The journal decided when it first started publishing the article type “that the cases should be fictional to protect patient confidentiality,” Robinson told us. “Apart from the case that led to the recent New Yorker article, all or almost all were cases of very well recognized conditions (such as congenital syphilis, fetal alcohol syndrome, serious trauma from ATVs, hepatitis C infection) where a single case report would not generate any interest or ever be cited.”

While the journal is indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, these articles are not. However, we queried all 138 DOIs in Semantic Scholar and found 61 of them have been cited at least once. Together they have been cited 218 times.

I don’t . . . What even . . .

The guy in front of all this, Gideon Koren, was investigated since 2016, had multiple papers retracted, was fired by Sick Kids by 2000. But of course, he ended up a Chair at Western.

In February 2019, he agreed to relinquish his licence to practice medicine in Ontario while under investigation by the CPSO for alleged professional misconduct and incompetence in relation to the Motherisk laboratory. He also agreed not to reapply for a medical licence in Ontario.

Canada has a huge science fraud problem.

How could this possibly have gotten through peer review? 138 fictional case studies published as fact in a medical journal?

Marking these studies as "fictional" is not enough, the Canadian Paediatric Society needs to retract every single fabricated article they've published.