I’m looking for examples where scientists have deliberately held up on reviewing a paper submitted for publication, so that their own work gets published first. I know it has happened, but I just can’t remember the specific examples.
Charles Darwin / Alfred Wallace
Wallace’s theory was pretty much identical to Darwin’s. Wallace’s work wasn’t submitted to Darwin for publication, it was sent to Darwin for comment. When Darwin received Wallace’s letter, it accelerated Darwin’s publication.
True, but Darwin forwarded Wallace’s letter to Charles Lyell with the suggestion that it be published as soon as possible. He did not attempt to delay publication by Wallace. It was Lyell and Hooker who insisted that Darwin’s and Wallace’s initial papers be presented jointly; they were published in the same journal issue. It was more a matter of forcing Darwin’s to publish his ideas, rather than delaying Wallace’s.
I recall there was some controversy surrounding the particle physicist Carlo Rubbia’s publication that got him the Nobel prize, but I can’t recall if it was specifically holding up a rivals publication or something else - Just googling it now and it seems to be more along the lines of ungentlemanly conduct.
I know of several anecdotal examples in my own field but they’re not the sort of thing I could cite, nor would they feature science that had any real relevance outside of the organic chemistry area. It’s never happened to me yet 
As asynthetic chemist, those examples would be great. They may even be the ones I’m thinking of.
As a working scientist, I would say this does happen, but not as often as one might think.
But when it does happen, people don’t advertise the fact. How would you know?
I’m not sure you’ll find any evidence of this happening.
First hand accounts will be in two categories:
“Someone did this to us… those bastards! Well, now we don’t have anything to publish… so… I guess we’re screwed.”
or
“Haha yeah my PI was asked to review a paper on topic X… good thing I was close to publishing and we beat them to it.”
In neither case are you going to find good public evidence of wrongdoing, short of subpoenaing everyone involved.
With the W and Z it was certainly the case that Rubbia, falling over himself in an unrelenting quest for personal glory, ensured that UA1 were far quicker than UA2 at submitting what were essentially similar results in order to establish priority. It’s also pretty inevitable that two experiments chasing the same hot results at the same lab will find themselves torn by rumours of what the other lot have found. But I’ve never heard any suggestion that there was anything untoward about the reviewing process for the papers once submitted in this instance.
But I’d also be astonished if any responsible journal editor was sending anything in the area to Rubbia to review in that period. Precisely because he had the reputation that this was the sort of stunt that he might pull if given the chance.
Thks Bonzer for clarifying that.
I just remembered another funny peer review anecdote concerning Paul Chu, the inventor of the first superconducting material that worked above liquid nitrogen temp, YBCO.
This field was intensely competitive in the 80s, Nobel prize likely up for grabs, so Chu submits the manuscript with the incorrect formula for the material (Yb instead of Y) (!). He knows that he cannot trust the security of peer review for something so potentially groundbreaking, because all the referees will tell their mates about it prior to publication. On getting the proofs, he then corrects the formula.
Did I say Ytterbium? Damn, I meant Yttrium.
Sounds sort of far-fetched, but there is a guy here discussing the same story on his blog and a few comments telling the same story. He speculates that this stunt caused such bad feeling that it caused Chu to miss out on the Nobel that was eventually given for high temp superconductivity.
It was my impression that scientific papers are published with their submission date - am I wrong in that?
No, that’s right. But if you are The Man in one particular field, the journal editor is going to especially value your opinion as a referee, so you could easily stall the peer review process if you liked. Even if you’re not The Man, the editor is still going to make allowances for late peer review because they’re constantly having to chivvy scientists to actually do it in the first place.
The length of time taken must vary a lot between fields - longer than one month would be lengthy in my area (chemistry), and indicate that there has not been accord between the referees and more review is being sought. Longer than 2 months without hearing anything would be really unusual.
I suspect that might be on the quick side in general - if the referee needs to scrutinise huge data sets, say a crystal structure of something big like a protein as an example, or some enormous particle physics experiment, then it has to take longer.
But if the published submission dates show that the paper by First Researcher was submitted before that of Unscrupulous Reviewer, wouldn’t that negate the advantage of delaying its publication?
I wish I could remember more details about this - my memory is vague enough that if anyone can show me wrong, I’ll accept without argument. But I heard once (maybe on QI?) that the only reason we know of Gregor Mendel’s work is because of the ongoing feud between the French and the Germans. As I recall it, a French scientist submitted a paper showing largely the same thing as Mendel’s work had shows to a paper with a German editor. The editor realized how big the discovery was, and didn’t want the credit to go to a Frenchman. So he dug through tons and tons of old journals before finally finding Mendel’s work, which he then heavily publicized, so that when the French paper was eventually published, all the credit had already gone to Mendel.
This is what I’d expect to happen. But it also implies that the editor knows The Man got the paper, and delayed it, and it is unlikely he’d get away with trying to rush the paper through another journal’s process. Some new guy might be intimidated by a big name, but it is unlikely that a journal editor would be.