Trial By Error: A Letter to BMJ Open

Trial By Error: A Letter to BMJ Open

19 February 2018

By David Tuller, DrPH

http://www.virology.ws/2018/02/19/trial-by-error-a-letter-to-bmj-open/

 

good start to the week

 

Professor Racaniello does write a good letter.

As usual, many thanks to everyone involved, however big or small, seen or unseen who worked together to produce the information involved.

 

One of the letter's great strengths - amongst many - is that it tightly focuses on just one issue, but an issue that is absolutely damning and totally inescapable.

 

Another strong letter. Thanks to everyone involved. Thought I'd add a couple of extra links on the school attendance study for people who might be new to this -

Here's the misleading COPE submission on this: https://publicationethics.org/case/service-evaluation-research-controversial-area-medicine

And Tuller's blog about it: http://www.virology.ws/2018/01/02/trial-by-error-the-school-absence-study-revisited/

re SMILE, it really is clear cut that SMILE does not meet this requirement:

"In accordance with the ICMJE Recommendations, BMJ will not consider reports of clinical trials unless they were registered prospectively before recruitment of any participants. This applies to trials which commenced after 1 July 2005; for older trials retrospective registration will be acceptable, but only if completed before submission of the manuscript to the journal."

I wonder if Crawley lied about this as part of the BMJ submission process? Their trial registration already falsely claims that it was prospectively registered: http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN81456207

 

Looks like the latest COPE meeting led to no further information, and this new conclusion:

https://publicationethics.org/case/service-evaluation-research-controversial-area-medicine

Wow. What impressive follow-up. COPE are awesome at dealing with ethical problems.

Previously:

https://web.archive.org/web/2018030...ne+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-b

 

Interesting. I do not think this BMJ Open decision will be the last we hear about this issue.

 

Lofty noble intentions and rules are utterly meaningless if they are not enforced.

Few things will create general cynicism and despair and disengagement more effectively than that situation.

 

Ostriches, heads and sand come to mind. They just don't realise it's their backsides about to get bitten.

 

COPE never had noble intentions - their structure and rules have been formulated to act as a rubber stamp for the members (journals) and silence the public criticism of those journals when they commit ethical violations.