Speaking this as a spouse of a medical doctor -- case reports are sometimes a good way to increase the bullet point count in your CV if you are a medical resident. A lot of residents do that just for the sake of beefing up their CVs (to apply for fellowship for example).
I don't see anything wrong with that by itself; with the amount of patients doctors see there should be one once in a while that is worth reporting. Or are such cases so rare that the doctor is incentivized to lie?
In vet med, case studies are still pretty important, but that's because vet med is in its infancy compared to human medicine. At least one case study, usually two, are required to be eligible to take boards. Future board renewals, I think for most boards, are "published one original piece of research or two case studies" among a slew of other requirements.
> The articles usually start with a case description followed by “learning points” that include statistics, clinical observations and data from CPSP.
I can see the reason where fictional cases could be used here as teaching aid - based on real cases/ilnesses but simplified to make the learning points succinctly, but surely if the cases are being cited elsewhere someone should have raised the issue earlier?
It looks like they labelled all of them fiction based on a single instance of one of the authors fabricating their case, a gross overcorrection. I wonder if they flinched at the prospect of actually assessing the validity of all of them and decided it was safer to just disclaim them.
I think this is mainly a case of the common "didn't notice when crucial literature for own published content was retracted, get caught with pants down when the replication police come knocking".
Obviously the poor labelling is bad, but 9 bad citations per year isn't the end of science and better labelling wouldn't discourage all the lazy authors who chose to cite these highlight articles, it'll just shift whos is to blame.
The real problem is hosting a review article about research that was retracted, and it sounds like they aren't moving very quickly on taking that piece down.
I don't mind the fact that the case reports were fictional -- actual cases can be problematic in terms of privacy as it may be easy to ascertain the patient's identity from the details -- but not putting a notice that it was fictional (or altered from a real case for privacy), for teaching purposes, is pretty bad.
This is fine, though somewhat belated. But it does nothing to deal with the public's growing distrust of science in general, and medical science in particular.
Too late, it's already in the bloodstream, LLMs will be recommending things to pediatric doctors and families from fabricated archives for years, probably.
Serious question: Why do doctors change their practice so much based on one case study? Surely, even if there isn't any malice, a doctor can make a mistake?
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 78.4 ms ] threadWhat is stopping anyone from faking the data they use in their research papers?
Sure it might be verifiable but if the data was made to give the desired results, i.e. faked to be what is required for the paper.
I can see the reason where fictional cases could be used here as teaching aid - based on real cases/ilnesses but simplified to make the learning points succinctly, but surely if the cases are being cited elsewhere someone should have raised the issue earlier?
No idea what you should update to, mind you, but the old era of photographic evidence is on its last jpgs.
> One author of a case report was surprised to learn of the correction — because the case described in her article is true.
So they managed to mess up even the correction of their giant mess.
> correcting the correction "would be difficult."
I bet. That's why they should have got it right in the first place. I would be absolutely ballistic if they would be libelling my work like that.
Genuine question, could they sue for this? It seems like a pretty good case.
Maybe we should revisit the routine practice of infant male genital mutilation?
Obviously the poor labelling is bad, but 9 bad citations per year isn't the end of science and better labelling wouldn't discourage all the lazy authors who chose to cite these highlight articles, it'll just shift whos is to blame.
The real problem is hosting a review article about research that was retracted, and it sounds like they aren't moving very quickly on taking that piece down.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46789205