- Oct 17, 2011
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Nature
A study that stoked enthusiasm for the now-disproven idea that a cheap malaria drug can treat COVID-19 has been retracted — more than four-and-a-half years after it was published1.
Its eventual withdrawal, on the grounds of concerns over ethical approval and doubts about the conduct of the research, marks the 28th retraction for co-author Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist, formerly at Marseille’s Hospital-University Institute Mediterranean Infection (IHU), who shot to global prominence in the pandemic. French investigations found that he and the IHU had violated ethics-approval protocols in numerous studies, and Raoult has now retired.
The paper, which has received almost 3,400 citations according to the Web of Science database, is the highest-cited paper on COVID-19 to be retracted, and the second-most-cited retracted paper of any kind.
In April 2020, the ISAC said the paper didn’t meet its standards. And that July, the journal published critical reviews of the work, including one by Frits Rosendaal, an epidemiologist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, who said the study suffered from “major methodological shortcomings”2. But the ISAC decided not to withdraw the paper...
This June, however, Elsevier reopened an investigation into the study after a group of scientists, including Bik, again called for its retraction, and because of the three authors who had asked to remove their names owing to methodological concerns, the website Retraction Watch reported.
A study that stoked enthusiasm for the now-disproven idea that a cheap malaria drug can treat COVID-19 has been retracted — more than four-and-a-half years after it was published1.
Its eventual withdrawal, on the grounds of concerns over ethical approval and doubts about the conduct of the research, marks the 28th retraction for co-author Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist, formerly at Marseille’s Hospital-University Institute Mediterranean Infection (IHU), who shot to global prominence in the pandemic. French investigations found that he and the IHU had violated ethics-approval protocols in numerous studies, and Raoult has now retired.
The paper, which has received almost 3,400 citations according to the Web of Science database, is the highest-cited paper on COVID-19 to be retracted, and the second-most-cited retracted paper of any kind.
In April 2020, the ISAC said the paper didn’t meet its standards. And that July, the journal published critical reviews of the work, including one by Frits Rosendaal, an epidemiologist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, who said the study suffered from “major methodological shortcomings”2. But the ISAC decided not to withdraw the paper...
This June, however, Elsevier reopened an investigation into the study after a group of scientists, including Bik, again called for its retraction, and because of the three authors who had asked to remove their names owing to methodological concerns, the website Retraction Watch reported.
