Kulik and Glantz Reponse to Criticism of their Paper is Censored by Journal, Undermining Its Own Conflict of Interest Policies

According to a commentary posted last week on Dr. Stan Glantz's blog, the journal Addiction has refused to publish a response he wrote to a critique of an article he and Dr. Margarete Kulik had published in the journal Tobacco Control on the "hardening" hypothesis of smoking cessation.Drs. Kulik and Glantz published the original article in Tobacco Control on June 24, 2015. In February 2016, the journal Addiction accepted for publication a manuscript by Plurphanswat and Rodu which provided a critique of the Kulik and Glantz article. Drs. Kulik and Glantz were therefore invited to submit a response to the manuscript, which is customary practice for every journal. Authors whose papers are criticized are always given an opportunity to respond to the criticism.Drs. Kulik and Glantz did submit a response to the critique. In their response, they made two major points. First, they noted that one of the authors of the critique has a substantial conflict of interest because of his previous and current funding by tobacco companies and they explained how and why this conflict needs to be considered in evaluating the validity of the critique. Second, they pointed out what they claimed was a statistical error in the critique which invalidated the analysis.The journal responded by refusing to publish their response and instead, ordering them to remove all reference to the conflict of interest if they wished to have their response published:"Thank you for your reply to the Rodu and Plurphans...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - Category: Addiction Source Type: blogs