Category: sports

Journal corrects CrossFit injury data in paper at center of lawsuit

XLargeThumb.00124278-201509000-00000.CVA study on the trendy and grueling workout regimen known as CrossFit has a correction concerning the number of participants hurt during 10 weeks of training. The paper has been the center of multiple lawsuits  — one by CrossFit, and one by a CrossFit gym owner — for allegedly over-inflating the risks associated with the regimen.

The original paper claimed that 9 of 54 participants dropped out of the study due to “overuse or injury.” The correction note says that just two left for those reasons.

The paper, published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research actually concludes that CrossFit has some benefits. According to the abstract: Continue reading Journal corrects CrossFit injury data in paper at center of lawsuit

Running shoe paper pulled for failing to disclose author’s industry ties

87507315-105.4.coverNot so fast — a paper that showed wearing Vibram FiveFingers (resembling foot gloves) “may help reduce running-related injuries” has been removed after the editors realized the first author is on Vibram’s advisory board.

Managing editor Noelle A. Boughanmi told us there’s no retraction here — the journal is just fixing the paper to address the relationship of podiatrist Nick Campitelli with the company featured in the article.

There is still a copy of the paper on PubMed, which suggests these “minimalist shoes” strengthen key muscles.

The paper was published online by the Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association. It was removed after editors realized that “the author did not fully disclose some involvement with the company,” Boughanmi said:

Continue reading Running shoe paper pulled for failing to disclose author’s industry ties

Author’s ties to NFL lead to correction for review that cast doubt on brain risk from sports

PLOS ONE

A review paper that suggested the degenerative brain disease that’s striking former football players may not be tied to contact sports has been corrected to reveal the first author spent decades working for the National Football League.

The correction appears in a review in PLOS ONE about chronic traumatic encephalopathy – the degenerative brain disease that was the basis of a $765 million settlement for former NFL players, along with a number of similar lawsuits. It fixes incorrect statements and adds conflicts of interest, including those with with first author Joseph Maroon, who spent more than 30 years working with the NFL and seven for the wrestling group the WWE.

It appears as if all the original paper declared was that Maroon was an “unpaid consultant” to the Pittsburgh Steelers. But apparently there was a lot more to it, according to the notice:

Continue reading Author’s ties to NFL lead to correction for review that cast doubt on brain risk from sports

CrossFit gym owner sues Ohio State, says fraudulent data led to $273 million in NIH grants

Mitch Potterf
Mitch Potterf
In an lawsuit unsealed yesterday, the owner of a CrossFit gym is suing Ohio State University (OSU) under the False Claims Act, claiming that researchers faked data in a university-based study involving his gym — and that OSU used the study to win $273 million in Federal grants.

The suit, originally filed in February in the U.S. District Court of Southern Ohio by Mitch Potterf, owner of a Columbus, Ohio CrossFit, alleges that a 2013 paper by OSU’s Steven Devor and colleagues falsely reported that nine subjects had dropped out of the study because of “overuse or injury.” The study, we should note, concluded that CrossFit is a useful form of exercise. It has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

As John Thomas, an attorney who handles False Claims Act cases, explained in a Retraction Watch guest post in March: Continue reading CrossFit gym owner sues Ohio State, says fraudulent data led to $273 million in NIH grants

Widely covered editorial extolling importance of diet over exercise “temporarily removed”

Source: NIH
Source: NIH

The British Journal of Sports Medicine has “temporarily removed” an editorial arguing that physical activity alone will not cure the obesity epidemic, following an expression of concern.

In its place stands the following message:

This paper has been temporarily removed following an expression of concern.

First author Assem Malhotra, based at the Department of Cardiology, Frimley Park Hospital and Consultant Clinical Associate to the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, told us the paper was pulled due to a “technical issue,” and an “official explanation” would be forthcoming.

Indeed, just this morning, we received a statement from Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal, which publishes the British Journal of Sports Medicine:

Continue reading Widely covered editorial extolling importance of diet over exercise “temporarily removed”

He shoots, he…misses! Soccer injury paper gets red card for data errors

jsmsThe authors of a 2014 paper on soccer injuries have forfeited their publication after revealing that the foundation of the work was based on faulty data. (Look, we could have written about letting air out of balls, yadda yadda, but the Super Bowl has come and gone.)

The article, which appeared in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, was written by a group in Denmark and Qatar led by Cristiano Eirale, a sports medicine researcher at the Aspetar-Qatar Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Hospital, in Doha. It showed goalies had a lower rate of injuries during training than field players.

Trouble was, someone called a foul.

Continue reading He shoots, he…misses! Soccer injury paper gets red card for data errors

A unicorn: Journal publishes euphemism-free plagiarism notice

af journ biomed researchIt’s always nice when a journal editor actually uses words the way they’re meant to be used instead of employing euphemisms.

In 2009, the African Journal of Biomedical Research published an article on the differences in heart rates when people ran backwards versus forwards. Unfortunately, five years later, the journal found out the paper was a reproduction of a 1994 Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise paper. They contacted the authors and, when there was no response, published a straightforward and fairly detailed retraction.

According to managing editor Babafemi Olaleye, the original paper was received and handled by the founding editor of the journal. In April 2014, the managing editor of Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise emailed the journal, stating that the paper had been copied wholesale.

Here’s the notice for “Comparison of Cardio-Pulmonary Responses to Forward and Backward Walking and Running”: Continue reading A unicorn: Journal publishes euphemism-free plagiarism notice

CrossFit to be tied: Fitness company sues journal to retract “sloppy and scientifically unreliable work”

Lawsuits are usually dry and boring, so it’s always fun to read one with a little life.

Here’s one of those: CrossFit, the fitness program famous for its brief, strenuous exercises and passionate devotees, is suing the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NCSA), which it considers its staid competitor for the nation’s sweat and cash.

According to CrossFit, the NSCA published a study with a “falsified rate of injury,” “in an effort to portray CrossFit as ‘dangerous’ and therefore a fitness program that should be avoided.”

No matter that the study, published in NSCA’s official research journal, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, concluded overall that CrossFit is a useful form of exercise. The suit says that the authors fudged a few statistics about participants’ injuries. Here’s the relevant section from the paper, titled “Crossfit-based high-intensity power training improves maximal aerobic fitness and body composition:”

Continue reading CrossFit to be tied: Fitness company sues journal to retract “sloppy and scientifically unreliable work”

Oh, snap: Cable wakeboarding injury paper falls to duplication

A team of what you might call daredevil researchers has lost a paper about a sport called cable wakeboarding after they tried to publish, in English, a very similar version of what they’d published in German.

We have a confession to make: Before sitting down to write this post, we had no idea what cable wakeboarding was. So before we discuss the retraction, here’s a definition, courtesy of CableWakeboarding.com:

Cable wakeboarding is simply wakeboarding while being pulled not by a boat, but by an overhead cableski system. It’s definitely the coolest addition to the distinguished list of extreme sports throughout the world, because it combines the best of the extreme nature of wakeboarding without the need for (or expense of) a boat. Cable is an enormously valuable and important element of the entire sport of wakeboarding.

Now to the retraction notice for “Cable wakeboarding, a new trendy sport: analysis of injuries with regard to injury prevention,” published online in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports online in 2010: Continue reading Oh, snap: Cable wakeboarding injury paper falls to duplication

Another retraction of IRB-free paper from Aussie sports medicine group

There’s another retraction from the Australian researchers who failed to obtain institutional review board (IRB) approval for their studies of rugby players and footballers.

The 2010 paper, in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders — which had already retracted two other articles from the group — was titled “The effect of a sports chiropractic manual therapy intervention on the prevention of back pain, hamstring and lower limb injuries in semi-elite Australian Rules footballers: A randomized controlled trial.”

The editor of the journal had added this comment to the PDFs associated with the paper on August 3, a day after our post on the previous two retractions: Continue reading Another retraction of IRB-free paper from Aussie sports medicine group