Sato Y, Asoh T, Metoki N, et al. Efficacy of methylprednisolone pulse therapy on neuroleptic malignant syndrome in Parkinson’s disease. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:574–576.

This article has been retracted. The editor received a letter from Dr Yoshihiro Sato retracting this article and two others also published in Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Dr Sato states the reason for retraction as ‘due to scientific misconduct. All co-authors did not participate study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation of data and drafting manuscripts in these 3 articles. Thus, all co-authors are honorary.’

Despite repeated requests for further explanation, we have not received any response from Dr Sato’s institution.

It was brought to our attention that several other journals have retracted articles by Dr Sato. Neurology published an article ‘Systematic review and statistical analysis of the integrity of 33 randomized controlled trials’ by Boland et al 1 indicating that the data in those trials were not reliable. The data supplement for the article in Neurology lists the three papers published in Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry providing evidence that the reported findings in those articles are unreliable.