We describe the ongoing citations to biomedical articles affected by scientific misconduct, and characterize the papers that cite these affected articles. The citations to 102 articles named in official findings of scientific misconduct during the period of 1993 and 2001 were identified through the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science database. Using a stratified random sampling strategy, we performed a content analysis of 603 of the 5,393 citing papers to identify indications of awareness that the cited articles affected by (...) scientific misconduct had validity issues, and to examine how the citing papers referred to the affected articles. Fewer than 5% of citing papers indicated any awareness that the cited article was retracted or named in a finding of misconduct. We also tested the hypothesis that affected articles would have fewer citations than a comparison sample; this was not supported. Most articles affected by misconduct were published in basic science journals, and we found little cause for concern that such articles may have affected clinical equipoise or clinical care. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe published research articles that were named in official findings of scientific misconduct and to investigate compliance with the administrative actions contained in these reports for corrections and retractions, as represented in PubMed. Between 1993 and 2001, 102 articles were named in either the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts (“Findings of Scientific Misconduct”) or the U.S. Office of Research Integrity annual reports as needing retraction or correction. In 2002, 98 of (...) the 102 articles were indexed in PubMed. Eighty-five of these 98 articles had indexed corrections: 47 were retracted; 26 had an erratum; 12 had a correction described in the “comment” field. Thirteen had no correction, but 10 were linked to the NIH Guide “Findings of Scientific Misconduct”, leaving only 3 articles with no indication of any sort of problem. As of May 2005, there were 5,393 citations to the 102 articles, with a median of 26 citations per article (range 0–592). Researchers should be alert to “Comments” linked to the NIH Guide as these are open access, and the “Findings of Scientific Misconduct’ reports are often more informative than the statements about the retraction or correction found in the journals. (shrink)

"The premise of the Jewish attitude toward illness is that living is sacred, that good health enables us to live a fully religious life, and that disease is an evil. Any effective therapy is permitted, even if it conflicts with Jewish law. To bring about healing is a responsibility not only of the person who is ill and of the professional caregivers, but also of the loved ones, and of the larger circle of family, friends, and community." "Illness and Health (...) in the Jewish Tradition is an anthology of traditional and modern Jewish writings that highlights these basic principles."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)