Peer-Reviewed Journal Will Retract Controversial Paper on Chromium Pollution

Chronicle of Higher Education, Lila Guterman
Published June 6, 2006

A peer-reviewed journal plans to retract a 1997 paper that was prepared by corporate consultants but did not acknowledge their contribution. The retraction will appear in the July issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. "This was a violation of editorial policy in terms of disclosure," said Paul W. Brandt-Rauf, the journal's editor, on Wednesday. Dr. Brandt-Rauf is also a professor and chairman of Columbia University's department of environmental health sciences. It is the first time the journal has retracted a paper because of disclosure violations. "It is possible," says the planned notice of retraction, "that full knowledge of the circumstances may have altered the review process or the subsequent interpretation of the study by readers." The journal covers a field that has come under criticism recently for extensive hidden bias (The Chronicle, June 24, 2005). The paper in question listed two authors, Chinese scientists, one of whom had earlier written a paper in a Chinese journal demonstrating an association between cancer and exposure to a form of chromium. The 1997 paper said the opposite. The Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based watchdog group, told Dr. Brandt-Rauf late last year that the 1997 paper had actually been written by consultants for the PG&E Corporation, which was a defendant in a lawsuit charging it with releasing chromium into groundwater. The lawsuit, which the company later settled, was dramatized in the 2000 movie Erin Brockovich. The 1997 study, said Bill Walker, a vice president at the Environmental Working Group, affected drinking-water regulations in California and decisions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on whether chromium should be included in wood preservatives. "Our main concern," he said, "was trying to set the record straight about this particular contaminant." The group contends that it has amassed documents demonstrating fraud in the published paper. But Dr. Brandt-Rauf said, "We have no evidence of scientific fraud." Only one of the Chinese authors is still alive, and Dr. Brandt-Rauf said that she did not object to the retraction. The Wall Street Journal last week was the first news outlet to report the planned retraction, calling the event "a black eye for scientific publishing." But Mr. Walker defended the journal. "They are the victim in all this," he said. "We don't believe that any taint should be pointed at them." However, he added, the case made him wonder about how much industry influence continues to hide in the scientific literature.