More than three years after publishing a research paper in Nature Medicine, 15 German scientists retracted it because of “several incorrect statements and the erroneous presentation of primary data, results and conclusions” (Nature Medicine 2003;9: 1221.).
The paper, whose lead author was Alexander Kugler, then senior registrar in the urology department of Göttingen University Hospital, presented a small clinical trial involving 17 patients with metastatic kidney cancer. Four patients had been treated with a special vaccine produced by fusing their tumour cells with immune cells.
Three of the patients seemed to respond to the experimental treatment, and the study was widely discussed by the medical community as well as by the press and the general public.
However, doubts were soon raised over the soundness of the study when a scientist pointed out that a picture of fused cells in another of Dr Kugler's publications had been downloaded from the internet (BMJ 2001;323: 184).
Furthermore, a specialist in cell fusion from Würzburg University questioned the safety of the experimental treatment.
Consequently, an ombudsman's committee from Göttingen University started an investigation, the report of which was published in November 2002. The experts did not find any scientific misconduct but did find negligence in the documentation of the trial and the preparation of the manuscript.
The study failed to follow good scientific and medical practice, the experts said, because inaccurate primary data were used and patients who did not fulfil the entry criteria were included in the results.
Also, the protocol for using dendritic cells was not approved by the hospital's ethics committee (BMJ 2002;325: 1193).
The retraction of the paper took place about three and a half years after the original publication because it took time to convince all the authors that a retraction was necessary and to agree its wording, an editorial in Nature Medicine says.