We, the editor and publisher of the journal Human Fertility have retracted the following article:
Shahnaz Ahmadi, Mehri Jamilian, Maryam Karamali, Maryam Tajabadi-Ebrahimi, Parvaneh Jafari, Mohsen Taghizadeh, Mohammad Reza Memarzadeh & Zatollah Asemi (2017),
Probiotic supplementation and the effects on weight loss, glycaemia and lipid profiles in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.
Human Fertility, 20:4, 254–261, DOI: 10.1080/14647273.2017.1283446
Following publication, significant concerns were raised by a third party (Bolland et al., Citation2020) about the integrity of the data and the reported findings in the article.
When approached for an explanation, the authors and their institution have been cooperative in providing some responses and documents. To verify the reported findings, the article and the documents provided by the authors were further evaluated by the journal editorial team, and also sent for review by an external statistical reviewer.
Both the journal editorial team and the external statistical reviewer were unable to confirm the integrity of the trial design and the main outcome of the external review was that the article’s results and conclusions are unreliable. Therefore, as the editorial team no longer have confidence in the reported conclusions the decision has been made to retract the article.
The authors listed in the publication have been informed. The authors do not agree with the retraction.
We have been informed in our decision-making by our editorial policies and the COPE guidelines.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.