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American Heart Association retracts e-cigarette study
In a rare decision, the Journal of the American Heart Association announced the retraction of a widely publicised study claiming vaping increased the likelihood...
J&J warns there is 'no evidence' that its HIV drug a treatment for COVID-19
Johnson & Johnson has announced that it has no evidence its HIV drug, Prezista, had any effect on patients suffering from the disease caused...
Study looks at stability of COVID-19 in aerosols and on surfaces
The virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces, according to a new...
UK's new-born baby with COVID-19 confounds Chinese statistical analysis
Early on Saturday morning the news broke that a new-born baby had tested positive for coronavirus in a London hospital. The case is striking...
COVID-19 spreading quickly and before symptoms appear
Coronavirus spreads quickly and sometimes before people have symptoms, a study found. Infectious disease researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, Institut Pasteur...
Overview of coronavirus infections, including COVID-19, in children
Like previous epidemic coronaviruses, "SARS-CoV-2 (seems) to cause fewer symptoms and less severe disease in children compared with adults," according to the review by...
In early stages, even moderate interventions help reduce spread of COVID-19
COVID-19 infections may be much higher, but even moderate interventions can help reduce spread. "This suggests that the opportunity window to contain the epidemic...
Mortality risk factors in adults hospitalised with COVID-19 — small China study
Specifically, being of an older age, having a high Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score, and having d-dimer greater than 1 μg/mL are the...
WHO's malaria vaccine study a 'serious breach of ethical standards'
A large-scale malaria vaccine study led by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been criticised by a leading bioethicist for committing a “serious breach”...
Researchers question new guidelines on aspirin in primary prevention
There has been considerable confusion from three large-scale randomised trials of aspirin in high risk primary prevention subjects, leaving doctors understandably confused about whether...
Chinese research that coronavirus passed from pangolins questioned
Independent scientists have questioned research that suggested that the outbreak of coronavirus disease spreading from China might have passed from bats to humans through...
Call for top UK geneticist to resign over a decade of research fraud
A row over scientific fraud at the highest level of British academia has led to calls for one of the country’s leading geneticists and...
Curb chronic inflammation to reduce risk of chronic disease mortality
The group of international experts, which also includes scientists from the National Institutes of Health, Stanford University, Harvard Medical School, Columbia University Medical Centre...
South Africa shines in global overview of HIV/Aids research excellence
A global analysis of four years of HIV/Aids research identifies the US as research leader in the field, followed by the UK and South...
Chinese organ donation statistics may have been falsified
The Chinese government may have been systematically falsifying its organ donation numbers, raising renewed concerns over the use of executed prisoners and other forced...
UK scientists damn EU clinical trials directive for 'killing academic research'
A UK report has criticised the EU’s Clinical Trial Directive saying it has “killed academic research” by making trials so “horrendously expensive” that only the largest pharmaceutical...
African resistance to genetically modified mosquitoes
A not-for-profit research group has developed a mosquito that can kill off its own species by spreading a faulty gene. In Burkina Faso, the...
Turkish academic jailed over study linking toxic pollution and cancer
A Turkish food safety engineer has been jailed after releasing to a newspaper details of a study that he had done for the health...
Study investigates 'spin' in psychology and psychiatry journals
More than half of papers in published over five years in six leading psychiatry and psychology journals — including JAMA Psychiatry, the American Journal of...
The challenge of studying paradoxical lucidity in dementia
It happens unexpectedly: a person long thought lost to the ravages of dementia, unable to recall the events of their lives or even recognise...
US crackdown on foetal tissue use shuts some research
The Trump crackdown on foetal tissue research, with new hurdles for government-funded scientists around the country who call the special cells vital for fighting...
NHS assesses studies on mortality risk of ultra-processed foods
Two recent widely-publicised international studies, which found people who ate the most ‘ultra-processed’ food were more likely to have a heart attack or stroke,...
Top medical journals are failing — and both they and authors are full of excuses
It’s a well-known problem with clinical trials: Researchers start out saying they will look for a particular outcome – heart attacks, for example –...
Side-effects of health interventions not properly reported in 35% of studies
The potential side-effects of health interventions — either a drug reaction or an effect of a procedure, such as surgery — were not fully...
Japanese stem cell research 'dangerous and unwise'
There is real hope for treating spinal cord injury with stem cell-based therapies in the future. However, writes Paul Knoepfler on the Knoepfler Lab...
Leading research centre bars execs from serving on corporate boards
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, one of the world’s leading research institutions, has announced that it would bar its top executives from serving on...
Leading cancer expert resigns as journal editor after disclosure issues
Dr José Baselga, the former chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, resigned under pressure as one of the editors-in-chief of the...
UCT professor warns about Africa's science brain drain
Not only are many science graduates in Africa unemployed but the situation is getting worse, fuelling a brain drain to Europe, the UK and North America, warned...
Mischievous responders misleading LGBQ researchers
Many research studies have reported on the elevated health risk and deviance of youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ). But...
Doubts and outrage over genetically edited babies claims
Significant doubts have been expressed, as well as international outrage, over unverified claims from a Chinese scientist that he has helped make the world's...
Cochrane Collaboration in turmoil over expulsion of board member
A the expulsion of a board member of the Cochrane Collaboration, one of medicine's most respected bodies for its reviews of clinical research, has...
Top breast cancer researcher failed to disclose pharma payments
One of the world’s top breast cancer doctors failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from drug and health care companies in recent...
Protecting pregnant women in clinical trials is a delicate balancing act
Treatment decisions during pregnancy are a balancing act that should be informed by available data and expert input, notes an article in The New...
Financial disclosure lacking in publication of clinical trials
A substantial proportion of pharmaceutical industry payments to authors of oncology clinical trials published in major scientific journals are not disclosed, research shows. The...
Unpaywall transforms research as academic publishers start to crack
Unpaywall is a free service locates open-access articles and presents paywalled papers that have been legally archived and are freely available on other websites to...
NIH shuts down controversial study funded by alcohol companies
The US National Institutes of Health will shut down a controversial industry-funded study of moderate drinking and heart disease after a task force found...
Small MRI sample size studies lack sufficient statistical power
Small sample sizes in studies using functional MRI to investigate brain connectivity and function are common in neuroscience, despite years of warnings that such...
Human drug trials compromised by poor animal research reporting
Poor animal study design and reporting thwarts the ethical review of proposed human drug trials, according to a study led by researchers at Hannover...
Duke University faces new NIH requirements after research misconduct
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently imposed unusual new requirements on researchers based at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who receive...
NHS scepticism over study claiming heart benefits of fasting diet
A University of Surrey study that compares the 5:2 fasting diet with a daily calorie restriction diet and concludes that fasting could have a...