Two papers linking XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome retracted

Mike posted on a paper refuting the possible link between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome over a year ago.  Now it appears that both the 2009 Science paper and  2010 PNAS paper supporting such a link have been retracted.  The reasons for retraction of each paper appear to be very different.  For example, the story of the Science paper authors' possible image manipulation described by blogger Abbie Smith is pretty fascinating.  A great description of both retractions and related media reports can be found for both the Science and PNAS paper at Retraction Watch.  All of this is very unfortunate for the scientific community and especially the affected patients.

Sources:

Retraction of Lombardi et al., Science 326 (5952) 585-589 in Science 23 December 2011: Vol. 334 no. 6063 p. 1636 

NY Times, David Tuller 12/26/2011

h/t Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch Blog 12/26/2011

Accentuate the negative

Dan has posted previously on how difficult it is for authors to get negative studies published.  Perhaps this is the real reason why the STAR*ICU study took 4+ years to make it to press.  I suspect that if the study was completed the exact same way that it was but found a benefit for barrier precautions, it would have appeared in press around 2009 or even earlier.  Just a guess.

Mike has posted at least twice on Ben Goldacre and his blog/book called Bad Science (part 1 and part 2).  Ben has a new post in the Guardian that discusses how medicine, academia and popular culture all favor positive, eye-catching and potentially spurious trial results and ignore important negative studies.  His discussion centers around a paper published last year that seemed to provide evidence of precognition - you know it before it actually happens.  That "positive" paper received tons of press, while a new negative study can't see the light of day.  I think this sort of bias plays a large role in infection prevention research - it is so much easier to publish a positive quasi-experimental study showing a benefit than a negative study.  This is why it was so great that after 4+ years of waiting the STAR*ICU study, which was a negative study, was published at the same time as the VA study, which showed a benefit.  This way, we could have a rational discussion with the positive/negative evidence receiving "almost" equal billing.

Ben Goldacre "Backwards step on looking into the future" Guardian 4/23/2011

Bad Science

Yesterday, my wife forwarded me a video on the placebo effect. Since I teach that topic to the first year medical students in their epidemiology course, I felt compelled to take a look. And I discovered Ben Goldacre, a British psychiatrist, who I think could best be described as a translational epidemiologist/comedian. He writes a column in The Guardian newspaper and a blog, both entitled Bad Science, all about, well, bad science. He likes to focus on media misrepresentations of medical studies, attempts by the media to scare the public about various health issues, and the corrupting influence of pharmaceutical companies. Interestingly, his father, Michael Goldacre, is the Chair of the Department of Health Care Epidemiology at the University of Oxford.

I've added his blog to our blogroll, and embedded his placebo video below. Warning: his language is somewhat colorful.