Welcome Retraction Decision from the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, and Hopefully Future Policy Revisions to Be Announced

I have posted two times (here and here) about the deeply misguided decision by the editorial management team of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics not to retract a fraudulent, obviously "antivaxx" propaganda piece, article. On invitation, I have also summarised my opinion on this matter at the Daily Nous philosophy blog. In all of these posts, I have strongly underscored the otherwise very promising track and strong reputation of this journal, the importance of this for the critical place of global health and developing country perspectives in bioethics scholarship, and my strong wish for a revised course by the IJME editorial management. It is therefore with the greatest satisfaction I have been reached by the news that the same management has now revised its judgement, and decided to retract the article in question, inviting publicity also from the widely read Retraction Watch blog.

The retraction note is rather brief, but open and honest, and it speaks well of the integrity of the editorial management that it does not try to hide its own mistakes, or that the retraction occurred only as a result of pressure from the journal's editorial board and external commentators. It signs off by promising further elaborations in coming editorials. My hope is that these will set out clarified policies and routines that ensure that the journal in the future will keep strictly within its own declared area expertise and scholarship of "all aspects of healthcare ethics and the humanities, relevant to and/or from the perspective of India and other developing countries". This simple policy will save the IJME from any further scandals of the sort it has just escaped, and be a pillar for what I hope will be a further positive route of development of this otherwise excellent journal.

However, on one point, I strongly disagree with the position set out by the editorial management, and that is its apparent decision to continue to hide the identity of the proven fraudulent author that used to call him-/herself "Lars Andersson", falsely claiming affiliation to Karolinska Institutet. The editors are hereby promoting further research fraud by this person, undermining both other journals and research institutions from protecting themselves against this person's future activities. It also impedes appropriate disciplinary action to be taken by the academic or other institution to which the person formerly known as "Lars Andersson" is indeed affiliated. Finally, it impedes any analysis into the vested or other conflicts of interests linking to this person's activity to attempt to peddle fraudulent antivaxx articles. The argument by the editors, that it has promised the author to keep his/her identity a secret is not only invalid. The action makes the editors complicit in any further research fraud undertaken by this person. The promise itself is morally void, as the editors had no business making it in the first place, their primary obligation being to the research community, and not to proven research fraudsters. It is my sincere hope that the further elaborations on editorial policy promised, possibly by help of further dialogue with the journal's editorial board, will lead to revision of judgement also regarding this particular point.

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Highly Problematic Stance on Fake "Antivaxx" Authorship By the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics

It is a recognised challenge of my research field, bioethics, to include and empower researchers and institutions from low- and midlle-resource settings. Since a few years, the leading journal of Bioethics, runs the side journal Developing World Bioethics to address this issue, and over the past few years a number of journals have appeared, based at institutions outside of the most affluent parts of the world with a natural focus on bioethical issue of relevance to such settings, as well as global health related issues. One of these is the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, that has quickly been rising in the ranks and attracting respect for its consistent work.

However, very recently the IJME has been dragged into potential scandal. First, the editor, Amar Jesani, decided to publish an article by a fake author, claiming fake credentials and affiliations, of an obvious antivaxx junk article of the sort that antivaxxers – just like tobacco-industry sponsored scientists used to do regarding the dangers of smoking – are constantly trying to peddle to various journals to create an image of "scientific controversy" around the use of vaccines to fight infectious disease and build public health. The fakes were all very easy to detect, and already the fact that the "author" was not using the email-domain of, and has no profile at the webpages of, the institution (Karolinska Institutet) to which he claimed affiliation should have rung immediate alarm-bells. But then, when this is pointed out, and the journal is alerted to this research fraud, the editor Amar Jesani decides not to retract the article! Instead, the editor appears to have decided to trust the author's obviously bogus explanations for his (?) fraud, and to attempt to counter a, to my mind, quite sound statement on the matter from the Karolinska Institutet president, Ole-Petter Ottersen.

The bogus explanations and Jesani's expression of sympathy with them, and Ottersen's stringent response, is to be found here. This very surprising and ill-conceived action of Jesani is potentially extremely damaging for the IJME, and in effect risks to soil the reputation of the entire field of bioethics. The fake author's attempt at justifying the fraud is that he/she has to be anonymous to protect him-/herself from persecution for unpopular views. This, of course, is not even worth the scrap of paper it was scribbled on. The real role of the fraud is to block any investigation into conflicts of interests (the antivaxx movement is nowadays a flourishing industry of quackery), other activities of the author that would undermine confidence in the article's content, and the fact the author lied to the editor, and offered the explanation only in retrospect when the scam had been uncovered should, of course, mean that the editor should have no trust in what the author is claiming. This is a proven fraudster, and should be treated as such. Just as authors lying about ethics approval should have their papers taken out, authors who lie about other things of relevance to the evaluation and assessment of the research have their papers removed. As Ottersen says in his second blog post: an editor of an ethics journal should know this. The editorial board of the journal should immediately and strongly recommend its editor, who has obviously let his personal prestige lead him astray in this matter, to revise his position and act according to the high publication ethical standards expected of a bioethics journal that aspires to be well regarded.

Let me, lastly, comment on the possible need for author anonymity for research articles. The afterconstructed reason brough forward by the fake author and that Jesani surprisingly buys, is the idea that is often practices within news reporting. Where, eg., a newspaper may protect sources by keeping them confidential. However, that also means that whatever story is built on this, needs to present suffient additional public evidence, that is open for scrutiny, in order to compensate for the loss of control following source anonymity. This has not taken place in the case of the fraudulent article. Also, the whole spinn about author/source confidentiality is obviously a lie in the present case: Had the author had any such plan, he/she would have honestly and openly contacted the IJME editor about it, and Jesani could have pondered - bringing in the editorial board - the issue. Had they decided to approve such a request, this would have brought with it extraordinarily strong obligations to check the author credibility, CoI, etc. This is not what occurred, however. What occurred is that a con-man defrauded the journal, and the journal editor then decides, against any common sense, to trust said con-man. Unbelievable!

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