How Should Journals Address a Procedure That Turns out to Be Dangerous?

Abstract

This Commentary critically evaluates scientific journals’ responsibility in addressing safety concerns within chemical research publications. We highlight the risks associated with uncritically accepting initial safety claims in the chemical literature, especially when such claims are later retracted or corrected. Our analysis focuses on three specific cases where procedures initially deemed safe necessitated significant safety corrections, and we emphasize the inadequate response of the publishing community to these updates. It is important to note that safety corrections often remain less visible and less cited than the original flawed publications. We scrutinize the mechanisms publishers employ for marking safety-related corrections and retractions and find them inconsistent and insufficiently visible to alert researchers, particularly trainees and those with less experience. We propose more effective strategies to enhance the clarity and prominence of safety information, including mandatory peer-review by chemical safety specialists and prominent watermarking of papers with safety corrections. We also advocate for authors and reviewers to use a safety checklist that includes detailed hazard identification, clear storage and handling instructions, and justification of hazardous reagents. Our Commentary underscores the shared responsibility across the scientific ecosystem in maintaining safety standards, advocating for a proactive role by journal publishers in protecting researchers from hazardous procedures and compounds, thus prioritizing safety in the publication of chemical research.