Some years ago our journal published a paper reporting concentrations of a substance in an organ in a small number of people of a particular occupational group who had died of a rare disease. The results have been reanalysed in two subsequent papers and discussed in five pieces of correspondence in two journals. The original paper contributes to a body of evidence used by the defence in some compensation claims in the USA. One of the authors of the original paper is prominent as an expert witness in such cases.
在这些补偿案件之一的过程中，原始纸张背后的一些原始实验室结果向法院披露，并在另一个期刊上发表。律师向我们抱怨，他们破坏了申诉人所说的原始纸张应该撤回。
我们已经审查了原文和新发布的数据，并得出结论，本文与新数据一致，并不能维护投诉。但是，在此过程中，我们注意到一个完全独立的问题：在论文中讨论中的重要陈述不同意本文中表中呈现的结果。虽然一旦指出，这似乎是清楚的，但它显然没有被数据关于数据的七个出版物的作者注意到。我们的结论是，我们不应该以现代形式接受原文。
The heart of the inconsistency is that the text makes statements which it says are true of all the cases observed, but inspection of the results makes it clear that there is at least one exception, which weakens the impact when there are only a few cases anyway.
Close examination of the original paper also discloses that many of the measurements must have been at low levels, close to the limit of detection, and subject to large uncertainties which make the conclusions insecure statistically. The low level of the results is confirmed by the newly disclosed laboratory data. The paper does not discuss these uncertainties, and they have been ignored in references to the findings in later papers. Although this reinforces our view that we were wrong to accept the original paper as published, there is always room for argument about statistical analysis, so we regard this as a less serious problem than the inconsistency between the discussion and the tables.
The paper was processed before we started using online submission, and the reviewers’ and editor’s reports no longer exist.
我们认为，这种不一致性将通过应对指南的标准来证明对原始纸张的修正通知。bob官方app但是，这种情况不符合通常的模式，因为我们没有响应新信息，而是为了实现我们犯了错误，我们发表了一篇严重缺陷的纸张 - 我们想纠正本文，因为我们有改变了我们的想法。
Has the COPE forum any comments please?
论坛建议issuing a notice of correction but the editor should perhaps consult with the publisher’s legal department before publication. As the problem occurred nearly 10 years ago, another suggestion was to write an accompanying editorial explaining the whole case. The journal can issue a notice of correction without the approval or consent of the authors, but the advice was to contact the authors in the first instance and try to agree on the wording of a correction that is acceptable to all. The journal could draft the notice and send it to the authors for their comments. If agreement on the wording cannot be reached, the editor could suggest an arbitrator or panel of arbitrators. The editor could also allow the authors a chance to reply or comment further in the journal.
As advised by the Forum, the journal discussed the issue with their publisher's legal advisers and wrote to the authors proposing a notice of correction. They have just received a reply. The editor is trying to avoid involving arbitrators. Meanwhile, the editor has had a new submission from a third party reanalysing the original data.
Follow up (September 2012):
The author has proposed simply updating the table, and has given an explanation of all the inconsistencies except one. The faults in the paper have moved into the area of what the editors consider to be poor scientific judgement rather than deceit or factual error. The editors regret that these questions of judgement were not dealt with before publication, but in view of the age of the paper they have decided to accept the author's proposal just to correct the table, and to leave discussion of the paper's conclusions to other authors.