Calls for an outside look at the journals’ action have begun. In a statement, pyschologist Chis Chambers of Cardiff University, a member of the UK Reproducibility Network Steering Group, said: “It is right that these articles were retracted. However, the failure to resolve such basic concerns about the data during the course of normal peer review raises serious questions about the standard of editing at the Lancet and NEJM — ostensibly two of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. If these journals take issues of reproducibility and scientific integrity as seriously as they claim, then they should forthwith submit themselves and their internal review processes to an independent inquiry.”