A paper on delirium in older adults has been withdrawn by a geriatric journal, after the clinical hospital notified the journal of problems in the data.
Here’s the notice for “Issues Associated with Delirium Severity Among Older Patients,” which first appeared in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care: Continue reading “Irregularities” lead to retraction of paper on delirium
A panel reviewing The BMJ‘s handling of two controversial statin papers said the journal didn’t err when it corrected, rather than retracted, the articles.
The articles — a research paper and a commentary — suggested that use of statins in people at low risk for cardiovascular disease could be doing far more harm than good. Both articles inaccurately cited a study that provided data important to their conclusions — an error pointed out vigorously by a British researcher, Rory Collins, who demanded that the journal pull the pieces.
In a letter to Godlee this spring, Collins wrote: Continue reading Panel says BMJ was right to not retract two disputed statin papers
Last November we wrote about the retraction of a 2010 paper in PNAS by Annemie Schuerwegh and colleagues. Schuerwegh had been fired from Leiden University in The Netherlands for fraud, which said there would be a second retraction coming.
It has.
The article, “Anti-citrullinated protein antibodies in rheumatoid arthritis: a functional role for mast cells and basophils?” had appeared in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading Second paper falls for ex-Leiden researcher accused of fraud
Last October, the BMJ published a paper by a group of researchers from the United States and Canada questioning the use of statins in patients considered at low risk of cardiovascular disease.
The article has been cited eight times since then, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. It mentioned data from another study that reported a high rate of side effects in patients who used the drugs, between 18% and 20% — suggesting that those who received little or no benefit from the therapy could be more more likely to suffer harm than good.
But that citation turns out to have been flawed — prompting the journal to take the unusual step of removing those “statements” from the article and another it published about the issue that has been cited six times. And in an editorial, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee said she has asked a panel of experts to review the original paper to determine if it ought to be retracted completely: Continue reading BMJ authors take back inaccurate statin safety statements
A group of researchers in Singapore has lost two 2013 articles in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care for problems with their data.
One of the articles was titled “Patients with Dysphagia: Encounters in Taking Medication;” the other, “Issues Associated with Delirium Severity Among Older Patients.” In both cases, the first and second authors were Rajaram S and Chua HC, of Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.
According to the retraction notices:
Continue reading Data “irregularities” prompt retraction of palliative care papers
A group of neonatal researchers in Caen has lost their 2013 review article in Archives of Disease in Childhood Fetal & Neonatal Edition for a variety of problems with their analysis of the data.
The article was titled “NIDCAP in preterm infants and the neurodevelopmental effect in the first 2 years,” and its first author was Laura Fazilleau of University Hospital Côte de Nacre.
According to the abstract: Continue reading Multiple data errors force retraction of paper about preemies
Last week, we reported that some of the authors of a 2010 paper in the BMJ claiming to have identified Henry IV’s head thought the study should be retracted based on new evidence. Some of the other authors have now responded to that call for retraction, which appeared on the BMJ’s site alongside the paper.
Philippe Charlier, the corresponding author of the original paper, and five of the original paper’s 15 co-authors conclude after reviewing the evidence that
The BMJ is well-known for its annual Christmas issue, which New York Times medical correspondent Lawrence Altman calls
a lighter and sometimes brighter side of medicine, publishing unusual articles that vary from simply amusing to bizarre to creative or potentially important.
The 2010 issue was no exception, featuring a paper called “Multidisciplinary medical identification of a French king’s head (Henri IV)” in which: Continue reading Off with his paper! Some authors want to retract claim to have identified Henry IV’s head
We don’t usually cover “pretractions” (see #5 for why), but our friend Larry Husten over at Forbes has a story today about what appears to be a dead paper walking.
The article, in Heart, comes from a group of prominent researchers in Italy who have been arrested for possibly failing to adequately consent their patients, among other potential misdeeds.
According to Husten, the 2010 article in question, “A randomised trial of target-vessel versus multi-vessel revascularisation in ST-elevation myocardial infarction: major adverse cardiac events during long-term follow-up,” by Maria Grazia Modena (a past president of the Italian Society of Cardiology) and colleagues, may have been grossly misrepresented to the journal. Continue reading Cardiac arrestees: Questions surface about Heart paper from Italian group that faces charges
A group of European researchers is retracting their 2012 paper in Thorax on the link between cystic fibrosis and the common cold after discovering that the first author, a promising young microbiologist in Switzerland, had made up her data.
The article, titled “Impaired type I and type III interferon induction and rhinovirus control in human cystic fibrosis airway epithelial cells,” purported to describe:
a novel mechanism to explain the increased susceptibility of patients with CF to rhinovirus infections. A profound impairment of the antiviral early innate response in CF airway epithelial cells was identified, suggesting a potential use of IFNs in the treatment of rhinovirus-induced CF exacerbations.
The lead author was Marjolaine Vareille, who at the time was at the University of Bern. Vareille won a L’Oréal France grant in 2007 from the Fondation L’Oréal – Unesco-French Academy of Sciences. The paper has been cited eight times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
But according to the retraction notice: Continue reading Thorax retracts cystic fibrosis paper with bogus data