Medical Journal Admits 25 Years of Published Case Reports Are Fabricated Fiction

The journal Paediatrics & Child Health, published by the Canadian Paediatric Society, has issued corrections on 138 case reports published over the past 25 years to add a disclaimer stating the cases described are fictional. The articles, part of the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program series published since 2000, typically began with a case description followed by "learning points" containing statistics, clinical observations, and CPSP data. These peer-reviewed articles did not previously indicate the cases were fictional. The corrections follow a January New Yorker magazine article that highlighted one 2010 report, "Baby boy blue," describing an infant with signs of opioid exposure via breast milk from a mother taking acetaminophen with codeine. The New Yorker article revealed a co-author's admission that the case was fabricated. Joan Robinson, editor-in-chief of Paediatrics & Child Health, stated that based on the New Yorker article, the journal decided to add correction notices to all 138 publications to clarify the fictional nature of the cases and that future case reports will explicitly state they are fictional. The revelation surprised David Juurlink, a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Toronto, who has spent over a decade investigating the claim that infants can be harmed by codeine in breast milk, a claim largely based on these now-admitted fictional cases.