The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has retracted, and republished a new version of, the PREDIMED study of the Mediterranean diet following concerns about the validity of some of the data.
The journal has also made minor corrections to five other studies. All these corrections were published online June 13 in NEJM.
The corrections follow concerns raised about baseline data distributions by a UK anesthesiologist with a track record of exposing fraudulent research.
John Carlisle, MD, Torbay Hospital, Torquay, United Kingdom, last year reported use of a screening tool that raised question about data in some studies.
These questions "may turn out to involve misinterpretation, statistical error, or plain simple mistakes," he said in a statement released at that time by his own journal, Anaesthesia, which published Carlisle's research June 5, 2017, and is among the journals implicated.
"However, on the basis of previous studies it is likely that some of the data highlighted in this latest research may have been deliberately falsified. At a minimum, it is clear that the reporting of some randomized, controlled trials may be seriously flawed," he wrote.
Carlisle told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology that he is satisfied with the NEJMresponse. "They have done the responsible thing.
