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Wednesday, May 7, 2008

A Note on Medical Pixie Dust

Filed under:

Yesterday we published a story about a man who re-grew a tip of his finger using "pixie-dust" supposedly sent to him by his brother who worked in a regenerative medicine lab. By now the story has largely been discredited. In our defense, when we saw the story on BBC and other respectful outlets, we did not publish it right away. We sat on it for 5 days or so, awaiting a press release from the University of Pittsburgh. When it did not materialize, without realizing that the story has been discredited, we went ahead and published it. We apologize for this gaffe.

More from the BBC...

(thanks, Matt!)

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replies: 3 comments
Open comments are not moderated, although abusive and vulgar remarks may be deleted. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Medgadget.com. Please consult our disclaimer.

Your excuse is just lame. I'm sorry, but it just is. I'm rather disappointed in you; you guys usually do much better. It would have been better if you had just said, "Hey, we screwed up and didn't check this out" than trying to excuse it using the "reputable news outlet" gambit. Surely you must have figured out by now that just because a story appears on the BBC and other "respectable" news outlets is no guarantee that it isn't a load of pseudoscience. Heck, even urban legends show up from time to time reported by "reputable" news outlets as fact.

Here's hoping you learn a lesson from this. By the way, for whatever reason you didn't publish my previous comment in which I included a link to Steve Novella's excellent debunking of this hoax. Here it is again:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=113


Posted by: Orac
on May 8, 2008 09:12 AM GMT

Orac,

Your previous post was flagged for moderation as possible span due to the links, and we just published it.


Posted by: Gene O.
on May 8, 2008 11:51 PM GMT

Orac:

Frankly, I don't think we offered any excuses. We were straightforward with our apologies.


Posted by: DrO
on May 9, 2008 09:18 AM GMT

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