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http://www.virology.ws/2019/03/18/t...oWgmciG-N-rAK3GT3i5lJNTxg4JydVNrt9GNfPGdel8yE
Trial By Error: My Letter to Professor Hotopf About Bristol’s School Absence Study
18 MARCH 2019
By David Tuller, DrPH
Matthew Hotopf is a professor of general medicine psychiatry at King’s College London. He served as a peer-reviewer for a study by Bristol University investigatorsthat was published in BMJ Open in 2011. The study involved whether school absences could be used to identify cases of diagnosed CFS/ME (as the study called the illness).
As I reported in my initial investigation of this issue, Professor Hotopf raised serious concerns in his peer-review about the study’s lack of ethical review–but the paper was published anyway. As part of my efforts to figure out what happened, I sent him the following e-mail on March 9. I cc’d Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ. I have not heard back.
The school absence study is one of 11 from Bristol investigators that exempted themselves from ethical review citing a single research ethics committee letter. The university is now investigating the situation, as I reported in January.