Minimal prevalence of authorship misrepresentation among internal medicine residency applicants: do previous estimates of "misrepresentation" represent insufficient case finding?.
BACKGROUND
High rates of authorship misrepresentation have been documented among medical trainees.


OBJECTIVE
To assess misrepresentation among internal medicine residency applicants while comparing searches used by previous authors (searches 1 and 2) to a more comprehensive strategy (search 3).


METHODS
Review of 497 residency applications.


METHODS
Two university-based internal medicine residency programs.


METHODS
Search 1 was limited to MEDLINE. Search 2 added Current Contents, Science Citation Index, and BIOSIS and included searching journals by hand. Search 3 added seven other databases and contacts to librarians, editors, and coauthors.


RESULTS
224 applicants reported 634 articles; 630 (99%) were verified. The number of applicants with misrepresented citations varied depending on the search used (56 applicants [25%] in search 1 vs. 34 applicants [15%] in search 2 vs. 4 applicants [1.8%] in search 3).


CONCLUSIONS
Using a comprehensive search, we found substantially less misrepresentation than had been reported. Previous studies probably overestimated the magnitude of the problem.
Hebert
Randy S
RS
John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and Harrison Medical Library, John Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. hebertrs@msx.upmc.edu
Smith
Cheri G
CG
Wright
Scott M
SM
D000328:Adult; D001319:Authorship; D008192:Deception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000193:education* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D007396:Internship and Residency / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016239:MEDLINE; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D014481:United States