Bringing retracted papers into focus.

To the editor:

In a recent issue of Clinical and Experimental Otorhinolaryngology, Kim et al. [1] presented an interesting study on the preoperative application of pregabalin in patients undergoing septoplasty. The authors should be congratulated to their interesting work, which showed benefits in reducing postoperative pain and analgesic requirements. Their results fits in an increasing body of evidence, where pregabalin has shown to effectively prevent postoperative pain [2], potentially by reducing postoperative hyperalgesia and allodynia [3,4].

The authors did a commendable job in designing and realizing the study. When preparing their paper, they overlooked that one of their references, a study by Reuben et al., was already retracted due to fraudulent data [5].

The problem of ongoing citation of retracted papers was previously reported [6]. Especially when using Embase in contrast to PubMed, authors have no information on whether a publication was rejected or not [7]. However, perpetuating fraudulent publications leads to a bias in the representation of the current literature. In consideration of the increasing number of retracted papers, authors should be encouraged to verify their sources. Beyond that, it would be desirable to incorporate a label in Embase on retracted papers.