The three retracting authors—Mandeep R. Mehra of Harvard, Frank Ruschitzka of University Hospital Zurich, and Amit Patel of the University of Utah—said in their retraction notice that Surgisphere refused to hand over its full dataset and an audit report of its servers for an independent peer review. "Based on this development, we can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources," the wrote.
But outside experts were quick to raise myriad questions about the quality and accuracy of the obscure data, which Surgisphere refused to share. Media investigations subsequently identified peculiarities in the company's past work—selling medical textbooks with fake reviews and shuttering a medical journal claimed to be renowned.
Update: 6/4/2020, 4:30pm ET : A second COVID-19 related study based on Surgisphere data has now been retracted. The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine and looked at the effect of preexisting use of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) in COVID-19 patients. As in the case of the Lancet study, the authors reported that "Because all the authors were not granted access to the raw data and the raw data could not be made available to a third-party auditor, we are unable to validate the primary data sources underlying our article."
arstechnica.com
But outside experts were quick to raise myriad questions about the quality and accuracy of the obscure data, which Surgisphere refused to share. Media investigations subsequently identified peculiarities in the company's past work—selling medical textbooks with fake reviews and shuttering a medical journal claimed to be renowned.
Update: 6/4/2020, 4:30pm ET : A second COVID-19 related study based on Surgisphere data has now been retracted. The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine and looked at the effect of preexisting use of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) in COVID-19 patients. As in the case of the Lancet study, the authors reported that "Because all the authors were not granted access to the raw data and the raw data could not be made available to a third-party auditor, we are unable to validate the primary data sources underlying our article."
Retracted: Hydroxychloroquine study pulled over suspect data [Updated]
Three of four authors "no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources."
arstechnica.com
