Year: 2013
Type: letter
Abstract: Of Gdansk and Glass HousesI am in receipt of your letter and have reviewed and chosen to publish your response to our serious allegation of duplicate publications.1 On balance, we can agree that there is no question that you failed to disclose that your Cancer publications of 1997 2 and 1999 3 included subsets of the data that had previously been published in small specialty journals in Poland.As such, this constitutes a significant ethical violation, one we must take seriously.To determine our course of action, it is important to understand that point, and to try to review and understand the circumstances that may have led and contributed to this mistake.Because this ethical violation does concern us considerably, I am gratified to see that you acknowledge the mistake you have made, accept full responsibility, and commit to not repeating this error again.However, the broader issues of its impact on the field must take precedence.I will attempt to walk through our understanding and our subsequent conclusions.The 2 articles that you authored in Cancer regarding the surgical treatment of patients with brain metastases from breast carcinoma and colorectal carcinoma are important and deserving of the citations (72 and 54, respectively) and downloads they have received over the last 15 years.Simply stated, they are among the early articles in the literature that pointed out to a broad cross-section of investigators and clinicians worldwide the importance of a neurosurgical consultation and indeed, when appropriate, a well-considered craniotomy and therapeutic metastasectomy for brain metastases that were shown to be resistant to radiotherapy.They built on the seminal clinical trial that Patchell et al conducted that first established the importance of the surgical resection of solitary brain metastases in patients with cancer.4 The impact on survival that you pointed out in your 2 articles has been realized in several subsequent institutional and multiinstitutional studies, although no phase 3 study to date has definitively shown this point.5 It has, however, become an accepted standard of practice, and you and your coauthors, Drs.Ehud Arbit and Beryl McCormick, deserve credit for helping bring this important option forward for physicians and patients alike.Although it would be relatively straightforward to sanction you and consider retracting the articles, I am convinced that this approach, while ethically defensible, would not serve the greater good.These publications are important articles that helped cancer neurosurgeons and medical oncologists to meaningfully prolong the lives of Cancer February
Source: Cancer
DOI: 10.1002/cncr.28460
Author: Fadlo R. Khuri
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1505952813