Chiropractic & Manual Therapies — formerly known as Chiropractic & Osteopathy — has retracted a 2010 paper by a team of Australian researchers who failed to obtain institutional review board (IRB) approval for their studies.
The journal has been informed by its publisher BioMed Central that contrary to the statement in this article [Wayne Hoskins, Henry Pollard, Chiropractic & Osteopathy 2010, 18:23], they have been advised by the authors’ institution Macquarie University, that its Human Research Ethics Committee did not approve this study. Because the study was conducted without institutional ethics committee approval it has been retracted.
The paper has been cited twice, according to Google Scholar.
The retraction is the fourth for the group, by our count, all for the same reason. The rest were in BMC Musculosketal Disorders.
The sheer number of retractions for the same reason raises the question: Did the authors repeat their offense before or after they were forced to retract the first, second, and third times? That is, did they receive a really thorough pasting and not learn from it or just did do it four times before they were caught? Any guesses and/or information on this? I know it’s kind of silly but one does wonder…
Considering the timing, apparently they just did it four times (at the least…) before being caught
That explains it. At least that part.
Could it also be a lack of knowledge about types of scientific studies? For disciplines without long-standing science traditions I’ve encountered numerous publications stating “clinical trials” or “clinical studies” for what turns out to be case series.
In Australia we don’t use the term IRB. We call them institutional ethics approval(s).
More like chiromalpractic.