Two months after announcing it would review an early 2020 paper on a way to detect the virus that causes COVID-19, a journal says that “the criteria for a retraction of the article have not been fulfilled.”
The review of the paper, “Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR, by the journal, Eurosurveillance, was prompted by critiques including a petition by some 20 people around the world for what they called “scientific and methodological blemishes.” The senior author of the Eurosurveillance paper, Christian Drosten, of the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, has been a leader in the fight against the pandemic, but has also predictably drawn criticism from those who oppose lockdowns.
On December 3, the journal issued a statement saying they were reviewing the allegations, which, as editors note in their statement dated yesterday:
Allegations concerned the scientific quality of the article, the peer review process and a conflict of interest for two of the authors, who are also editorial board members of Eurosurveillance.
Those two authors were excluded from the review, according to the journal.
The editorial board of the journal found that “there was no conflict of interest by the associate editors who co-authored the manuscript” and “further decided to involve external subject experts to assess the allegations related to the scientific content of the article.”
The editors note that
articles submitted by members of the board are not given any priority over other manuscripts. When editorial board members are authors of a submitted manuscript, they are not involved in any stage of the peer review or the editorial decision-making, nor do they have access to confidential information related to the decision-making process.
The statement continues:
The speed of the publishing process has led to allegations via social media and email that the evaluation and review process were flawed. The Eurosurveillance editorial team has long-standing experience in expedited publishing in instances when rapid dissemination of information could potentially lead to a prompt change in an ongoing public health situation or create awareness for topics of timely relevance. In such instances, the editorial team works in close coordination with reviewers and authors. Since 2015, about 30% of rapid communications have been published less than 2 weeks following submission, including peer review. This has also been the case for a maximum of two regular articles per year. Eurosurveillance’s in-house editorial team performs most editorial and all publishing tasks, without involvement of external parties such as typesetters. This allows for great flexibility, particularly in times of emerging or evolving public health emergencies [4–6], when case numbers or other relevant information/data can be updated even hours before publication.
The editors conclude:
The detailed allegations with respect to scientific flaws in the Corman et al. article were reviewed by a group of five laboratory experts. These comments were made available to the Eurosurveillance associate editors, except for those who were co-authors of the paper.
The consulted experts confirmed that the Corman et al. article was scientifically adequate for its purpose and for the limited data and material available at this early stage in the COVID-19 pandemic. Any laboratory deciding to use the primers and protocol suggested in this article would ascertain the assay for its fitness for purpose and compliance with local quality and accreditation requirements; this is what has happened worldwide since the publication of the article. With more data and evolving knowledge, laboratories have since further improved the initial method, as per usual practice.
In conclusion, after a thorough investigation in which we collected scientific advice from various sources, including several external reviewers, the editorial team—unanimously supported by its associate editors, except for those who were involved as co-authors—has decided that the criteria for a retraction of the article have not been fulfilled.
A reaction from Erasmus Medical Center virologist Marion Koopmans:
Hat tip: Pepijn van Erp
A couple of the authors of the ‘retraction paper’ have already been complaining on social media that Eurosurveillance did not release the reviews of the five consulted experts. But Borger wrote the following on Twitter:
** 6 tweets from a thread **
Another bad day for science.
Three days ago, we asked the editorial board of Eurosurveillance for the status of our external peer review, which we submitted on Nov 27 last year.
Yesterday we got a reply. This is what they write:
“After careful evaluation and taking into consideration the guidance
from a group of five experts in the field, we have decided not to consider your submission for publication in Eurosurveillance.
Please note that and anonymised version of your submission was made available to the reviewers. Reviewers, however, noted that your manuscript was already in the public domain. They informed us about this and opted to name the authors for the purpose of the review to avoid ambiguity. We are sending the reviewers’ comments below.
Please note that editors, peer reviewers and authors shall not share any documents relating to manuscripts under consideration nor to those that have been rejected or accepted.
With kind regards,
The Eurosurveillance editors”
After this introductory letter, I was hoping to find the comments of the five experts. Normally, a paper is reviewed by at least TWO peers, usually THREE. In our case, there was only ONE!
** end **
So they did get the comments.
No, he4 got 1 comment, not comments. He seems to have received one comment after being promised all 5. He is objecting to the missing 4, not to a situation where he received none. Seems like a legit objection.
On the other hand, it appears that the reasoning behind Eurosurveillance’s refusal to publish the retraction request is due to it being available elsewhere. If that is the case, does that not seem like a bit of a weakness in their justification for not retracting pseudoscience?
From the info available, the analogy would be, “Your honor, my client could not possibly be guilty because he was previously accused of this at another venue, outside of this courtroom.”
The obvious problem in your argument is that the paper is not pseudoscience.
It would be incredibly unorthodox for a journal in any discipline to publish a piece available elsewhere. This isn’t an elaborate form of persecution, it’s journal 101.
Similarly, I don’t they’re sitting on 3 other sets of comments. I would guess that as soon as the first reviewer pointed out the article was already widely available they sent the rejection letter without bothering to wait on other responses since they would be a waste of the reviewers’ time.
“It would be incredibly unorthodox for a journal in any discipline to publish a piece available elsewhere.”
That’s far too general. It’s quite common in some subjects to publish preprints on Arxiv or Medrxiv, or on university preint servers, before submitting them to journals, and journals have learnt to live with that.
For a website called Retraction Watch you sure do turn a blind eye when journals fail to retract pseudoscientific garbage when that pseudoscientific garbage appeals to your authoritarian-leftist political bias.
Dear John: They literally wrote this post to disclose the details of this situation. How is that turning a blind eye to the matter? To the contrary, they are drawing attention to it. What was the alternative?
Sounds like you think someone should be finding problems in the Eurosurveillance paper; preferably someone who isn’t you.
I thought the cancel culture critique was that the left forms censorious mobs much more often than the right.
If that theory is true, you’d expect there to be fewer retractions of leftist papers than rightie papers. You’d also be grateful to Retraction Watch for cataloguing the numerous overreaches of authoritarian leftists. And you’d appreciate them leaving the comments open unlike, say, TheConversation, which locks comments on SJW topics so that no dissenting opinions can be expressed.
I don’t have to agree with every retraction or non-retraction decision. But I do appreciate RW for covering them.