Tag: Research Integrity
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Sato Iwamoto Part 6: 2024 update
As mentioned, the previous sections were written prior to and then updated in 2021 with the intention of them being published, but we didn’t get around to it. In any case, it’s more exasperating than usual trying to get work in this area published. What has happened since then, now that 11 years have passed…
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Sato Iwamoto Part 5: Reflections in 2021
All the previous sections were written prior to, and then updated in, 2021 (with a key few numbers updated again in 2024). At this time, we were considering publishing the story and wrote our reflections about the case at that point. We’ve included an update in 2024 in the next section. The eight-year anniversary of…
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Sato Iwamoto Part 4: Wider notifications
The slow but steady retraction of clinical and pre-clinical studies meant that Sato, Iwamoto and colleagues had their 100th retraction in February 2020, and 4 years later have 133 retractions. However, this still represents a minority of the group’s papers. By early 2020, we had notified journals about 163 publications but still >150 remained unassessed,…
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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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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…