Notice of inadvertent duplicate publication

The BMJ regrets that the paper “Screening for carcinoma of the prostate by digital rectal examination in a randomly selected population” by K V Pedersen, P Carlsson, E Varenhorst, O Lofman, and K Berglund (BMJ 1990;300:1041-4) was substantially similar to a paper published in Acta Oncologica (1991;30:273-5) entitled “Screening for carcinoma of the prostate in a randomly selected population using duplicate digital rectal examination” by E Varenhorst, K V Pedersen, P Carlsson, K Berglund, and O Lofman and to one published in Recent Results in Cancer Research (1993;126:25-30) entitled “Screening for carcinoma of the prostate in a randomly selected population” by E Varenhorst, K V Pedersen, P Carlsson, K Berglund, and O Lofman. The two later papers make no reference to any earlier paper, and the editor of Acta Oncologica was not told of the existence of the earlier paper, in contravention of both the BMJ's and Acta Oncologica's instructions to authors and of internationally agreed guidelines (we have been unable to contact the editor of Recent Results in Cancer Research). Professor Varenhorst has apologised.