Validity of Canadian studies: Response of editor of BMJ

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7437.465-b

BMJ 2004;328:465 (21 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7437.465-b

Letter

Validity of Canadian studies

Response of editor of BMJ

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—We were wrong to suggest that Chandra's paper showedthat participants could remember 50 digits,¹ and a correctionhas been published.²

In his rapid response to White's news article Chandra quotesProfessor Meisen's letter at length,³ but that letter was dated2 April 2001. In response to that letter I went back to ourreviewers and consulted our ethics committee. We remained convincedthat there were major problems with Chandra's paper, and soI wrote back on 30 November 2001 and asked the university toclarify what form its investigation had taken. In particularI wanted to know if the university had examined the raw dataof the study.

Meisen wrote back on 3 January 2002 to say that university hadnot asked to see the raw data. He acknowledged that we had raisednew issues and said that the university would review them andget back to . . . [Full text of this article]

Richard Smith, editor

BMJ