BMC Public Health informed the authors of “Population-level counterfactual trend modelling to examine the relationship between smoking prevalence and e-cigarette use among US adults” that the editors had decided to retract the article after receiving a critical letter. The letter did not request retraction of the paper, but argued that its analyses “were flawed and therefore potentially produced misleading findings that would benefit tobacco industry profits and interests.”
The authors of the retracted paper are employees of Pinney Associates, a consulting firm that they disclosed “provide[s] consulting services on tobacco harm reduction on an exclusive basis to Juul Labs Inc.” The article also disclosed that Juul Labs funded the research and reviewed and provided comments on a draft manuscript.
The authors of the paper “believe that a retraction is not warranted. The correspondence the authors posted contains their detailed refutations of the concerns mentioned in the retraction notice, and conviction that the decision “is based on fundamental misconceptions regarding basic elements of our article.”
The authors also sent a formal complaint about the “process followed, and scientific judgment” of the journal’s editors to SpringerNature, its publisher, on September 22, and said they have not received a reply. Rather than a retraction, the authors said that the journal should publish the original complaint letter it received, as well as the subsequent assessment by an editorial board member and the authors’ reply.
A SpringerNature spokesperson confirmed receipt of the complaint and said the publisher was “currently in the process of providing a detailed response.
