“I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted.”

David Allison writes:

I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted. Despite our concerns, the editor seems to be unwilling to accept responsibility and to be responding to us in a way that we perceive as unethical. You may wish to see a full account on this matter including the Letter to the Editor (LTE) that was rejected by the journal [Di Molfetta et al LTE (short version) Submit.pdf (attached)], our email exchange with the editor following its rejection [Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice Editor Email Exchange.pdf (attached)], and our email exchange with the authors and editor prior to submitting the LTE [Di Molfetta Email Exchange.pdf attached)], but a succinct summary of the events are provided below for brevity: 07/30/2023: We identified a paper as having errors related to not properly analyzing cluster randomized trial data.
08/08/2023: We contacted the original study authors and requested the deidentified data to reproduce the published results.
08/21/2023: The authors requested clarification for the reason for the data request.
08/21/2023: We provided clarification for the data request.
09/22/2023: We prompted the authors to reply to our prior communication.
09/30/2023: We included the editor in the email exchange requesting that they uphold the journal’s data sharing policy.
10/14/2023: We prompted the editor to reply to our prior communication.
10/14/2023: The editor replied and asked for clarification for the reason for the data request.
11/03/2023: We clarified that we requested the data to reproduce the analyses and re-analyze the data using the correct statistical methods for the study design. We also provided a summary of the errors we identified.
11/23/23: The authors replied with their rebuttal to sharing the data, rationalization for their errors, and rationale for not correcting them.
04/29/24: We submitted a letter to the editor to the original journal.
05/01/24: The manuscript was rejected on the basis that our “paper cannot be assigned sufficient priority to allow publication.”
05/08/24: We wrote to the editor directly to reconsider publication of our letter.
05/09/24: The editor responded that the journal does not wish to be engaged in a legal issue and that the matter will not be entertained by the journal any longer.
05/10/24: We responded to the editor to clarify that we simply want the journal to publish our letter and had not proposed any legal action. The editor has not responded to our last communication as of 05/21/24. We believe that the most recent response from the editor is patently unethical and incommensurate with the publishing standards of Elsevier, guidelines of COPE, and generally accepted norms in the field of science. We have two requests: 1. Do you have any advice for us on how we might best pursue this issue further. 2. Would you be willing to blog about this item? If so, you might compare and contrast it with another recent case we pursued [BMC Public Health LTE Example.pdf (attached)] which was an exemplar situation where the journal was responsive to the ethical issues we raised.

I don’t have any advice on what they should do! The flood of bad research is just so overwhelming. But I can blog it. So I did.

David Allison often works in nutrition science, an area where our government is spreading misinformation that is then sane-washed in the news media. And, along with all that, there’s so much uncertainty and variation that it’s hard to know what to think or do.