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Research Issues
J&J claims fraud in paper linking talc to mesothelioma
A key paper linking talc-based baby powder to cancer allegedly contains fraudulent information, according to a new complaint against an author of the article...
US law change allows for end of animal testing for new medicines
In a move welcomed by animal welfare organisations, new medicines no longer need to be tested on animals to receive US Food and Drug...
Top 10 global retractions of 2022
From typo-laden code in a psychedelics research to paper mills and plagiarism, The Scientist looks back on some of the most notable retractions in...
Research into popular blood thinner drug under scrutiny
Revelations from US documents show research into a popular blood thinner, used by millions of people around the world after being approved for stroke...
Young scientists warned about predatory, damaging journals
Authors of a two-year study exposing various dodgy publishing practices urged delegates at the World Science Forum in Cape Town last week to help...
Probe into possible data manipulation in Stanford president’s research
One of America’s most prestigious institutions, Stanford University, has launched an investigation of possible research misconduct in several papers co-authored many years ago by...
Step forward in human studies for Neuralink brain implants
Elon Musk’s brain-machine interface company Neuralink intends to put its first implant in a human subject in the next six months, he said last week,...
Search for a new class of antibiotics
A study on the surge of new antimicrobial research has shown that despite almost a quarter of a million research papers (227 808) being...
SA’s first chronic pain clinical trial to explore cannabis as alternative to opioids
The first clinical trial of its kind in South Africa, probing cannabis’ effectiveness as an alternative to opioids for chronic pain management, aims to...
Hopes dashed as Roche’s potential Alzheimer’s drug fails trials
Expectations of a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease have been dealt another blow by the failure of an experimental drug to slow the progression of...
Patient’s death in Alzheimer’s trial raises concern about risk
A month after drugmaker Eisai reported positive, topline phase three data of its Alzheimer’s treatment lecanemab, it has been reported that one of the...
Scientists suggest SARS-CoV-2 has signs of genetic engineering
A trio of scientists has come up with a controversial theory about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, suggesting it was genetically engineered –...
Cancer jab might be ready by 2030, say Pfizer/BioNTech scientists
A vaccine against cancer could be ready by 2030, says the team behind the successful Pfizer/BioNTech COVID jab, who have worked to pioneer cancer...
Retractions, plagiarism concerns over dozens of articles by concussion expert
Nine articles from internationally renowned Australian concussion expert Dr Paul McCrory have been retracted from a prestigious medical journal and dozens more have had...
Drug for Lou Gehrig’s gets regulatory nod despite questionable data
Despite questionable research data, a much-debated drug for Lou Gehrig’s disease has won US approval based on one small study, has renewed questions about...
Medical journals probe potential manipulation in heart research
Three medical journals recently launched independent investigations of possible data manipulation in heart studies led by Pennysylvania’s Temple University researchers, adding new scrutiny to...
Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza retracts four papers
A Johns Hopkins researcher who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology has retracted four papers from the Proceedings of the National...
Not enough safety data or research on sunscreen safety, say US scientists
There’s a need for additional research into sunscreen ingredients and their safety, say US scientists in a recent report, pointing out that certain chemicals,...
Dump ineffective COVID drugs, Abdool Karim urges
Despite World Health Organisation guidance, drugs with unproven efficacy against COVID-19 continue to be prescribed by some doctors, who ignore the wealth of evidence...
New PEPFAR boss urges global health community to learn from African research
Dr John Nkengasong, new head of the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), has encouraged African researchers to build regional networks to...
The red flags that led to a massive Alzheimer’s research scandal
A neuroscience image sleuth has found signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles, threatening a reigning theory of the disease, and uncovering what...
Researchers caution about endemic sponsorship bias in cost-effective analyses
Sponsorship bias in cost effective analyses (CEAs), a requirement of most manufacturers when applying for insurance coverage, is significant, systemic and present across a...
Scientists sound alarm on badly run medical studies
A new research paper has signalled a crisis in medical research, with researchers saying “more than 60% of trials are so methodologically flawed we...
BJSM issues statement on plagiarism by its former editor-in-chief
British Medical Journal (BMJ) recently retracted ‘The time lords – measurement and performance in sprintingʼ, authored by former British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM)...
Famous vitamin C study ‘may have relied on fraudulent data’
The data underpinning a famous study of vitamin C for sepsis that some thought might put its author on track for a Nobel Prize...
Study labelling masturbation and homosexuality ‘abnormal’ leaves former staff seething
An homophobic article in the Clinical Schizophrenia & Related Psychoses, published following the sale of the journal to a new publisher, has left the...
Undeclared pharma payments rife among Australian medical researchers
One in four Australian medical researchers involved in drug trials failed to declare money they had received from pharmaceutical companies when submitting journal manuscripts,...
Withdrawn: Mexican Ivermectin paper claiming reduced COVID hospitalisation
The overseers of the preprint server SocArXiv have withdrawn a paper claiming that treating COVID patients with Ivermectin dramatically reduces their odds of hospitalisation,...
Publishing ban for researchers at tobacco industry-owned firms – Nature
A group of international respiratory societies has banned researchers associated with tobacco companies from publishing papers in their journals after the acquisition of a...
Facebook censors The BMJ: When gatekeepers go rogue
The British Medical Journal (The BMJ), one of the world’s premier medical journals, locked horns with Facebook and the gatekeepers of international fact-checking, after...
Ivermectin meta-analyses highlighted, again, the dangers of fake data
Some of the data that recently found Ivermectin was effective against COVID-19 came from clinical trials that “almost certainly” did not happen as described....
PLOS ‘expression of concern’ over study punting Ivermectin for dengue fever
A PLOS journal has issued an expression of concern for a 2018 paper that claimed Ivermectin could be useful as a way to control...
200-year-old race-based COPD diagnostic formula shown to be inadequate
A long-term epidemiological study reveals that one of the oldest, racially-based diagnostic formulas in medicine – used globally to define the severity of COPD...
AHA ‘Expression of Concern’ over study on mRNA vaccines and cardiac inflammation
A study just published in Circulation, flagship journal of the American Heart Association (AHA) has been flagged with an Expression of Concern, reports Retraction...
UK investigation into racial and gender bias in medical devices
The UK Health Secretary has ordered a review into whether medical devices — such as oximeters, spirometers and respirators — are equally effective regardless...
The challenges to collecting accurate COVID-death statistics in SA
The number of “excess deaths” from COVID-19 are often angrily disputed. The SA Medical Research Council’s Prof Debbie Bradshaw, explains in an interview with...
The high costs to a medical watchdog of challenging bad science
Days after a mysterious new illness was declared a pandemic in March last year, a prominent French scientist announced he’d already found a cure...
Ivermectin papers show limitations of ‘inherently unreliable’ summary data
The The demand for COVID-19 treatments has created a demand for meta-analyses by systematic review — a process fraught with risk, as evidenced by...
Noakes: Iconic study hid findings, reached unjustifiable and possibly unethical conclusions
Emeritus Professor Tim Noakes, in a study published in the journal Open Heart, has criticised the authors of one of the most influential studies...