Trial By Error: An Update about the Pediatric MUS Systematic Review http://www.virology.ws/2019/06/26/t...te-about-the-pediatric-mus-systematic-review/ 26 June 2019 By David Tuller, DrPH This week I raised concerns about a second systematic review that cited the dung heap known as the Lightning Process study, published by Archives of Disease in Childhood two years ago. This new review did not mention the paper’s egregious deficiencies. After the appearance in April of an earlier systematic review that highlighted the study, I sent letters of concern both to Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ, and Dr Terry Segal of University College London, that review’s senior author. To date, neither has taken any public steps to address the issues. Dr Godlee and her editorial team have apparently fallen asleep at the wheel when it comes to this domain of inquiry, for reasons that remain opaque. Dr Segal, so far, has given no sign that she is concerned about having cited a study in which the investigators violated core ethical and methodological principles by recruiting more than half the participants prior to trial registration, swapping outcomes based on the early results, and then deciding not to disclose these details in the published paper…
The bit about COPE is interesting- sorry I can’t cut and paste it - whether the anonymised study where retraction seems to be being considered is SMILE
Thanks to Tuller for keeping drawing attention to these things. Surely the SMILE trial is full of enough nonsense and falsehood for even the BMJ to realise it needs to be retracted?
If those flaws bothered them they would not have published it in the first place. Fools, not idiots. They know. They just don't care. Assumptions change everything, and here the assumption is "there is no disease, you can aim for full recovery". Medical ethics don't apply when a disease is treated as a behavioral disorder with a psychosomatic, i.e. non-medical, cause, mechanism and treatment. It should not be allowed, since they are labeled as medical research and published in medical journals with the intent of giving it the full credibility of medicine, but that's the only loophole that allows psychosomatic medicine to continue existing so it's a big challenge when ambiguity and confusion is used by those who should know better but don't care to.
