HRA (Health Research Authority) & Bristol University's report on E. Crawley's CFS/ME Studies over registration to the Research Ethics Committee (2019)

I guess their dog ate their homework.

I'm going to call complete BS on this implausible excuse. The idea that they at some point switched to a different system that wiped all their prior data is either incompetent or massively incompetent, possibly both. In the last 2-3 years, this isn't even an old complaint. Implausible deniability.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention David. This case predates our current complaints handling process, but we’re reviewing our records and will confirm what we intend to do next.
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Milo said:
I wonder whether the people at Retraction Watch would be interested in this post?
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But I agree, they SHOULD be interested. The fact that they only really look at "retractions" obviously leaves a big gap in their coverage. I tried to nudge them to cover the 3,000-word "correction" of the Lightning Process study, for example. Of course, that should have been retracted! But it was a correction, so it didn't really fall in their bailiwick, from their perspective.

To be fair, RW is a site with one or two people working there, so they need to limit themselves somehow--they're swamped as it is. So I fully understand making the choice to limit their work to actual retractions.
 
NelliePledge said:
Yeah probably if I was writing something formal that’s what it would be but their is what came out of my brain
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I've actually heard/seen this routinely in UK press and media, and it always feels sightly off to me. So it's a real thing. I assume grammatically correct that way in UK and the other way in US, but haven't checked. If I were editing, I would "correct" that if it was for a US audience but not a UK one, I think.
 
rvallee said:
I guess their dog ate their homework.
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This of course made me laugh. I guess we'll see what happens next. They did have a turnover after Teresa Allen left. She was the HRA official I was dealing with. I would guess that they assume that recommendations made in such a report would actually get made. It really shouldn't be necessary to double-check, even though it obviously was.
 
dave30th said:
I've actually heard/seen this routinely in UK press and media, and it always feels sightly off to me. So it's a real thing. I assume grammatically correct that way in UK and the other way in US, but haven't checked. If I were editing, I would "correct" that if it was for a US audience but not a UK one, I think.
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Either can be deemed acceptable but there is a distinction to be made. "When the group is considered as a whole the singular is to be preferred; when it is viewed as consisting of individuals the plural is preferred". The distinction is often lost.

I did once check it in Fowwler's Modern English Usage, the supposed bible on such matters, though probably no longer modern.
 
MSEsperanza said:
Thank you, David.

And another bump -- the HRA's letter of appreciation from 2019 to the head of your department:
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Thanks for bringing it to my attention! it had been off my radar. I'd assumed they'd been corrected as a matter of course although in the back of my mind I figured I should check at some point.

and I really appreciated that letter from the HRA not to my dept head but to the Berkeley chancellor--the chancellor had been the recipients of the complaints from Bristol's vice chancellor. Teresa Allen, who wrote that letter, knew about Bristol's complaints and I assume that's why she took it upon herself to alert the chancellor to my work. I disagreed with various HRA findings and Teresa knew that, so I really appreciated that she took the initiative and time to write that letter.
 
chrisb said:
Either can be deemed acceptable but there is a distinction to be made. "When the group is considered as a whole the singular is to be preferred; when it is viewed as consisting of individuals the plural is preferred". The distinction is often lost.

I did once check it in Fowwler's Modern English Usage, the supposed bible on such matters, though probably no longer modern.
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This is also how it was explained in my English grammar books (they teach British English here).

Now I actually looked this up in a book I have titled Cambridge Grammar of English (from 2011) because it has a chapter about the grammatical differences between the two (and it is 10 pages long). This one was also listed. It says using only the singular is a tendency in spoken American English. But I guess if the plural sounds strange to @dave30th , then it is not only in spoken AmE.
 
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Trial By Error: My Letter to Bristol and the Health Research Authority About Uncorrected Crawley Papers

30 August 2022 by David Tuller

"In 2019, a report from the University of Bristol and the UK’s Health Research Authority recommended corrections to the ethics statements of eleven studies. Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol’s ethically and methodologically challenged star researcher and grant magnet, was the main author and/or principal investigator of all eleven papers. In a post yesterday, I disclosed that only four of the eleven appear to have been corrected.

"When I tweeted out the post, the HRA’s twitter account quickly responded with the following: 'Thanks for bringing this to our attention David. This case predates our current complaints handling process, but we’re reviewing our records and will confirm what we intend to do next.' [...]"

More at link:

https://www.virology.ws/2022/08/30/...h-authority-about-uncorrected-crawley-papers/
 
Trial By Error: Update on Professor Crawley’s Uncorrected Ethics Statements

6 October 2022
By David Tuller, DrPH

*October is crowdfunding month at UC Berkeley. If you like my work, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Berkeley’s School of Public Health to support the Trial By Error: project: https://crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/33528

"In August, I alerted both the University of Bristol and the UK’s Health Research Authority about a problem. [...]

"The HRA responded to my concerns quickly, letting me know that it would look into the matter and get back to me by October 4th—this past Tuesday. In contrast, Bristol’s legal department responded with dismissal, informing me curtly that the university would only answer questions from the HRA.

"On Tuesday, I didn’t hear back from the HRA. Yesterday, October 5th, I did receive a follow-up e-mail from the agency, letting me know that it still had no answers. [...]"

More at link:

https://www.virology.ws/2022/10/06/trial-by-error-update-on-the-crawley-chronicles/
 
Trial By Error: So the Dog Ate Professor Crawley’s Corrections AND Her Correspondence As Well

"I’ve been waiting to hear from the UK’s Health Research Authority about why seven papers from Professor Esther Crawley, Bristol University’s methodologically and ethically challenged grant magnet, have not been corrected–as mandated in a joint 2019 report from the HRA and her own academic institution. As many readers are aware, the joint report provided specific language to fix the ethics statements in 11 separate papers. But only four of the papers have been corrected.

As I suspected–the dog did eat the corrections! And all the associated correspondence as well. At least that’s how I interpret the information I received yesterday in an e-mail from the HRA, which gave an account of Bristol’s laughable explanation of what happened. In short, Bristol has thrown the journals under the bus. It’s all their fault!"

https://www.virology.ws/2022/10/25/...s-corrections-and-her-correspondence-as-well/
 
And Bristol or anybody else couldn't be bothered to contact the journals for copies of the correspondence? If it was really sent the journals will have copies, not everyone loses stuff or has a convenient team of gremlins on standby. I doubt that the journals would be able to find any correspondence if it was never sent. If Crawley says it was, she needs to prove it rather than claiming that she did but both sides lost it.
 
TiredSam said:
And Bristol or anybody else couldn't be bothered to contact the journals for copies of the correspondence? If it was really sent the journals will have copies, not everyone loses stuff or has a convenient team of gremlins on standby. I doubt that the journals would be able to find any correspondence if it was never sent. If Crawley says it was, she needs to prove it rather than claiming that she did but both sides lost it.
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He seems to have contacted the journals now asking them if they had any comments on Crawley's and the University of Bristols comments. I think we all know how that is going to go and then its not just David going after Crawley its the journals too for lying about their actions. The hope is this does enough reputational damage with the journals in question that she gets blacklisted and the University of Bristol is on notice, but alas the journals care little for the integrity of what is published in them or those who write the fabricated papers.
 
BrightCandle said:
He seems to have contacted the journals now asking them if they had any comments on Crawley's and the University of Bristols comments. I think we all know how that is going to go and then its not just David going after Crawley its the journals too for lying about their actions. The hope is this does enough reputational damage with the journals in question that she gets blacklisted and the University of Bristol is on notice, but alas the journals care little for the integrity of what is published in them or those who write the fabricated papers.
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Unfortunately so far it seems that, at least publicly, British journals in such situations bend over backwards to protect the authors rather than scientific integrity. It looks like an old boys network is protecting the various eminent academics regardless of the facts of the case.

So, though I think it is important that @dave30th is pursuing these ethically challenged articles, I am not optimistic that the journals will do anything other than collude in attempts to sweep things under the carpet.
 
Peter Trewhitt said:
British journals in such situations bend over backwards to protect the authors rather than scientific integrity.
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Another nail in the journals' coffins, with a bit of luck. The whole system's bent, and probably does very little for the advancement of science. It's like the union closed shop; long out of date, and I say that as a trade unionist all my working life.
 
Peter Trewhitt said:
Unfortunately so far it seems that, at least publicly, British journals in such situations bend over backwards to protect the authors rather than scientific integrity. It looks like an old boys network is protecting the various eminent academics regardless of the facts of the case.

So, though I think it is important that @dave30th is pursuing these ethically challenged articles, I am not optimistic that the journals will do anything other than collude in attempts to sweep things under the carpet.
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So, we need to get his Crowdfunding over the line asap!
 
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