This year’s winning paper marks the first occasion on which a Baseline submission has received this award. As the Baseline section of the journal is approaching its 30th anniversary in July this year (an occasion we will mark with

a variety of invited papers), I view this win as particularly important. Although it is not part of the criteria for the selection process, I did look at various indices concerning the paper after a decision had been made. It is very pleasing to see that the Morét-Ferguson et al. (2010) paper is amongst our top downloads from Marine Pollution Bulletin’s this website website – a statistic that I am sure will also be reflected in citations

as the years go by. A final word should rest with the corresponding author. When I contacted Skye click here to inform her of the award, she replied “that having been my first academic paper, and concerning a project I have been so intimately involved with (from teaching students to identify pelagic debris, to analysis, etc. and eventually educating industry about the potential marine fate of their products), I am so very pleased that our paper was chosen for this award”. Skye(and your coauthors), it was a most worthy “first academic” paper, and on behalf of Marine Pollution Bulletin’s editorial team, Professor Charles Sheppard and myself, and on behalf of Elsevier Science who provide the award, sincerest congratulations. “
“Crossing the scientific line’ – an ominous term, but what does it mean? There is no clear definition related to science to be found in Google searches. The term appears to refer to scientific misconduct, but what type of misconduct? In this Editorial I explore scientific ‘sins’ that

I believe constitute ‘crossing the scientific D-malate dehydrogenase line’ – both by Omission and Commission. At the end of the Editorial I explain why I was motivated to explore and to attempt to define this term – I was recently accused of ‘crossing the line’ by an old colleague. Scientific Sins of Commission: (1) Judging others’ work based on their employer/sponsor. Labeling a scientist and their work as not trustworthy because they work for a group whose goals/philosophy do not match your own or because you believe they can be bought. Typically this is applied to scientists working for or funded by industry by those who are not. However, the reverse can also be true. The corollary is blindly trusting a scientist and their work because of whom they work for (see Sin of Omission 1, below). This is opinion unless justified by facts; it is a sin if it is an unproven opinion that will not be further investigated.