Scientific misconduct in Croatia

In the wake of the reaction of academic institutions in Croatia to Chalmers’s account of repeated plagiarism by Croatian clinician Asim Kurjak,¹ the BMJ called on Zagreb University School of Medicine to take action,² whose court of honour had recently failed to act on proved allegations of Kurjak’s misconduct. After a request that both the BMJ and the Croatian Medical Journal investigate the articles by Kurjak that they had published, I asked the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) for their expert opinion. This revealed unacknowledged duplicate publications. A report I prepared documenting this opinion was sent to the dean of the medical school, Nada Cikes, on 14 March 2007. However, my report was not mentioned in the ruling of the school’s court of honour.

When I asked about this omission at the school’s council meeting of 27 November 2007, the dean answered that she could not recall ever having received my report. I also learnt that the court of honour was not provided with the National Committee for Ethics in Science’s report on the Kurjak case,³ although Dean Cikes told the BMJ in May 2007 that “it [the report] would be considered by the university’s court of honour.”⁴ At the same school’s council meeting, the dean proposed that my suitability as editor in chief of the Croatian Medical Journal be reviewed because of my interviews to the media about corruption in academia.⁵

I welcome the spotlight that has been provided by international exposure of the academic community reaction to scientific misconduct in Croatia. I am not asking for help but simply offering first hand testimony that many Croats detest the lack of public responsibility of the academic community in Croatia and wish to fight it, but it is difficult to confront entrenched attitudes during the transition from authoritarian to more democratic and accountable structures.