The article “A 67-year old man with facial droop, ataxia and vertigo” (DOI:https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.190474; authors: Laila Nasser, Siobhan Deshauer, Kyla Caners and Amitabha Chakraborty)1 published in the June 8, 2020, issue of CMAJ has been retracted at the request of the authors.
The reason for the retraction is that the article contained several substantial errors in the description and interpretation of clinical findings in the case, which means that correction is not feasible. First, the patient was incorrectly described as having ptosis when images showed lid retraction, and was thus incorrectly described as having Horner syndrome. Second, the authors concluded that the patient had lateral medullary syndrome when the clinical features presented were suggestive of a pontine lesion. Third, the authors stated that the patient fulfilled the 2017 McDonald criteria for the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis; however, the case as presented did not contain enough information to allow the reader to conclude that disease dissemination occurred in time, which is necessary for the McDonald criteria to be met.
The article underwent external peer review, and these errors were not identified by any of the 3 peer reviewers or by the article’s handling editor. CMAJ’s external and internal review of this article has been audited, and the lessons learned will be used to improve our performance in the future. The authors intend to submit a version that corrects all errors identified by postpublication review2,3 to be considered for republication.