The Lancet on Thursday retracted a study that raised safety fears over the use of a drug favored by President Donald Trump to treat COVID-19, after the paper's authors said they could no longer vouch for its underlying data.
It was soon followed by the withdrawal of another coronavirus paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that was not linked to hydroxychloroquine but relied upon the same healthcare company's patient database.
The unfolding research scandal threatens to undermine confidence in two of the world's top medical journals in the midst of a pandemic.
But it is the retraction of The Lancet study that may supercharge what has become a highly politicized debate about hydroxychloroquine, an old malaria and rheumatoid