Karen Rech, a hematopathologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., was reading a case report about a rare disease when she recognized the patient. Although the authors of the paper were affiliated with the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Fargo, the patient in the report had gone to Mayo for care, and Rech had made the pathology diagnosis. But the article, "A Diagnostic Dilemma and Classification Conundrum: Atypical Histiocytic Neoplasm Presenting as a Calvarial Mass," published in Cureus in February, didn’t mention or credit Rech or her colleagues.
The North Dakota physicians, who had referred the patient to Mayo, were able to access the Mayo physicians’ clinical notes, laboratory data and pathology reports through the electronic medical record and used the information to produce the case report, Rech wrote. She identified incorrect statements about pathology in the article, too, wording that had come from a Mayo hematology fellow’s clinical note.
Initially, the journal’s editors agreed with Rech. But after the authors of the paper objected and the editors asked their institutions to investigate, the journal decided not to retract the article. It remains intact, without any notice.
