The Winter of Scholarly Science Journals

Irving Maltzman, Ph.D. 

Science, idealized, is the objective, disinterested, communal search for the truth. One of its important virtues is that it is self-correcting (Merton, 1968).

Fraud, purportedly a rare occurrence, is uncovered and punished, and cannot ordinarily escape exposure because science replicates its results, especially its important results, and these results are published in journals following peer review. This traditional view is based upon a number of unexamined assumptions. We can deal here briefly with only one of these: the critical role of scholarly journals as objective, disinterested vehicles for the expression of dissent and criticism generally and the exposure of fraud in science in particular. By fraud I mean the intentional misrepresentation of any one or more of the following: procedures, results, or the conclusions and implications of research.
    Among the important factors that may interfere with the idealized vision of scholarly science journals are the following:

One: The selective filter of ideology and politics, which may interfere with the expression of criticism and the exposure of fraud at many levels. By ideology I do not mean elaborated economic or political systems that interfere with the free expression of science, but rather the masquerading of value statements as statements of fact (Bergmann, 1954). If one ideology in this latter sense dominates an area of study or research, there are few critical, questioning adversaries serving as watchdogs; fraud is less likely to be detected under such circumstances. If detected, it is less likely to be reported by fellow ideologues and, if reported, less likely to be acted upon. Interference with the process of self-correction may also occur because adherents to a common ideology react to an attack upon or criticism of one of their members as an attack upon themselves. They may therefore attempt to avoid, defend against, or suppress such an attack. Ideologues are more forgiving of each other than of their common foe. It may be all rationalized as serving a greater good. Critical peer reviews and scholarship suffer in such an atmosphere.
    Detection of fraud and its reporting are most likely to occur from an adversarial quarter, not from friends or fellow ideologues. Diversity and pluralism, in science as in other institutions and in society at large, help safeguard against fraud and facilitates its exposure when it is detected. Deadening effects of ideology on self-correction may be present to a far greater degree than casual observers imagine.

Two: The chilling effect of libel and the threat of libel, which is an obstacle to the reporting of fraud and the expression of criticism. Idealized visions of science assume that there is free access to primary scholarly journals and that editorial reviews are conducted in an objective, disinterested manner. Quality determines probability of publication, not ideology and legal considerations. Unfortunately, this has not been my experience in an attempt to expose an alleged case of fraud in the field of alcoholism treatment, nor has it been my invariable experience in less controversial areas of academic biobehavioral science.
    Beginning in the early 1970s and culminating in the publication of a book, Mark and Linda Sobell (1978) have reported and widely circulated the claim that they successfully treated physically dependent chronic alcoholics — so-called gamma alcoholics — to return to controlled, moderate drinking. They reported finding a significantly greater number of these alcoholics functioning well at the end of a two-year follow-up period than gamma alcoholics receiving the traditional treatment goal of abstinence. A third-year independent follow-up by Caddy, Addington, and Perkins (1978), encouraged and assisted by the Sobells, purportedly confirmed the Sobells' findings.

Two factors contributed to the Sobells' enormous impact and attention in the scholarly literature and subsequently in textbooks:
 

 1) They used behavior modification techniques, the application of principles presumably derived from the laboratory to problems of maladaptive behavior. Behavior modification (and its variations) was becoming the major new ideology in clinical psychology and was winning the battle for allegiance of newer clinical psychologists over the older, “nonscientific” psychodynamic approaches. There was, therefore, a large body of receptive clinical psychologists who hailed the Sobell's work as another successful application of their approach to an entirely new area of research and treatment.
 

2) Their study appeared to be the most rigorous experiment ever conducted in the field of alcoholism treatment. The study purportedly employed random assignment of patients to experimental and control groups, and obtained quantitative data and conducted statistical analyses on daily drinking dispositions for every day for the full two years of the follow-up period.

I became involved in the discovery of alleged fraud committed by the Sobells, and by Caddy, Addington, and Perkins, entirely by chance. In 1972 a colleague, Mary Pendery, and I visited Patton State Hospital (San Bernardino, California) where the research had been recently conducted. Colleagues, including former students of mine on the staff of the hospital, urged us to follow up the patients. They were concerned about the validity of the results. Despite its widely acclaimed success, staff members were seeing rehospitalized patients.

It was not until some years later that the powerful ideological network supporting the Sobells became apparent. Through the Freedom of Information Act, copies of the correspondence between the Sobells and officials in the recently formed National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) were obtained. Thus in September 1973, before we had initiated our follow-up study, the Sobells wrote to Albert Powlowski, chief, Extramural Research Branch, expressing concern over our planned attempt to conduct a follow-up of their patients. They indicated that they were in consultation with Peter Nathan about possible courses of action they might take. Nathan was an early investigator of chronic alcoholics using behavior modification methods and was considered a senior psychology investigator in the alcoholism field.

Powlowski was a participant on a site-visiting team with Nathan as its chair. They reviewed our proposed research project submitted to NIAAA for funding to support the conduct of our follow-up beginning in May 1975. Our grant proposal was rejected as unfeasible. The follow-up was conducted without extramural funding.

Science published a report of our follow-up study (Pendery, Maltzman, & West, 1982) emphasizing only the past and current condition of patients in the experimental group, showing that the majority were not functioning well, and at best one was drinking moderately. Science declined to consider material in an earlier draft of the manuscript suggesting fraud on the part of the Sobells.

A copy of this earlier draft was obtained by the Sobells and widely circulated among their colleagues. G. Alan Marlatt, a major figure in the behavior therapy/modification approach to alcoholism, wrote on May 27, 1982, to Ray Hodgson, a well-known British psychologist in the alcoholism field, as follows:

“Their goal (Pendery and Maltzman) is to destroy the reputation of two psychologists and to kill the notion of controlled drinking as a viable treatment option once and for all. And that seems wrong to me.

     “I await your response to all this. In the meantime, I am taking the liberty of sending copies of this letter to Terry Wilson, Peter Nathan and Barbara McCrady, since I have spoken to each of them recently about this matter. I am willing to serve as a clearinghouse for all of us who wish to respond to the issues involved in one way or another. We should all keep in touch regarding developments in what could become the big ‘gunfight at the O.K. Corral’ in the alcoholism field.”

Marlatt (1983) authored the leading article in defense of the Sobells and controlled drinking in the American Psychologist, the journal distributed to all members of the American Psychological Assn. At that time Peter Nathan was associate editor of the American Psychologist responsible for reviewing and accepting articles on clinical issues including alcoholism. I was not invited to respond to the article.

Mark and Linda Sobell were invited to provide the standard brief reply to our report in Science. Instead they replied in a lengthy article in Behavior Research and Therapy (Sobell & Sobell, 1984a), the leading journal in the behavior therapy field. I was invited to reply, which I did (Maltzman, unpublished a), but the editor informed me that my manuscript was libelous, and it was rejected. Prior to submission, it had been reviewed and judged to be free of potentially libelous material by an attorney for the University of California. I then asked the attorney for Pergamon Press, publisher of Behavior Research and Therapy, to specify which passages were libelous and the legal precedents forming the basis for his judgment. He replied that his judgment stands.

In August 1984 I wrote a reply (Maltzman, unpublished b) to a comment by the Sobells (1984b) and a letter to the editor (Maltzman, unpublished c) in response to a misleading editorial by Marlatt (1984) published in the Bulletin of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors. The editor declined to publish my comment and letter, stating they were libelous. I asked him to explain the grounds for such a judgment. He replied that it was the judgment of the executive committee, which included Marlatt — who was president of the society at the time. He also stated that they had decided not to publish further material on the Sobell controversy and controlled drinking since it was settled. A lengthy article on controlled drinking appeared in the next issue (Marlatt, et al., 1985). Similar articles favorable to some form of controlled drinking and the Sobells' work have continued to appear in the Bulletin (e.g., Graber & Miller, 1988; Peele, 1986).

In November 1985 I submitted a manuscript to the British Journal of Addiction (Maltzman, unpublished d) replying to an article by Doob (1984). He was the psychologist member of the Dickens Committee appointed by the president of the Toronto Addiction Research Foundation, then the employer of the Sobells, to investigate my allegation that the Sobells had committed fraud. My paper examined some of the inadequacies that I believed were evident in the report by the Dickens Committee and the Trachtenberg Committee (Trachtenberg, 1984). The editor of the Journal wrote that my paper ought to be published but that in all fairness he wished to obtain replies from all parties concerned, including the Sobells, Dickens & Doob, and Trachtenberg. The latter was chair of an investigating committee convened by the Alcoholism, Drug, and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA). I suggested that if he did, the Sobells and others would threaten a libel suit and inquired what he would do then. He replied that he would cross that bridge when he came to it. Three years later he came to it — and rejected my manuscript because of the threat of legal action on the part of the Sobells, Dickens, and Doob.

My fourth experience of failure of nerve or influence of ideology on the editorial policy of a scholarly journal involved a manuscript I sent to the most prestigious journal in the field, the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, in January 1986. It was a reply to Cook's article on the “controlled drinking controversy.”

My cover letter accompanying the manuscript requested that it not be reviewed by the field editor for psychology, Marlatt, nor by Nathan, who at the time was executive editor of the Journal, head of the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, and president of the corporation that was publisher of the Journal. My request was honored. It was reviewed by the editor for the field of sociology and two ad hoc reviewers, and was accepted with a request for a minor revision, which was done. After an unduly long delay in its publication, the managing editor called to say that Nathan found that my manuscript may be libelous. I wrote to Nathan explaining that the manuscript had been reviewed by counsel for the University of California and found free of libelous material. I asked him to indicate which material was libelous. He never responded to the query.

I eventually received a letter from the editor stating that they had rejected my manuscript because an attorney for Rutgers University judged there was the possibility of a lawsuit against the Journal since the Sobells stated they might sue the Journal for libel if my article was published. I replied that I considered this a breach of contract, among other things.

I was fortunate enough to obtain the services of a large and prestigious Los Angeles law firm, which accepted my case pro bono, in public interest, and brought a complaint against the Journal and others for breach of contract. This legal action followed repeated attempts by my attorney to amicably resolve possible differences. His request for information concerning which specific passages in my paper were libelous was never honored by the attorney for Rutgers. At considerable expense to Rutgers University and the taxpayers of New Jersey, the Journal also hired a large Los Angeles law firm to represent them. After a delay of more than three and a half years, my paper was published in the September 1989 issue of the Journal (Maltzman, 1989), preceded by a Prefatory Comment by Nathan (1989) and followed by replies from the Sobells (1989), Cook (1989), and Baker (1989). Nathan's Prefatory Comment is falsified by the objective record, including legal documents on file in the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles (Maltzman v Alcohol Research Documentation, (1988).

Some good may, nevertheless, come of all this. First, Timothy Baker proved one of my allegations: The Sobells intentionally misrepresented their procedures. I have argued that it is logically impossible to report drinking dispositions for every day of the year derived from interviews every 3-4 weeks, as did the Sobells, and not know that they were interviewing subjects less frequently than every 3-4 weeks. I believe this incorrect reporting of procedures could not be due to carelessness, as the Dickens Committee Report and the Sobells now insist.

Baker (1989) states, “We knew the previous contact date so that we knew exactly how many days had to be accounted for” (p. 482). The Sobells therefore knew that, for example, for Subject #14 contacted on March 23, 1972, the previous contact was on Oct. 9, 1971. They knew that there was a gap of 5.5 months between interviews. They therefore necessarily knew that subjects were interviewed less frequently than every 3-4 weeks as reported in their publications. Second, and more importantly, perhaps, these events demonstrate that complex forces operate to profoundly intrude upon the processes traditionally assumed to make for self-correction in science. Much needs to be done to address problems of fraud in science. These problems are both more subtle and more complex than they generally are taken to be. The health and well-being of members of our society as well as science depend upon corrective action.

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Maltzman's References 

Baker, T. An open letter to Journal readers, J. of Studies on Alcohol, Vol. 50, 1989, pp. 481- 483.

Bergmann, G. The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism, Longman,

Green, New York, 1954. Caddy, G.R.; Addingrton, H.J.,Jr.; and Perkins, D. Individualized behavior therapy for alcoholics: A third year independent double-blind follow-up, Behaviour Research & Therapy, Vol. 16, 1978, pp. 345-362.

Cook, D.R. Craftsman versus professional: Analysis of the controlled drinking controversy, J. of studies on Alcohol, Vol. 46, 1985, pp. 433-442.

Cook, D.R. A reply to Maltzman, J. of Studies on Alcohol, Vol. 50, 1989, pp. 484-486.

Dickens, B.M.; Doob, A.N.; Warwick, O.H.; & Wingard, W.C. Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Allegations Concerning Drs. Linda & Mark Sobell, Addiction Research Foundation, Toronto, 1982.

Doob, A.N. Understanding the nature of investigations into alleged fraud in alcohol research. A reply to Walker & Roach, British Journal of Addiction, Vol. 79, 1984, pp. 169-174.

Maltzman, I. (unpublished a) A reply to the Sobells: You did not do what you said you did; You did not find what you say you found.

Maltzman, I. (unpublished b) The Sobells and alchemy.

Maltzman, I. (unpublished c) Letter to the editor.

Maltzman, I. (unpublished d) Criticisms of the Dickens Committee Enquiry into the Sobell's alleged fraud and Doob's effort at their defense.

Maltzman, I. A reply to Cook, “Craftsman versus professional: Analysis of the controlled drinking controversy.” J. of Studies on Alcohol, Vol. 50, 1989, pp. 466-472.

Maltzman vs. Alcohol Research Documentation, Inc. Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, c681631, 1988.

Marlatt, G.A. The controlled-drinking controversy: A commentary, American Psychologist, Vol. 38, 1983, pp. 1097-1110.

Marlatt, G.A. President's Message. Bulletin of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 3, 1984, p. 67.

Marlatt, G.A. Letter to Father Royce, Bulletin of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 3, 1984, p. 70.

Marlatt, G.A.; Miller, W.R.; Duckert, F.; Gotestam, G.; Heather, N.; Peele, S.; Sanchez-Craig, M.; Sobell, L.C.; & Sobell, M.B.; Abstinence and controlled drinking: Alternative treatment goals for alcoholism and problem drinking? Bulletin of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 4, 1985, pp. 123- 150. Merton, R. Social theory and social structure, Enlarged edition, The Free Press, New York, 1968.

Nathan, P.E. A prefatory comment, J. of Studies on Alcohol, Vol. 50, 1989, p.465.

Peele, S. Denial--of reality and of freedom--in addiction research and treatment. Bulletin of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 5, 1986, pp. 149-166.

Pendery, M.L.; Maltzman, I.M.; and West, L.J. Controlled Drinking by alcoholics? New findings and a reevaluation of a major affirmative study. Science, Vol. 217, 1982, pp. 169-175.

Sobell, M.B. & Sobell, L.C.. Behavioral treatment of alcohol problems, Plenum Press, N.Y., 1978.

Sobell, M.B. & Sobell, L.C. The aftermath of heresy. A response to Pendery et al's (1982) critique of “Individualized behavior therapy for alcoholics,” Behaviour Research & Therapy, Vol. 22, 1984, pp. 413-440.

Sobell, M.B. & Sobell, L.C. More on Maltzman, Bulletin of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 3, 1984, pp. 74-76.

Sobell, M.B. & Sobell, L.C. Moratorium on Maltzman: An appeal to reason. J. of Studies on Alcohol, Vol. 50, 1989, pp. 473-480.

Trachtenberg, R.L. Report of the Steering Group to the Administrator, Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration Regarding its Attempts to Investigate Allegations of Scientific Misconduct Concerning Drs. Mark & Linda Sobell, Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, Rockville, Maryland, 1984.

Alcoholism ò Addiction, Out From Under


From: Professional Counselor magazine, 10/92