Navigating interpersonal conflict and peer review.

N ot too long ago I was invited to serve on a graduate school faculty panel composed of Editors-in-Chief dealing with that most slippery of life’s supposedly immutable concepts, ethics as regards the peer-reviewed literature, a growing area of scholarly investigation in its own right. The audience was, in turn, composed of several dozen graduate students pursuing their PhDs in the life sciences. They were divided into groups, with each team offering a scenario to the panel for their learned and instantaneous opinion. One could relatively easily and with only a modicum of bombast deal with the standard issues of fraudulent data, conflicts of interest with commercial entities and plagiarism. This was helped in large part by journals codifying their own integrity policies. Much more worrisome, however, was the surprisingly large percentage of cases that focused on interpersonal relationships, or the lack thereof, in Science, ie, mentors mistreating graduate students, post-doctoral fellows helping each other without appropriate acknowledgment or academic credit, issues of inappropriate sharing of reagents, intellectual property or novel techniques and lastly, academic rivalries extending to the sabotaging of each others work. I and others have previously written about priority in biomedical research, the desire to be first, and the usually mistaken belief that to whomever crosses the finish line first, all credit and glory flows. If anything this concept has fallen farther into the background as patent positions take on a larger role rather than publication in the peer-reviewed literature. These other alluded to problems, however, seemingly take on a larger and more unhealthy role and are regretfully becoming so common place as being accepted, at least by these young people, as ‘the cost of doing business.’ The question then remains as to whether in fact any of this is true. As editors, it is virtually impossible to know because when authors approach editors with charges of failure to include one as a co-author, or inappropriate inclusion of one in that role, more often than not we are forced to push this charge back to them or to their home department, college or institution as there is no way to judge from afar the true merit of such a claim. Although some journals have required each author to spell out in antagonizing detail their exact role in any publication who among us can and will say in the end that this was not an appropriate role meriting authorship if all the other authors agree that it does. The literature itself is surprisingly silent on this world of interpersonal distress as influencing peer review. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has as recently as October of last year, updated their uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Others including the WHO have moved down similar pathways. They have accomplished the seemingly Herculean task of reaching consensus on a host of related topics ranging from authorship to conflicts of interest, the need to publish negative studies and duplicate submissions. Even the Creationist Community has entered the debate with a paper entitled, ‘Toward a practical theology of peer review’ where they argue ‘it is centered in several Christian virtues’ and therefore desirable. At the other end of the spectrum, Rockwell has argued that the process of peer review itself unleashes a whole series of ethical responsibilities for the reviewer. Although not wishing to minimize or negate these observations, it still begs the central question as to why scholars appear to be at each other’s throats with regard to the publishing of scientific articles? Again, true data being remarkably absent. It is my hypothesis that the answer is straightforward and non-obtuse. One does not have to invoke biblical references to Cain and Abel or a psychosocial rationale for aggressive behavior Anatomic Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA. Correspondence should be addressed to gsiegal@uab.edu Laboratory Investigation (2009) 89, 256–258 & 2009 USCAP, Inc All rights reserved 0023-6837/09 $32.00