We, the Editor and Publisher of The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, have retracted the following article:
Zatollah Asemi, Mansoreh Samimi, Zohreh Tabasi, Parisa Talebian, Zohreh Azarbad, Zahra Hydarzadeh & Ahmad Esmaillzadeh (2012), Effect of daily consumption of probiotic yoghurt on lipid profiles in pregnant women: a randomized controlled clinical trial. The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, 25:9, 1552–1556, DOI: 10.3109/14767058.2011.640372
Following publication, significant concerns were raised by a third party [Citation1] 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 original data and documents. In order to verify the reported findings, the article and the original data provided by the authors were 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 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The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.