To the Editor. —
After reading "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals,"1 I believe we should further caution aspiring authors against listing references used by earlier authors but not personally examined. This back-referencing of older works conveys no greater status to a manuscript but jeopardizes its academic validity.
During a recent literature search, I noted some contemporary authors referred to an article Ludwig Bruns2 published in 1890. The original text is in a century-old German journal not commonly found even in university libraries. Numerous citation errors committed by the later authors raised serious doubts about whether the original article had been read by these authors.
Back-referencing has no place in medical writing in that it may misrepresent original work and, thus, add to the pervasive problem of inaccuracy in scientific publications.3,4
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