{"id":1589,"date":"2014-11-29T11:49:26","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T11:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/post-publication-peer-review-and-legal-clashes-should-researchers-be-wary-of-commenting-publicly\/"},"modified":"2025-04-05T07:22:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T07:22:55","slug":"post-publication-peer-review-and-legal-clashes-should-researchers-be-wary-of-commenting-publicly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/post-publication-peer-review-and-legal-clashes-should-researchers-be-wary-of-commenting-publicly","title":{"rendered":"Post-publication peer review and legal clashes: Should researchers be wary of commenting publicly?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">The recent case of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/peer-review-website-vows-to-fight-scientist-s-subpoena-1.16356\">defamation suit filed against PubPeer<\/a> an online forum for anonymous, post-publication peer review\u2014has created a buzz in the scientific community. The lawsuit has been filed by Fazlul Sarkar, a cancer researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, the author of more than 500 papers, and a principal investigator for more than $1,227,000 in active grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, on the grounds that anonymous derogatory comments posted on the site about his work cost him his job. Sarkar wants to uncover the identities of the anonymous commentators and press legal charges against them. This incident has brought to the fore several doubts academicians have long harbored about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/post-publication-peer-review-an-unexplored-avenue\">post-publication peer review<\/a> such as:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Would scientists be wary of commenting about a paper\u2019s inaccuracy for the fear of legal action?<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">To what extent should law interfere with science?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Should whistleblowers be offered legal protection?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeshighereducation.co.uk\/news\/can-post-publication-peer-review-endure\/2016895.article\">Pre-publication peer review is confidential; peer review reports are never revealed to the general public, which is why even highly critical views that may lead to a paper\u2019s rejection do not attract charges of slander from authors<\/a>. Moreover, authors are bound to respect the journal\u2019s decision-making process and hence are more accepting of peer reviewer comments. In the case of post-publication peer review, however, the comments or responses to a paper are accessible to the public. Also, authors are wary of comments with malicious intent as they can adversely affect their reputation. Such comments can lead authors to respond aggressively, for example, by taking legal action. Although it is the basic right and duty of an expert to comment on a paper\u2019s incorrectness, considering the PubPeer incident, researchers might contemplate the consequences of critiquing any researcher\u2019s work. As the PubPeer\u2019s moderators <a href=\"https:\/\/pubpeer.com\/topics\/1\/3F5792FF283A624FB48E773CAAD150\">commented<\/a> on their site, \u201cThe case may have to resolve what is perhaps the most vexed legal issue in post-publication peer review today: if features of published data are suggestive of misconduct, is it defamatory to draw attention to those features?\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">The PubPeer issue brings to mind a strikingly similar incident that led to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timeshighereducation.co.uk\/news\/can-post-publication-peer-review-endure\/2016895.article\">closing down of the site Science Fraud<\/a>. The whistleblower site run anonymously by Professor\u00a0Paul Brookes, a researcher at the University of Rochester, had documented <a href=\"http:\/\/sciencecareers.sciencemag.org\/career_magazine\/previous_issues\/articles\/2014_03_10\/caredit.a1400061\">over 500 problematic images in over 300 publications, amounting to tens of millions of dollars in misappropriated research funds<\/a>. This led to many retractions and corrections of research papers. However, the site was pulled down once it got embroiled in legal threats. Many researchers are, therefore, wary of commenting even anonymously on published research. In an interview after the site was pulled down, Paul Brookes said, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/sciencecareers.sciencemag.org\/career_magazine\/previous_issues\/articles\/2014_03_10\/caredit.a1400061\">The fundamental idea is that discussing this stuff in public produces results, and it appears that when stuff is kept private less is done about it. There&#8217;s no reason to be afraid to question data<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Both these incidents point to a crucial question: How much should libel laws interfere with science? Governments play a decisive role in protecting genuine whistleblowers from unwarranted legal threats. Scientists have long been making <a href=\"http:\/\/www.senseaboutscience.org\/pages\/keep-libel-laws-out-of-science.html\">attempts to reform libel laws<\/a> in favor of whistleblowers, and one of their successes is the redesigning of the UK\u2019s Defamation Bill. The UK had laws that favored those claiming to having been defamed, but it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/england-s-libel-laws-reformed-in-a-victory-for-science-campaigners-1.12874\">reformed to prevent whistleblowers from being forced to suppress their scientific criticism fearing legal threats<\/a>. Similarly, the US protects rights to anonymous free speech, and PubPeer, which is contesting the law suit filed by Sarkar, is hinging on these legal protections for free speech and anonymity to defend itself. Alex Abdo of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, which is assisting PubPeer with the case, opines that legitimate scientific questions \u00a0should not be resolved through court proceedings, but through more discussion.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Post-publication peer review draws extreme opinions: While some consider it as an essential step toward preserving scientific integrity since published research is open to the scrutiny of all experts in the field, many others disfavor it for it can be used as a weapon by unidentified persons to make personal attacks on researchers. To make the commenting effective and productive, post-publication peer review sites should weed out any malicious comments. Additionally, identities of the commentators should be known to the sites\u2019 moderators. Although post-publication peer review is not free of imperfections, researchers should be encouraged to point out questionable science because as Philip Moriarty, Professor of Physics at the University of Nottingham, rightly puts it, \u201cIf you are publicly funded and you put your research into the public domain but no one can criticise you for it without facing legal proceedings, that seems to me to be a very badly damaged system.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent case of a defamation suit filed against PubPeer an online forum for anonymous, post-publication peer review\u2014has created a buzz in the scientific community. The lawsuit has been filed by Fazlul Sarkar, a cancer researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, the author of more than 500 papers, and a principal investigator for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":33313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2405],"tags":[539],"new_categories":[],"new_tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-trends","tag-peer-review-process"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Post-publication peer review and legal clashes: Should researchers be wary of commenting publicly? | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Post-publication peer review is considered by some experts as one of ways of preserving scientific integrity since published research is open to the scrutiny of all experts in the field. 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