What is truth? Standards of scientific integrity in American Heart Association journals.

The pursuit of scientific knowledge engenders both a profound sense of wonder and responsibility. As life scientists, we endeavor to discover hidden truths that will illuminate specific pathways underlying basic life or death processes, or the mechanism of action of a therapeutic intervention. But what is truth? We expect what is true in a given set of experiments to be self-evident in our publications; however, increasingly, we are confronted with cases of skewed truth or outright fraud. One could argue the increase in scientific misconduct relates to the ever-rising demand to publish data. This demand in publishing is reflected by a steady increase in both the number of scientific journals and total articles published over the past 60 years (Figure). Interestingly, recent evidence suggests an apparent escalation in the number of retracted articles during the last 10 years,1 when a particularly sharp increase in journal/paper number was observed (Figure). Whether the rise in the number of retracted papers, and by extension scientific misconduct, relates to increases in published articles or simply the greater detection/reporting of scientific misconduct is unclear. However, few would dispute that the pressure to publish (or perish) and the ease in which data figures are generated provide fertile conditions for scientific misconduct to occur. The issues surrounding scientific misconduct have spawned several initiatives to detect and combat such practices. But what realistic remedy can we promulgate for the journals stewarded by the American Heart Association (AHA)? A recent National Academies panel was formed to define guidelines for journals to follow in matters related to data integrity. Unfortunately, there was no list of guidelines generated, and the conclusion of one editor was that the task of developing such a list rests on the shoulders of individual societies and journals.2 Some journals, such as Journal of Cell Biology, Nature, Nature Cell Biology, and Journal of Clinical Investigation, have already adopted tools and policies to assist in decreasing instances of scientific misconduct.3–8 The AHA is sensitive to issues of scientific misconduct and, while recognizing that the process will necessarily be an evolving one, believes it is time some general guidelines for submitting manuscripts to each of the 11 AHAsponsored journals be delineated and shared with each journal’s readership. Of note, much has already been formulated regarding AHA standards for falsification of scientific data, plagiarism, and scientific misconduct on various websites and in the Instructions for Authors. However, none of these standards has previously been published. The intent here is not to burden reviewers with methods to detect scientific misconduct, although we rely heavily on reviewers or coauthors to bring to the attention of the editors any potential misconduct in manuscripts submitted to AHA journals. Rather, we wish to define some of the major forms of scientific misconduct and some general guidelines for authors to consider when contemplating submission of a manuscript to one of the AHA journals.