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"Once Again, Lancet Stumbles on PACE" (Aug 29) by Vincent Racaniello

Cheshire

Senior Member
Messages
1,129
Dr. Horton did not himself apologize or even deign to respond. Instead, Audrey Ceschia, the Lancet’s correspondence editor, replied, explaining that the Lancet editorial staff decided, after discussing the matter with the PACE authors, that the letter did not add anything substantially new to the discussion.

Hum? So the way The Lancet deals with a controversy is to ask one of the parties to assess the quality of the paper that criticizes them.
 
Instead, Audrey Ceschia, the Lancet’s correspondence editor, replied, explaining that the Lancet editorial staff decided, after discussing the matter with the PACE authors, that the letter did not add anything substantially new to the discussion
It is certainly surprising that The Lancet appears to have given the PACE authors some power to determine what letters appear in the journal itself.
If we had any doubt of how far in bed with the PACE authors the Lancet is this gives us the answer - they are right in the middle, snuggled up tight to each other! :mad:

Today, because of the urgency of the issue, we are posting on PubMed Commons the letter that The Lancet rejected. That way readers can judge for themselves whether it adds anything to the current debate.
Direct link to the letter in the comments section on the trial itself - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21334061#cm21334061_26677

Thanks once again to all who have put their names to this letter.
 

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
Unbelievable. It's no longer surprising they managed to publish PACE.

Edit:

In explaining The Lancet’s decision to publish the results, Horton told the interviewer that the paper had undergone “endless rounds of peer review.” Yet the ScienceDirect database version of the article indicated that The Lancet had “fast-tracked” it to publication. According to current Lancet policy, a standard fast-tracked article is published within four weeks of receipt of the manuscript.

http://www.virology.ws/2015/10/23/trial-by-error-iii/
 
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worldbackwards

Senior Member
Messages
2,051
Genuinely ugly behaviour. What is clear from both this and the ICO and tribunal decisions is that, when we have credible support on board, the whole strategy crumbles and they just start going weird. One wonders quite how far someone like Horton (heavily entitled, slightly deranged) will go before his colleagues start looking at him funny.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
Deja vu???

https://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2...cet-reviewed-the-1998-wakefield-lancet-paper/

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/02/lancet-retracts-mmr-paper

http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/12/smoke-and-mirrors-dr-richard-horton-and-the-wakefield-affair.html

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blo...ichard-Horton-Still-The-Editor-Of--The-Lancet

Even when 10 of the original 13 authors withdrew their names from the article, Horton still refused to withdraw the study.

All of which makes it all the more important for serious journals, as the Lancet claims to be, to avoid junk science -- not promote it.

This incident leads to one very unsettling but unavoidable conclusion: Even a study in a top-notch, peer-reviewed medical journal may still be scientific garbage.

https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/does-the-lancet-care-about-patients/

The probably biggest Lancet scandal now is that of the trachea transplant surgeonPaolo Macchiarini, the recently sacked professor at the Swedish Karolinska Institutet (KI).

The journalist David Tuller, who was investigating the PACE trial controversy from the beginning, commented to me:

“The Lancet has not explained how this piece of nonsense could possibly pass peer review."
 
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Stewart

Senior Member
Messages
291

Apparently Horton's first act after the Sunday Times made him aware of the serious problems with Andrew Wakefield's autism paper was to contact Wakefield and try to find a way to kill the Times' story. You can read an account here:

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7001

Horton also wrote two editorials (in September 2015 and February 2016) defending Paolo Macchiarini of the Karolinska Institute against allegations of misconduct, including falsifying the research reported in his four Lancet papers. Horton's robust defence seems a tad premature, given that the Karolinska Institute fired Macchiarini for scientific negligence and lying on his CV just a month after Horton's second editorial was published.

According to the second editorial, Horton's response to the public calls for Macchiarini's papers to be withdrawn was to contact Macchiarini to 'seek his views'. It seems this is standard operating procedure at the Lancet under Horton's leadership.
 

TiredSam

The wise nematode hibernates
Messages
2,677
Location
Germany
One wonders quite how far someone like Horton (heavily entitled, slightly deranged) will go before his colleagues start looking at him funny.
We don't have to wonder, we are going to get to watch it all, because the circle of critics is getting wider and wider, and none of them are going away until this is sorted.