AC317 The Plant Phenome Journal editorial board

An initial quality control check was completed for the journal and magazine content and a check of the books content is currently under way. Authors make edits directly to the HTML article file, which cuts down time to publication and reduces errors introduced during typesetting. [...]far we've received positive response and hope to expand this program to additional titles. [...]the group reviewed mismatched guidelines and adopted a standardized Scientific Misconduct Statement for all 13 journals to create uniformity across the journal collection. The JIF is one tool used to evaluate a journal's relative importance when compared with other journals in the same study area.

New Horizons or Business as Usual? New Zealand's Medico-Legal Response to Digital Harm

A socio-legal commentary, this article examines the emerging issue of digital harm in New Zealand's health settings. There are recent cases, and an increasing number of them, demonstrating the medico-legal response to various forms of digital harm. Of these, several representative cases are considered in order to identify features of digital harm within the health context. The article questions whether this is a new type of harm, enabled by the creation of new technologies, or simply a different manifestation of conventional unprofessional or unethical behaviour. The article considers whether the existing medico-legal framework can appropriately respond to this harm and whether new legal or policy tools are required. The cases suggest that the rights and disciplinary systems in place can adequately deal with digital harm within their existing scopes, particularly when individuals have been harmed. However, gaps in the legal framework are identified, with particular reference to the actions of unregistered providers and harm to professions. Further, a future challenge for the system may be the response to COVID-19 vaccine denial and misinformation. As the legal response to digital harm in the health context is a relatively unexamined area of research, this work may guide future research.

If it ducks like a quack: balancing physician freedom of expression and the public interest.

Physicians expressing opinions on medical matters that run contrary to the consensus of experts pose a challenge to licensing bodies and regulatory authorities. While the right to express contrarian views feeds a robust marketplace of ideas that is essential for scientific progress, physicians advocating ineffective or dangerous cures, or actively opposing public health measures, pose a grave threat to societal welfare. Increasingly, a distinction has been made between professional speech that occurs during the physician-patient encounter and public speech that transpires beyond the clinical setting, with physicians being afforded wide latitude to voice empirically false claims outside the context of patient care. This paper argues that such a bifurcated model does not sufficiently address the challenges of an age when mass communications and social media allow dissenting physicians to offer misleading medical advice to the general public on a mass scale. Instead, a three-tiered model that distinguishes between citizen speech, physician speech and clinical speech would best serve authorities when regulating physician expression.

Frauds in scientific research and how to possibly overcome them.

Frauds and misconduct have been common in the history of science. Recent events connected to the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted how the risks and consequences of this are no longer acceptable. Two papers, addressing the treatment of COVID-19, have been published in two of the most prestigious medical journals; the authors declared to have analysed electronic health records from a private corporation, which apparently collected data of tens of thousands of patients, coming from hundreds of hospitals. Both papers have been retracted a few weeks later. When such events happen, the confidence of the population in scientific research is likely to be weakened. This paper highlights how the current system endangers the reliability of scientific research, and the very foundations of the trust system on which modern healthcare is based. Having shed light on the dangers of a system without appropriate monitoring, the proposed analysis suggests to strengthen the existing journal policies and improve the research process using new technologies supporting control activities by public authorities. Among these solutions, we mention the promising aspects of the blockchain technology which seems a promising solution to avoid the repetition of the mistakes linked to the recent and past history of research.