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I love this sentence:

''As our letter noted, obtaining such clarification would only require that you and other BMJ Open editors read the actual paper.''

So it seems the BMJ Open editor is prepared to defend a paper she herself published but which she hasn't actually bothered to read. Pretty damning.
 
But, in addition to my last post, I really must make this point -

This letter by Racaniello et al is spot on. We couldn’t ask for better advocacy than this, exposing the corrupt nature of the medical journals that so many bow down to. I just hope that Tuller is going to stay on board and ask for crowdfunding for another year. Without him we would be back to floundering around, not getting anywhere fast. Does anybody know what he’s intending to do?

If you’re reading this David, PLEASE stay on board, we all need you.
 
Dr Trish Groves in picture form:

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Esther12 said:
What a weird reply from Groves. And a good one from Racaniello & co. Thanks so much to all the signatories.

What is going on here? It's so odd that this is a pretty simple, matter of fact issue, but BMJ Open want to try to ignore that. Are they just confident that they can go on bluffing it out?
Click to expand...
I suspect it may be inertia. Journals have probably been pulling these sort of tricks for many many years, and up until now have been able to conceal and obfuscate with ease, and faced no opposition they could not deal with. Social media has changed all that, and I don't think they have really caught on. I suspect they still have a dinosaur culture that blindly tries to blunder on in the same old bull-and-bluster way that always used to work for them, not realising how it actually digs their own very deep hole for them in the modern age. I think they simply know no better.
 
Barry said:
I suspect it may be inertia. Journals have probably been pulling these sort of tricks for many many years, and up until now have been able to conceal and obfuscate with ease, and faced no opposition they could not deal with. Social media has changed all that, and I don't think they have really caught on. I suspect they still have a dinosaur culture that blindly tries to blunder on in the same old bull-and-bluster way that always used to work for them, not realising how it actually digs their own very deep hole for them in the modern age. I think they simply know no better.
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Quite so and I think they still think they are invincible and above scrutiny.
 
I can't get this to open - I just get a message saying "Internal Server Error".

Is it just me?! Has the article been posted anywhere else?

Thank-you.
 
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