{"id":16893,"date":"2020-07-01T19:29:44","date_gmt":"2020-07-01T19:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/?p=16893"},"modified":"2025-12-08T13:04:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T11:04:48","slug":"why-doesnt-the-nejm-retract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wjst.de\/blog\/sciencesurf\/2020\/07\/why-doesnt-the-nejm-retract\/","title":{"rendered":"Why doesn’t the NEJM retract?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In contrast to what the NYT wrote<\/a> and in contrast to what the SPIEGEL <\/a>reiterates today – the NEJM letter form Munich wasn’t the first description of an asymptomatic patient – this was already published one week earlier on January 24, 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

…one asymptomatic child (aged 10 years) had radiological ground-glass lung opacities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The wording of the letter was immediately criticized by Kai Kupferschmidt<\/a> in Science<\/p>\n

But now, it turns out that information was wrong. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German government\u2019s public health agency, has written a letter to NEJM to set the record straight, even though it was not involved in the paper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The NEJM tried to rescue the letter with an online supplement<\/a> giving more details from another phone call to the Chinese lady, making clear that she already had symptoms taking acetaminophen. But also Drosten did not want to retract according to a transcript of the press conference.<\/p>\n

\"\"
https:\/\/www.sciencemediacenter.de\/fileadmin\/user_upload\/Press_Briefing_Zubehoer\/Transkript_Coronavirus_PressBriefing_13022020.pdf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Maybe it was a somewhat unclear situation if the index case could not be interviewed (which should have been done when writing a case report)… Clearly this wasn’t a dysfunctional social media discussion but a basic scientific question as the following RKI report in the Lancet<\/a> corrected numerous details.\u00a0Differences of the two reports<\/p>\n

The NEJM Article missed patient #13<\/a>\u00a0who accompanied index\u00a0#0<\/a>.
\n“#0<\/a>\u00a0had been well with no signs or symptoms of infection” was wrong already at time of submission.
\n#0<\/a> had no business meeting on 19th (also wrong according to the online supplement).
\n#1<\/a> symptoms on 23rd not 24th.
\n#2<\/a>\u00a0symptoms on 25th not 24th, meeting also on 20th.
\n#3<\/a>\u00a0symptoms on 25th not 26th, contacts with\u00a0#1<\/a> only 24th.
\n#4<\/a>\u00a0symptoms 24th not 26th, met\u00a0#0<\/a>\u00a0not\u00a0#1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And again the Rothe version 0:32 tells version of #1…<\/p>\n