"To address this, the publishers of clinical journals must do more to ensure that someone takes responsibility for the fact-checking. That could involve asking authors to guarantee that they have checked figures, tables, text and abstracts for internal consistency. Publishers could require authors to make available suitably anonymized data on each patient as metadata to the study, so that readers can trace the source of any discrepancy that might creep through. Or the publishers could reach into their pockets and provide more in-house resources to perform the necessary checking. What is not acceptable is for the situation to continue as it is, with responsibilities undefined and inexact publishing distorting clinical messages."
http://www.nature.com/news/false-positives-1.15119?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20140501 David Duffy Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit Botany University of Hawaii 3190 Maile Way Honolulu Hawaii 96822 USA 1-808-956-8218
