Scientific Misconduct in Environmental Science and Toxicology

Scientific misconduct easily occurs in environmental science and toxicology; we encountered four such cases. Only one case was discovered by editors; three were reported by other authors. All guilty authors were eventually banned from future publication in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology . Cases in the Bulletin indicate that scientific misconduct may occur undetected across phyla, genera, and species; that distance from the publishing source makes detection more difficult; that editors and reviewers are not organized to take action against scientific misconduct; that plagiarized authors are likely to report plagiarism; and that there is only a small risk of censure from any source for authors engaging in scientific misconduct. ( JAMA . 1994;272:168-170)