A journal has retracted a 2021 paper claiming that vitamin D “significantly reduced the inflammatory markers associated with COVID-19 without any side effects” following criticism that led them to “no longer have confidence in the conclusions.”
The paper “Impact of daily high dose oral vitamin D therapy on the inflammatory markers in patients with COVID 19 disease,” appeared in Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature journal, on May 20, 2021. The paper earned a correction on August 30, and has been cited 29 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
The editors said that “the Editorial Board Member indicates that the study may potentially not be scientifically valid.” The editors also write that Brown found that “problems with data mismatches are pervasive, and while some of them could be accounted for how the data was processed, it is not the case in all instances and it is not something that the readers would be able to discern given the information provided in the published article.”
And, they said, “it appears that the way these results are reported is different for the same analyses across different display figures.
There is no scientific justification for this.” Madhu Latha Karra, of Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences in Hyderabad and the corresponding author of the paper, responded with 15 pages of point-by-point counterarguments, and urged the editors not to retract the paper. But in April 2022, the journal did so.
