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Sato Iwamoto Part 3: Preclinical studies
We had previously identified a large body of preclinical trials (>40) reported by Iwamoto, Sato and colleagues. A striking feature of these trials was the similarity between many of the papers. Between March and October 2017, we undertook a systematic assessment of the body of preclinical trials to determine what had occurred and whether there…
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Sato Iwamoto Part 2: Clinical studies
After our manuscript with the editorial documenting compromised research integrity and the confession of fraud were published in Neurology, several months passed with no public action by the other affected journals. We decided to also contact all the journals with affected trial reports in March 2017, about 6 months after they had been contacted by…
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Sato Iwamoto Part 1: Clinical trials
In late 2012, two of us (MB, AA) had an email conversation about meta-analyses, little knowing it would lead to an investigation of a research group’s work that remains incomplete more than 14 years later. We were discussing why some meta-analyses reached different conclusions even though they included the same trials. AA mentioned three trials…
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The Sato Iwamoto story: References
1. Halbekath JM, Schenk S, von Maxen A, Meyer G, Muhlhauser I. Risedronate for the prevention of hip fractures: concern about validity of trials. Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:513-4; author reply 514-5. 2. Carlisle JB. The analysis of 168 randomised controlled trials to test data integrity. Anaesthesia. 2012;67:521-537. 3. Bolland MJ, Avenell A, Gamble GD, Grey…
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The Sato Iwamoto story: A saga in 6 parts
From today, there will be a series of posts coming out at regular intervals giving some of the back story to the work we’ve done in this area over the past decade. The story is quite long, 18 pages and nearly 8000 words, so we’ve split it into 6 sections that seemed to fit naturally.…
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Xmas edition: the olympics of vitamin D research
Each year the BMJ (and some other journals) publish some Christmas articles which are often silly, funny, or both. In 2016, the BMJ published our attempt: We read spam a lot: prospective cohort study of unsolicited and unwanted academic invitations It described our attempts to unsubscribe from spam emails with invitations to submit a paper…
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Zombie
In 2020, John Carlisle published the results of his analysis of all trials submitted to the Journal Anaesthesia from Feb 2017 to Mar 2020. He chose the word zombie: to indicate trials where false data were sufficient that I think the trial would have been retracted had the flaws been discovered after publication. Later such…
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Table of Cases
We’ve be involved with the assessment of well over 500 publications where there have been concerns about research integrity. We thought it might be useful to have a table with the broad details and links to discussions about the cases. We’ll update the post from time to time. Name of case Publications/Retractions/EoC (n) Links SatoIwamoto…
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Can inadequate corrections turn misinformation to disinformation?
Thanks to Roger and David at Scholarly Kitchen for posting our blog on this topic. The link is: https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2023/08/31/guest-post-can-inadequate-corrections-turn-misinformation-into-disinformation/ It’s quite an interesting story. Essentially, a journal published two papers that had incorrect analyses. Rather than correcting the papers, the journal chose to allow letters on the topic, so the corrections are largely invisible. So…