COVID-19 data scandal prompts tweaks to elite journal’s review process: The now-retracted study, published in May, relied on data from the small Chicago-based company Surgisphere, which purported to have collected and analyzed patient records from hundreds of hospitals around the world. But the paper’s central claim—that antimalarial drugs increased COVID-19 patients’ risk of death—quickly unraveled as observers questioned the study’s large sample size and details about patient demographics and dosing. The Lancet retracted the paper when Surgisphere declined to make underlying data available for an independent audit. The same day, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) retracted another study using Surgisphere data, which found that certain blood pressure drugs didn’t increase risk of death from COVID-19.
