Retracted Article On Dopaminergic Neurotoxicity of MDMA - Aftermath of The Retraction

Aftermath of The Retraction

In the 12 September 2003 issue of Science there was also another Constance Holden "News of the Week" article called "Paper on Toxic Party Drug Is Pulled Over Vial Mix-Up". Holden reported that the drug supplier, Research Triangle Institute, was conducting a thorough review of its procedures to see if it could have switched the labels on the drug bottles. Ricaurte was reported to still be interested in previous results that suggested MDMA is toxic to dopamine neurons in mice.

In a review of the year's events published in the 19 December 2003 issue of Science (volume 302, page 2033), Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy wrote, "It was also a vintage year for scientific fluffs. We shared in one: Some vials containing the recreational drug Ecstasy got switched with vials containing methamphetamine, and we wound up publishing a paper we wish we hadn't".

An editorial in the journal Nature called the retraction "one of the more bizarre episodes in the history of drug research" and noted that "Some observers have in the past questioned NIDA's ability to maintain its independence in the face of the immense pressures brought to bear by those who stand behind America's interminable 'war on drugs'."

Another remarkable aspect of this episode is the public endorsement of the study, at the time of its publication, by Alan Leshner, chief executive of the AAAS and former director of NIDA. It isn't clear why an officer of the AAAS should be involved at all in publicly promoting a particular result published in its journal, least of all one whose outcome was questioned at the outset by several experts. The AAAS issued the retraction late in the afternoon on Friday 5 September, resulting in low-key media coverage, which contrasts sharply with the hype surrounding the initial paper. —Nature 2003

In an interview in The Scientist British scientists Colin Blakemore and Leslie Iversen described how they expressed concerns about the article with editors at Science. "It's an outrageous scandal," Iversen told The Scientist. "It's another example of a certain breed of scientist who appear to do research on illegal drugs mainly to show what the governments want them to show. They extract large amounts of grant money from the government to do this sort of biased work."