Category: clinical study retractions

Did a clinical trial proceed as planned? New project finds out

Ben Goldacre
Ben Goldacre

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

NEJM pulls letter by heart researcher who faked patient records

Screen Shot 2015-11-30 at 10.08.23 AMA heart researcher who fabricated patient records has notched retraction number six — this time, for a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine. She has two more retractions forthcoming.

The retraction comes at the request of Anna Ahimastos’s co-authors, following an investigation into her work by her former workplace, the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute. The investigation was not able to verify the data referenced in the letter, which includes a citation for a recently retracted JAMA paper.

The retraction note is similar to others for Ahimastos’s papers:

Continue reading NEJM pulls letter by heart researcher who faked patient records

After lawsuit, university releases misconduct report about nutrition researcher Chandra

R K Chandra
R K Chandra, self-proclaimed father of nutritional immunology (from www.drrkchandra.com)

Memorial University in Canada has released a five-year-old report of an investigation, confirming a former nutrition professor had committed misconduct in a 2001 paper.

The 53-page report — about Ranjit Kumar Chandra, a prominent and once-lauded researcher — focuses on a Nutrition paper that examined the effectiveness of vitamins patented by Chandra. The report, authored by MUN professor emeritus William Pryse-Phillips, lists 41 problems with the paper, which it concludes:

…was not in full compliance with the scientific, ethical, and/or integrity standards of Memorial University at the time.

The paper was retracted in 2005; the report is dated 2009. We asked Pryse-Phillips why the university took so long to release it. He told us:

Continue reading After lawsuit, university releases misconduct report about nutrition researcher Chandra

Mega-correction for updated CPR reporting guidelines

CirculationA major correction has been posted for an update to international guidelines on reporting outcomes of people receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Circulation published the paper online in 2014; the correction was issued before it appeared in print, in the journal’s September 29, 2015 issue. “When reviewing the final proof for print publication, the author noticed some errors and requested changes,” according to a spokesperson for the journal’s publisher, the American Heart Association.

The notice is so long, we’re only including the first paragraph, most of which is taken up by just the title of the paper:

Continue reading Mega-correction for updated CPR reporting guidelines

Osteoporosis paper felled by concerns with “scientific integrity”

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A paper suggesting that exposure to sunlight might help prevent hip fractures in the elderly has been retracted, due to duplication and “concerns about the underlying data.”

An expression of concern that appeared last July flagged the 2005 paper as containing text that matched another paper with the same first author that was published in 2011. According to the publisher, that duplicated text sparked a closer look at the text, which raised concerns about the scientific integrity of the paper.

The retraction note, published by the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, says that the first author was responsible for the content of the paper: Continue reading Osteoporosis paper felled by concerns with “scientific integrity”

Cropped, spliced image leads to a PLOS One correction

Screen Shot 2015-10-01 at 4.27.21 PMA PLOS One paper on morphine treatment for cancer cells has a couple issues with figures, prompting a massive correction — what we affectionately call a “mega-correction” — by the journal.

In one figure, there was “an undisclosed splice.” Another figure contained two panels that were “mistakenly from the same sample.”

The 2013 paper in question, “Chronic Morphine Treatment Attenuates Cell Growth of Human BT474 Breast Cancer Cells by Rearrangement of the ErbB Signalling Network,” has been cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Here’s the correction:

Continue reading Cropped, spliced image leads to a PLOS One correction

Prominent nutrition researcher Marion Nestle retracting recent article

jphp_journal_coverProminent nutrition expert Marion Nestle is pulling an opinion piece she recently co-authored in the Journal of Public Health Policy following revelations that the piece contained multiple factual errors and failed to reveal her co-author’s ties to one of the subjects of the article.

The article, “The food industry and conflicts of interest in nutrition research: A Latin American perspective,” was published October 29 and raised concerns about the conflicts of interest that can occur when a food company pairs with a public health organization. Specifically, the article critiqued the supposed relationship between the biggest beverage distributor in Guatemala and the leading Guatemala-based public health organization, aligned to distribute a fortified supplement for undernourished children.

However, after the paper appeared, Nestle learned they had misrepresented the relationship between the key parties, and failed to disclose that her co-author, Joaquin Barnoya, received “a substantial portion of his salary” from INCAP. Retracting the opinion was the best solution, Nestle wrote on her blog today: Continue reading Prominent nutrition researcher Marion Nestle retracting recent article

JAMA retracts second paper by heart researcher

Screen-Shot-2015-10-27-at-10.53.53-AMA heart researcher who fabricated trial participants has notched a second JAMA retraction. The retraction comes at the request of her co-authors, after an investigation by her former employer wasn’t able to confirm that this study was valid.

In September, we learned that Anna Ahimastos, who used to work at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, had “fabricated [records] for trial participants that did not exist” in a JAMA trial for a blood pressure drug, according to principal investigator Bronwyn Kingwell.  That trial was retracted, along with a sub analysis.

An investigation by the institute found problems or sufficient doubt in several more publications. This second JAMA retraction is number 5 for Ahimastos, of 8 total expected.

The paper, “Effect of perindopril on large artery stiffness and aortic root diameter in patients with Marfan syndrome: a randomized controlled trial” Continue reading JAMA retracts second paper by heart researcher

Scott Reuben notches 25th retraction, for a letter to the editor

Screen Shot 2015-11-18 at 11.08.26 AMAnother domino has fallen for the infamous and prolific former anesthesiologist Scott Reuben. This time it’s a retraction for a letter to the editor that cites one of his since-retracted papers.

The letter, published in 2001, argues that local anesthesia is a “safe, reliable, inexpensive, and practical alternative to the use of epidural, spinal, or general anesthesia” for outpatient knee surgery. But to support his point, he uses one of his papers that has since been retracted for data fabrication.

The note from Anesthesia & Analgesia explains:
Continue reading Scott Reuben notches 25th retraction, for a letter to the editor

Mystery: A bullet with no entry wound, in a paper with no spell check?

“world emergency surgeryThe Patient, a 60-years old Caucasian male found unconscious in a trailer park of gypsies…”

So begins a strange — and apparently not copyedited — new case report in the World Journal of Emergency Surgery. The paper concerns a patient — perhaps we should call him Rasputin — who showed up with a bullet in his left lung but no entry wound that would explain its presence.

Naturally, the authors draw the obvious conclusions:

Continue reading Mystery: A bullet with no entry wound, in a paper with no spell check?