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Journal Retracts COVID-19 Vaccine Paper Based on Faked Content
Science Translational Medicine on Oct. 14 announced the retraction of a paper on COVID-19 vaccination after learning the report contained fake data and images.
More than four years after publishing “SARS-CoV-2 S2–targeted vaccination elicits broadly neutralizing antibodies,” the journal stated that an investigation conducted by an institution for which some of the authors worked or work determined that the paper included “fabricated data” and “falsified images,” the retraction note stated.
The paper had claimed that experiments showed vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, elicited strong antibodies. The Francis Crick Institute in London conducted the investigation and concluded that first author Kevin W. Ng was responsible for the fake data and images. Ng, who worked for the institute in 2022, when the paper was published, has admitted responsibility, according to the note.
A Flawed Study Shaped the Treatment of Childhood Depression
Can one bad apple spoil the entire bushel? In science, a single flawed study can sometimes distort a larger body of evidence. A recent report, “Prozac use for childhood depression skewed by single flawed medical trial,” describes how one clinical trial may have influenced a major synthesis of research — and, in turn, prescribing practices for children with depression.
In the recent review, a central question for researchers was: “How well does Prozac work for children with depression, compared with other treatments?” When many clinical trials point in the same direction, pediatricians and mental health professionals take notice. Whatever one’s view of medicating children for conditions such as attention-deficit disorders, anxiety, or depression, everyone should want prescribing decisions to rest on sound evidence.
In this case, however, a single trial conducted in Iran with only 40 patients appeared to have had an outsized impact on the evaluation of using Prozac — fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) — to treat pediatric depression.
Here is what happened. A meta-analysis combined results from multiple studies on this question. Researchers included several clinical trials comparing Prozac with other treatments, but that single study from Iran, published 20 years ago, produced unusually strong results and exerted a disproportionate effect on the overall analysis. That outlier shifted the findings in favor of Prozac, helping to shape the message that Prozac was especially effective and preferred for treating depressed children.
Millions of Children Aren’t Getting Vaccinated: How Mapping Tools Can Help Find Them
Worldwide about 13.5 million children have never received a vaccine at all. These are known as zero-dose children. Reaching them is central to the Immunization Agenda 2030, a global drive to ensure that everyone has access to the vaccines they need. Gavi, the vaccine alliance, has built its strategy around finding and reaching them.
Reaching zero-dose children starts with knowing where they are: putting them on a map. Geographers offer a starting point — the first law of geography is that objects closer to another are more alike than those further apart.
This principle underpins geospatial health, the study of how where people live shapes their health. If we know something about one place, we can often infer the same thing about its neighbours. This includes how many unvaccinated children live in areas surveys haven’t reached.
NAION Blindness — Like a Thief That Comes in the Night
LawyersandSettlements.com reported:
One night in February 2025, Diane Wirth went to bed. The next morning, she woke up and much of the vision in her right eye was gone. It’s not coming back. Wirth, like many of us, wanted to lose a few pounds. Her doctor prescribed Wegovy, a drug like Ozempic, which is often prescribed for weight loss, or at a different dosage, to treat Type 2 diabetes. She had only been taking it for a few weeks.
“I woke up one morning and I was like, ‘What is wrong with my eye?’” Wirth said. “I was fine when I went to bed, and I woke up, and the vision was gone. … There was no warning sign at all.” Wirth has since been diagnosed with nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, or NAION. It is sometimes described as a stroke of the optic nerve.
Wirth is one of roughly 250 people whose lawsuits against drug manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, are now consolidated for pre-trial proceedings in In Re: Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists (GLP-1 RAs) Non-Arteritic Anterior Ischemic Optic Neuropathy (NAION) Products Liability Litigation (MDL 3163) in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Study Links Antibiotic Use With Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Children and adolescents who received antibiotics had 1.5-times-higher odds of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) by age 24 than those who had not, Swedish researchers reported today at the annual United European Gastroenterology (UEG) conference.
The findings are from an analysis of 2,853 participants enrolled in the BAMSE study, which began in Stockholm in 1994 and was originally established to study environmental and nutritional factors involved in the development of allergies and other chronic conditions.
For this study, researchers at the University of Gothenburg reviewed antibiotic drug prescription data starting in 2005, when the participants were aged 9 to 11 years, until IBS was assessed at age 24, tracking whether they had received antibiotics, the number of prescriptions received, and which antibiotic classes had been prescribed.
