News From Jarred Younger / Neuroinflammation, Pain, and Fatigue Laboratory at UAB, From Aug 2020

[mango]

"055 - Focused ultrasound reduces chronic pain

You can get the open-access paper at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39073370/

Jarred Younger"

 

[Utsikt]

"055 - Focused ultrasound reduces chronic pain

You can get the open-access paper at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39073370/

Jarred Younger"

we did not quantify subjects' ability to distinguish active from sham or expectations of pain relief.

Subjects were informed during recruitment and at consent that this was an exploratory trial and would not lead to a long-term replacement for treatment.

Nonetheless, 3 points of evidence suggest that the sham procedure could not be reliably identified from the active procedure;
(1) The sham successfully elicited a temporary placebo response (Fig. 3);

(2) The time dynamics of the pain reduction effects were comparable across the active and sham conditions regardless of randomization (Supplemental Fig. 4, available at http://links.lww.com/PAIN/C85);

(3) There was no significant difference in the dropout rates between active and sham stimulation.

I don’t buy this line of reasoning. There are absolutely no good reasons to not ask the participants which group they believe they belonged to.

 

[mango]

"An article on using prednisone for Gulf War Illness was recently retracted. The article may be found at the below links. - Jarred Younger"

 

[Trish]

"An article on using prednisone for Gulf War Illness was recently retracted. The article may be found at the below links. - Jarred Younger"

This is the article expaining the retraction:
Retraction: Gulf war illness inflammation reduction trial: A phase 2 randomized controlled trial of low-dose prednisone chronotherapy, effects on health-related quality of life
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10270619/

 

[Utsikt]

This is the article expaining the retraction:
Retraction: Gulf war illness inflammation reduction trial: A phase 2 randomized controlled trial of low-dose prednisone chronotherapy, effects on health-related quality of life
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10270619/

From the retraction:

Based on an independent investigation conducted at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that the first author engaged in research misconduct (falsification of research) related to the submission of this article [1]. Specifically, in [1] the first author selectively used study results to suggest a benefit from prednisone, and omitted the results of the originally specified analysis which showed no significant difference between prednisone and placebo. Consequently, the results presented in [1] do not accurately represent the research record. As a result of the research misconduct findings, a request to retract the paper was submitted to PLOS One.

If that is the standard for «research misconduct», I can think of quite a few more articles that should also be retracted..