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Many journals have not retracted "fraudulent" research

Déirdre Cooper-Mahkorn, Bergish Gladbach, Germany

A year after Germany's most serious fraud scandal first came to light only two journals out of 19 have retracted the articles concerned, according to the respected daily German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Between May 1997 and May 1998 a number of inquiries concluded that Friedhelm Herrmann, professor of medicine at Ulm University, and his fellow cancer researcher, Marion Brach, had forged and invented data contained in 47 scientific articles. These articles were published in 19 journals, including the Journal of Immunology, Blood, Journal of Biological Chemistry, and FEBS Letters. Marion Brach has admitted forging data and claimed that Friedhelm Herrmann was aware of the fraud but he denies any wrongdoing.

Last month the Süddeutsche Zeitung revealed that only two of the 19 journals in question--Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and EMBO Journal--have retracted the problematic articles. Only half of the 19 publishers responded to the newspaper's request for information. The rest who replied denied knowledge that the articles contained false information and delegated responsibility to the authors of the articles under discussion.

Policies concerning the retraction of papers vary between journals. Most only require the relevant author to retract, but some need every coauthor to consent. Some coauthors are worried that the association of their names with the controversial papers will end their careers and have threatened to sue the committee investigating the fraud.

Friedhelm Herrmann published at least seven dubious articles in Blood and was asked to retract them by the editors in charge--according to the journal's rules he was the only person authorised to annul his publications. He did not respond to the request.
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