Answer to D. Boning's and J. M. Steinacker's Letter to the Editor 'Problems with Doping in Scientific Articles?'

摘要

We appreciate the dedicated comments of the authors of the "Letter to the Editor". As coauthors of some of the mentioned papers [9-12], we strongly support their suggestion that clear rules regarding illegal offences should be included in the Journal's guidelines - in case such rules do not already exist. As a matter of course these regulations should be in force against any punishable or ethically unacceptable activity of authors. Thus, rejection of manuscripts prior to publication seems formally easy. However, we should decide what to do with papers that have already been published. In the mentioned cases, the investigation of their employer, the University of Freiburg, has led to a termination of the scientific and academic career for the persons accused of doping practices. As there.was also extensive press coverage about the factual or even supposed personal participation in doping, we conclude that there is no additional need to inform the scientific community nor is there a need for the International Journal of Sports Medicine to personally penalize these scientists.