Article cited in Mifepristone case has been retracted

Sage Publications had independent experts review rigor of study used by district judge to justify decision

A U.S. Publisher retracted two studies that a Texas judge cited when he ruled that mifepristone couldn’t be distributed within his state even though it had been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. 

Sage Publications had included the work of Public health researcher James Studnicki, a vice president at the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute. Reuters reported the news and included a quote from Studnicki. 

"The Charlotte Lozier Institute rejects this baseless attack on our scientific research and studies," Studnicki and Tessa Longbons, a research associate at the institute and co-author, said in a statement. "To date, Sage has advanced no valid objection to their findings and no legitimate reason for their retraction."

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo cited that study in concluding that the plaintiffs had legal standing to bring their lawsuit challenging the pill's approval because they would be harmed by having to treat patients suffering from complications following medication abortions. The plaintiffs' standing is expected to be a key issue in the appeal, according to Reuters.

The institute features statistics and data on its website that are designed to provide support for the antiabortion cause. It also includes essays that argue in favor of antiabortion laws. 

Another study that Kaacsmaryk cited found that such complications are frequently misclassified as miscarriages. He used it to support his finding that the true rate of complications is underreported.

The retraction notice said that a reader contacted the journal with concerns about the 2021 article as to whether the presentation of the data was misleading, whether there were defects in the selection of the cohort data, and whether the authors’ affiliations with antiabortion advocacy organizations, including Charlotte Lozier Institute, present conflicts of interest that the authors should have disclosed as such in the article.

A peer reviewer was also affiliated with the Charlotte Lozier Institute. 

Sage had two experts go through and evaluate the validity of the study. 

“In the 2019 article, which relies on a different dataset, both experts identified unsupported assumptions and misleading presentations of the findings that, in their opinions, demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor and render the authors’ conclusion unreliable,” they wrote in the retraction.