[HN Gopher] Research at the heart of a federal case against the ...
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       Research at the heart of a federal case against the abortion pill
       retracted
        
       Author : everybodyknows
       Score  : 38 points
       Date   : 2024-02-09 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (text.npr.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (text.npr.org)
        
       | some_random wrote:
       | Are there any documents laying out the specific issues found in
       | the papers? It sounds like there's a lot wrong with them but I'm
       | curious how much worse than your median paper they actually are.
       | There are a lot of politically motivated studies that could be
       | argued to have unsupported assumptions and present data in a
       | misleading way that have not been retracted.
       | 
       | Here's the retraction itself:
       | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23333928231216699
        
         | idoubtit wrote:
         | It's not only about fake science, don't forget the authors and
         | a reviewer lied about their affiliations and conflicts of
         | interest. When a Journal Editor and a publisher realize that
         | they were deceived by plain lies, I would expect them to react
         | as strongly as they did.
        
           | some_random wrote:
           | Of course, but that's all pretty clear cut (at least in this
           | example) and well spelled out in the retraction.
        
             | vundercind wrote:
             | There are some specifics about which parts of the paper had
             | problems, but I can't _find_ the original paper to see how
             | those parts look (failed to find at libgen, doesn't seem to
             | be open-access from what I can tell)
        
         | csnover wrote:
         | There is some additional detail in the reporting from Ars
         | Technica[0]:
         | 
         | > The study looked at all emergency department visits, not only
         | visits related to abortion. This could capture medical care
         | beyond abortion-related conditions, because people on Medicaid
         | often lack primary care and resort to going to emergency
         | departments for routine care. When the researchers tried to
         | narrow down the visits to just those related to abortion, they
         | included medical codes that were not related to abortion, such
         | as codes for ectopic pregnancy, and they didn't capture the
         | seriousness of the condition that prompted the visit.
         | Medication abortions can cause bleeding, and women can go to
         | the emergency department if they don't know what amount of
         | bleeding is normal. The study also counted multiple visits from
         | the same individual patient as multiple visits, likely
         | inflating the numbers. Last, the study did not put the data in
         | context of emergency department use by Medicaid beneficiaries
         | in general over the time period.
         | 
         | [0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/anti-abortion-
         | groups...
        
       | golemotron wrote:
       | It's a good thing science isn't politicized. If it was this
       | retraction would be suspect too.
        
         | striking wrote:
         | If you're implying that the retraction is suspect, could you
         | point out a particular section?
        
         | metabagel wrote:
         | On what grounds?
        
         | kergonath wrote:
         | Gaming the process this blatantly is ground for immediate
         | retraction in any sane journal. Politics do not matter at this
         | point. This sort of things happens regularly for many papers,
         | not only papers some people happen to find convenient in their
         | misguided arguments.
        
         | twh270 wrote:
         | Everything in the human sphere is 'politicized', but that
         | doesn't mean politics is the only game in town, i.e. that all
         | science is politicized and thus the retraction should be
         | assumed to be political.
        
       | 303uru wrote:
       | Everyone in the pharmacy/pharma world saw this coming. Everyone.
       | I'm sure our super not corrupt SCOTUS will reverse their ruling
       | any day.
        
       | samatman wrote:
       | There's at least one bit of total nonsense in here, namely this:
       | 
       | > _The decision that overturned Roe v. Wade is an example, she
       | says. "The majority [opinion] relied pretty much exclusively on
       | scholars with some ties to pro-life activism and didn't really
       | cite anybody else even or really even acknowledge that there was
       | a majority scholarly position or even that there was meaningful
       | disagreement on the subject."_
       | 
       | I read Dobbs v. Jackson in its entirety, including the dissent.
       | This statement is not-even-wrong, in that the decision was given
       | based on the proper limits of federal power, and whether a right
       | to an abortion was something which could be derived from the
       | Constitution and relevant case law. It had nothing to do with
       | scholarly opinions on abortion at all.
       | 
       | Disagreeing with the decision of the court isn't license to make
       | things up like this.
        
         | vundercind wrote:
         | It may hold if we read that as meaning _in places where the
         | opinion cites scholars_. That is, when it relies on scholars,
         | it cites only a minority scholarly view with no mention of the
         | majority.
         | 
         | And I see a handful of citations in the notes of the majority
         | opinion that appear to be just that, though admittedly not
         | many. Not sure if there are any others written into the body
         | text such that they didn't need to be footnotes.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-09 23:01 UTC)