Earlier this week, we reported on the retractions of two papers on Covid-19 in Texas inmates after the journal was told that the researchers did not have proper ethics approval for the studies.
According to the senior author on the articles, however, that’s nowhere near the whole story. Kenneth Nugent, of Texas Tech Physicians in Lubbock, told us that he’d repeatedly sought — and received — approval from an institutional review board (IRB) throughout their project, articles on which appeared last year in the Journal of Primary Care & Community Health, a Sage publication.
The first study, published in August 2020, was titled “A Retrospective Analysis and Comparison of Prisoners and Community-Based Patients with COVID-19 Requiring Intensive Care During the First Phase of the Pandemic in West Texas.”
The second, from November 2020, was titled “Basic Demographic Parameters Help Predict Outcomes in Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 During the First Wave of Infection in West Texas.” Only the first article has been cited (one time), according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
The retraction notice for the papers states that the authors requested their removal:
Continue reading When a retraction notice leaves out important details: COVID-19, prisoners, and an IRB