Do you think the write-up of scientific results has gotten more rosy over time? If so, you’re right — the use of positive language in science abstracts has increased by 880% since 1974, according to new findings reported in the British Medical Journal.
Researchers led by Christiaan H Vinkers at the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands found that, among PubMed abstracts: Continue reading Do science findings feel more novel, robust? They are — at least, in language
A new project does the relatively straightforward task of comparing reported outcomes from clinical trials to what the researchers said they planned to measure before the trial began. And what they’ve found is a bit sad, albeit not entirely surprising.
As part of The Compare Project, author and medical doctor Ben Goldacre and his team have so far evaluated 36 clinical trials published by the top five medical journals (New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, and British Medical Journal). Many of those trials included “switched outcomes,” meaning the authors didn’t report something they said they would, or included additional outcomes in the published paper, with no explanation for the change.
Here are the latest results from the project, according to its website:
Continue reading Did a clinical trial proceed as planned? New project finds out
We’ve stumbled upon a trio of retractions published in August, 2013 from BMJ Case Reports for “redundant publication” to a group of researchers based in India.
Editors found that the reports, which were published between 2012 and 2013, had considerable “overlaps” with articles that had been published in other journals. Although one of the retracted authors was also an author on one of the overlapping articles, the rest of the authors have no obvious connection to the previous work.
The authors of the three retracted papers are based at the Modern Dental College and Research Centre in India.
One retracted paper, “A rare occurrence of peripheral ossifying fibroma in the first decade of life and its management,” described the case of a 10 year-old girl with a lesion growing on her gums. The notice reads:
Continue reading BMJ Case Reports pulled three dental papers for plagiarism
Today, The BMJ retracted a 1989 paper about the role of breastfeeding and formula in infant eczema — 20 years after the data were called into question by a university report.
However, the report was kept secret — due, by some accounts, to alleged threats of a lawsuit. That is, until this year, when author Ranjit Kumar Chandra — who once dubbed himself the “father of nutritional immunology” — lost a $132 million libel case. That case, against the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) for airing a three-part documentary series on allegations of fraud against Chandra, pushed the report by his former employer Memorial University of Newfoundland into the public domain.
At 26 years, the BMJ retraction is a runner up for the longest amount of time a journal has taken to retract a paper. (We know of another retraction that was 27 years in the making, and a scientist who requested the retraction of some passages of a 1955 article in 2007, after the article became fodder for creationists.)
Here’s the first part of the retraction note:
Continue reading After court verdict, BMJ retracts 26-year-old paper
The BMJ has published a correction to a critique of the U.S. dietary guidelines report that has received heavy criticism from nutrition experts.
The author, journalist Nina Teicholz, has also posted a response to the criticism of the article.
The BMJ investigation, released in September, asserted that the guidelines committee used “weak scientific standards” to make its recommendations. It also criticized several aspects of the new expert report for the guidelines, such as “deleting meat from the list of foods recommended as part of its healthy diets.”
Soon after the feature appeared, The Verge — who first reported the news of the correction this week — called it “bogus.” The BMJ quickly issued a “clarification” to the paper, in the “rapid response” section of the paper (the journal’s version of a comment section). It noted that the feature should have specified “lean” meats.
The new, official, correction doesn’t formally put the clarification on the record. Instead, it addresses the research behind the analysis about saturated fats. Here it is in full:
Continue reading BMJ corrects controversial critique of US dietary guidelines report
The BMJ has issued two “clarifications” to an investigation it published last week that questioned whether the new U.S. dietary guidelines were evidence-based.
The article criticized several aspects of the new dietary guidelines, such as “deleting meat from the list of foods recommended as part of its healthy diets” — without, according to author Nina Teicholz, reviewing the scientific literature on meat. However, according to the clarification, that sentence should have specified “lean” meats.
After The BMJ‘s article appeared, an analysis on The Verge questioned whether Teicholz was guided by her own opinions. She’s the author of a book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee also posted a lengthy “rapid response” — The BMJ‘s refined version of a comment section — to Teicholz’s article, saying it “strongly disagrees with many of the statements represented as facts.”
This afternoon, Rebecca Coombes, head of investigations and features at The BMJ, posted a response: Continue reading Following criticism, BMJ “clarifies” dietary guidelines investigation
Clinical studies that eventually get retracted are originally published with significantly more errors than non-retracted trials from the same journal, according to a new study in BMJ.
The authors actually called the errors “discrepancies” — for example, mathematical mistakes such as incorrect percentages of patients in a subgroup, contradictory results, or statistical errors.
The study doesn’t predict which papers will eventually be retracted, since such discrepancies occur frequently (including one in the paper itself), but the authors suggest a preponderance could serve as an “early and accessible signal of unreliability.”
According to the authors, all based at Imperial College London, you see a lot more of these in papers that are eventually retracted: Continue reading Can you spot the signs of retraction? Just count the errors, says a new study
The antidepressant Paxil isn’t safe or effective for teens after all, says a re-analysis of a 2001 study published today in The BMJ.
The original 2001 paper in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry — study 329, as it’s known — helped greenlight use of the drug (generically known as paroxetine) in young people. But it’s faced accusations of ghostwriting, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and issues with data analysis since publication.
According to a BMJ feature, also published today: Continue reading Re-analysis of controversial Paxil study shows drug “ineffective and unsafe” for teens
The self-proclaimed “father of nutritional immunology,” Ranjit Kumar Chandra, has lost a libel lawsuit against the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC).
The suit was in response to a 2006 three-part documentary from the CBC, which examined allegations of fraud against the former Memorial University researcher.
After the 58-day trial, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice “ruled in favour of CBC, on the grounds that the words in the broadcast were true,” according to CBC producer Lynn Burgess: Continue reading Nutrition researcher Chandra loses libel case against CBC
In yet more evidence that retracted studies continue to accrue citations, a new paper has shown that nearly half of anesthesiologist Scott Reuben’s papers have been cited five years after being retracted, and only one-fourth of citations correctly note the retraction.
According to the new paper, in Science and Engineering Ethics: Continue reading Half of anesthesiology fraudster’s papers continue to be cited years after retractions