Letters to the Editor The journal publishes both invited and unsolicited letters.
IDENTIFYING CORRECTIONS—IS THERE A BETTER WAY? One of the challenges of evidence-based practice is finding and synthesizing the relevant information. This challenge is depicted in the logo of the Cochrane Collaboration (http://www.cochrane.org/about-us/our-logo), which tells the story of corticosteroids in premature birth—the individual trials showed the benefits, but the impact on practice only occurred after the trials were brought together in a systematic review. The problem of the impact of individual studies being diluted by the sheer volume of publications is still present. The internet and electronic publishing have facilitated ready access to full text papers, but have also exacerbated the problem with the explosion of publication options. The days of researchers following a small number of journals and looking through the latest journals in paper form are long gone. Indeed, the library at my university is now dominated by computers rather than paper journals and books. This change in processes raises an issue with corrections to published papers. Publishing corrections to a paper in the journal in which it first appeared is no longer an effective way of distributing that information. Furthermore, there is variability in how the different journals publish corrections, and how corrections are managed in the literature databases. For example, there were post-publication corrections to a paper by Lim et al. [1]. If you access the record for this paper with the Ovid Online version of Medline, details of the erratum are included in the title field. If you access the record using PubMed, the details of the erratum come after the author list. If you access the PubMed record through EndNote you do not find details of the erratum at all. The electronic version of the paper on the publisher’s website is the corrected version, and includes details of the changes that were made. If (as I did) you had downloaded the paper when it was first published, how are you to know that there were corrections? Everyone makes mistakes, and when there are complex data or calculations the peer review and editorial processes are less likely to detect mistakes. Authors want their work to be used appropriately and readers want to know that the version of the paper they are referring to is accurate. Some corrections are relatively minor, such as the addition of an author or correction of a name, but others, such as the correction to the paper by Lim et al. [1], involve substantial changes to data, or may even involve retraction of a publication [2]. As an author of systematic reviews, should I be checking every paper referred to in my review to ensure it is still current, or is © 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
there a better way to alert readers to corrections of scientific papers? Keywords evidence-based practice, literature databases, publication standards, research literature, systematic reviews. LINDA GOWING Discipline of Pharmacology, The University of Adelaide, South Australia E-mail: [email protected]
References 1. Lim S. S., Vos T., Flaxman A.D., Danaei G., Shibuya K., Adair-Rohani H. et al. A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. Lancet 2012; 380: 2224–60. 2. Niederhofer H., Staffen W. Retraction note: acamprosate and its efficacy in treating alcohol dependent adolescents. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2012; 21: 713.
HAIR DRUG TESTING IN THE NEW BRAZILIAN REGULATION TO OBTAIN PROFESSIONAL DRIVER’S LICENCE: NO PARALLEL TO ANY OTHER LAWENFORCEMENT IN THEWORLD According to the World Health Organization, Brazil ranks fifth in the world regarding deaths due to road crashes (approximately 40 000 deaths per year) [1]. Recent researches have indicated that not only alcohol but also illicit drug use is a serious problem among Brazilian professional drivers [2–5]. Efforts to create a specific offence of driving under the influence of drugs (DUID), together with drug tests, have been implemented recently in some countries, such as the United States, European countries and Australia [6]. The general strategy comprises the adoption of drug-per se laws, training of drug recognition expert officers, development of toxicological screening methods to detect recent drug use (using blood, urine and oral fluid samples) and national awareness campaigns [7–12]. In Brazil, this issue is being handled differently. In 2015, The Brazilian Transport Department enacted a controversial regulation establishing a mandatory ‘wide detection window’ (minimum of 90 days) test for drugs based on scalp, other hair or nail samples to apply for professional driver’s licences (e.g. truck drivers). There was no notable public debate on this subject, and a comprehensive discussion involving legislators, traffic safety researchers and Addiction, 110, 1207–1208
IDENTIFYING CORRECTIONS—IS THERE A BETTER WAY? One of the challenges of evidence-based practice is finding and synthesizing the relevant information. This challenge is depicted in the logo of the Cochrane Collaboration (http://www.cochrane.org/about-us/our-logo), which tells the story of corticosteroids in premature birth—the individual trials showed the benefits, but the impact on practice only occurred after the trials were brought together in a systematic review. The problem of the impact of individual studies being diluted by the sheer volume of publications is still present. The internet and electronic publishing have facilitated ready access to full text papers, but have also exacerbated the problem with the explosion of publication options. The days of researchers following a small number of journals and looking through the latest journals in paper form are long gone. Indeed, the library at my university is now dominated by computers rather than paper journals and books. This change in processes raises an issue with corrections to published papers. Publishing corrections to a paper in the journal in which it first appeared is no longer an effective way of distributing that information. Furthermore, there is variability in how the different journals publish corrections, and how corrections are managed in the literature databases. For example, there were post-publication corrections to a paper by Lim et al. [1]. If you access the record for this paper with the Ovid Online version of Medline, details of the erratum are included in the title field. If you access the record using PubMed, the details of the erratum come after the author list. If you access the PubMed record through EndNote you do not find details of the erratum at all. The electronic version of the paper on the publisher’s website is the corrected version, and includes details of the changes that were made. If (as I did) you had downloaded the paper when it was first published, how are you to know that there were corrections? Everyone makes mistakes, and when there are complex data or calculations the peer review and editorial processes are less likely to detect mistakes. Authors want their work to be used appropriately and readers want to know that the version of the paper they are referring to is accurate. Some corrections are relatively minor, such as the addition of an author or correction of a name, but others, such as the correction to the paper by Lim et al. [1], involve substantial changes to data, or may even involve retraction of a publication [2]. As an author of systematic reviews, should I be checking every paper referred to in my review to ensure it is still current, or is © 2015 Society for the Study of Addiction
there a better way to alert readers to corrections of scientific papers? Keywords evidence-based practice, literature databases, publication standards, research literature, systematic reviews. LINDA GOWING Discipline of Pharmacology, The University of Adelaide, South Australia E-mail: [email protected]
References 1. Lim S. S., Vos T., Flaxman A.D., Danaei G., Shibuya K., Adair-Rohani H. et al. A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. Lancet 2012; 380: 2224–60. 2. Niederhofer H., Staffen W. Retraction note: acamprosate and its efficacy in treating alcohol dependent adolescents. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2012; 21: 713.
HAIR DRUG TESTING IN THE NEW BRAZILIAN REGULATION TO OBTAIN PROFESSIONAL DRIVER’S LICENCE: NO PARALLEL TO ANY OTHER LAWENFORCEMENT IN THEWORLD According to the World Health Organization, Brazil ranks fifth in the world regarding deaths due to road crashes (approximately 40 000 deaths per year) [1]. Recent researches have indicated that not only alcohol but also illicit drug use is a serious problem among Brazilian professional drivers [2–5]. Efforts to create a specific offence of driving under the influence of drugs (DUID), together with drug tests, have been implemented recently in some countries, such as the United States, European countries and Australia [6]. The general strategy comprises the adoption of drug-per se laws, training of drug recognition expert officers, development of toxicological screening methods to detect recent drug use (using blood, urine and oral fluid samples) and national awareness campaigns [7–12]. In Brazil, this issue is being handled differently. In 2015, The Brazilian Transport Department enacted a controversial regulation establishing a mandatory ‘wide detection window’ (minimum of 90 days) test for drugs based on scalp, other hair or nail samples to apply for professional driver’s licences (e.g. truck drivers). There was no notable public debate on this subject, and a comprehensive discussion involving legislators, traffic safety researchers and Addiction, 110, 1207–1208
