Identical FSH & LH values at baseline in two different trials

My first PubPeer comment

As anyone who’s tried to expose fraudulent research by writing a “letter to the editor” will know, it can be fustrating. Editors prevaricate, authors obfuscate, and time ticks by.

PubPeer (click here) is an alternative. Publish the facts, let the author reply, and readers, editors, regulators and employers can judge for themselves. If you enter the author’s email when you submit, PubPeer automatically notifies them that one of their papers has been commented on.

It has been a powerful way to expose fabricated laboratory research, where authors have manipulated images. It can also be used for fabricated clinical studies.

To protect whistleblowers, comments can be anonymous – they just need to stick to verifiable facts – but I’ll be signing mine. Here’s my first. To read it on PubPeer (click here).

It refers to this paper:

Rezk M, Shaheen AE, Saif El-Nasr I. Clomiphene citrate combined with metformin versus letrozole for induction of ovulation in clomiphene-resistant polycystic ovary syndrome: a randomized clinical trial. Gynecol Endocrinol. 2018 Apr;34(4):298-300. doi: 10.1080/09513590.2017.1395838. Epub 2017 Oct 27. PMID: 29076376.

Table 1 has identical values for FSH and LH as Table 1 in a different paper in the same journal from 2016.

Rezk M, Sayyed T, Saleh S. Impact of unilateral versus bilateral laparoscopic ovarian drilling on ovarian reserve and pregnancy rate: a randomized clinical trial. Gynecol Endocrinol. 2016;32(5):399-402. doi: 10.3109/09513590.2015.1124262. Epub 2015 Dec 15. PMID: 26670076.

Present paper

Rezk et al 2016

The earlier paper reported a trial comparing two surgical treatments with 105 participants, and the present paper a trial of two medical treatments with 202 participants. The earlier paper recruited “from October 2014 to July 2015”. The present paper recruited “between the middle of October 2016 and the beginning of May 2017”. The later paper does not reference the earlier one.

Both have the same first author, and originate from Menoufia university, Egypt.

Jim Thornton