Skip to content

ACN - 101321555 | ABN - 39101321555

Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services Pty Ltd (AHRECS)

AHRECS icon
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Consultants
    • Services
  • Previous Projects
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Feeds
  • Contact Us
  • More
    • Request a Quote
    • Susbcribe to REM
    • Subscribe to VIP
Menu
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Consultants
    • Services
  • Previous Projects
  • Blog
  • Resources
  • Feeds
  • Contact Us
  • More
    • Request a Quote
    • Susbcribe to REM
    • Subscribe to VIP
Exclude terms...
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
AHRECS
Analysis
Artificial Intelligence
Arts
Australia
Authorship
Belief
Beneficence
Big data
Biobank
Bioethics
Biomedical
Biospecimens
Breaches
Cartoon/Funny
Case studies
Clinical trial
Collaborative research
Conflicts of interest
Consent
Controversy/Scandal
Controversy/Scandal
Creative
Culture
Data management
Database
Dual-use
Essential Reading
Ethical review
Ethnography
Evaluative practice/quality assurance
First People
Fraud
Gender
Genetics
Good practice
Guidance
Honesty
HREC
Human research ethics
Humanities
Institutional responsibilities
International
Journal
Justice
Links
Media
Medical research
Merit and integrity
Methodology
Monitoring
New Zealand
News
Online research
Peer review
Performance
Primary materials
Principles
Privacy
Protection for participants
Psychology
Publication ethics
Questionable Publishers
Research ethics committees
Research integrity
Research Misconduct
Research results
Researcher responsibilities
Resources
Respect for persons
Sample paperwork
sd
Serious Adverse Event
Social Science
SoTL
Standards
Supervision
Training
Vulnerability
Young people
Exclude news

Sort by

Human Research Ethics Research Integrity

Just How Historic Is the Latest Covid-19 Science Meltdown? – WIRED (Adam Marcus & Ivan Oransky | June 2020)

Posted by saviorteam in Human Research Ethics, Research Integrity on June 28, 2020
Keywords: Human research ethics, Institutional responsibilities, International, Journal, Research integrity, Research Misconduct, Research results, Researcher responsibilities
Folded news paper with the words "Extra Extra FOUL PLAY" visible above the folded

Don’t blame last week’s journal retractions on the scary pace of the pandemic. “Once-in-a-lifetime” scandals like this seem to happen all the time.

WHEN The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine pulled an influential pair of Covid-19 papers last Thursday, it was a rare event in scientific publishing. For medical researchers, this was like seeing The Washington Post and The New York Times take down related news stories at the same time—a confluence of editorial failures that raises dire questions about what went wrong and why. But how surprising is this scandal, really? Could these be among “the biggest retractions in modern history,” as one observer described the news about the paper in The Lancet? That depends entirely on how you read history. Science meltdowns of this type—and the “biggest” retractions that ensue—occur with shocking regularity. Again and again, over decades, scientists and the public have had their confidence in the enterprise shaken by these sorts of disturbing revelations; and then, again and again, over decades, everyone has been surprised. Cue Casablanca.

The latest scandal is, indeed, a bad one. At the moment, we don’t know the full story of what went wrong, beyond that the papers’ authors and the journals’ editors decided that they could no longer trust the underlying data. Both studies purportedly drew from the medical records of 96,000 patients with Covid-19, seen at hundreds of different hospitals around the world. The NEJM article reported that those with cardiovascular disease were at increased risk for death from Covid-19, and that the use of certain heart medications did not appear to compound that risk. The Lancet paper reported that the drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine did not help the 15,000 patients who took them; in fact, these medications seemed to cause significant harm.

The giant data set was never made available for inspection by other scientists, which would be critical for demonstrating that results are reproducible. More astounding, the private and secretive company that owned the data, called Surgisphere, denied full access to the papers’ authors too. That’s bad faith, and it violates best practices for respectable science.

Read the rest of this discussion piece

Related Reading

No related Resources found

Related Links

Complaints against Research Ethics Monthly

Request a Takedown

Submission Guidelines

About the Research Ethics Monthly

About subscribing to the Research Ethics Monthly

A diverse group discussing a topic

Random selected image from the AHRECS library. These were all purchased from iStockPhoto. These are images we use in our workshops and Dr Allen used in the GUREM.

Research Ethics Monthly Receive copies of the Research Ethics Monthly directly
by email. We will never spam you.

  • Home
  • Services
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
Menu
  • Home
  • Services
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Company
  • Terms Of Use
  • Copyright
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
Menu
  • Company
  • Terms Of Use
  • Copyright
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Support
  • Contact Us
  • Site Map
Menu
  • Support
  • Contact Us
  • Site Map

Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services Pty Ltd (AHRECS)

Facebook-f
Twitter
Linkedin-in