DISCLAIMERS

Editorial policy, legal notices, and licensing

These notices apply to this website and to every ACE audit report, in both its online and PDF forms. Where a report contains a statement that differs from this page, the report governs for that report.

Statement of Independence

Audit Clinical Evidence (ACE) is an independent initiative. It is not affiliated with, funded by, or acting on behalf of any journal, publisher, university, regulator, or professional body. The views expressed on this website and in ACE reports are solely those of the named authors and do not represent the University of Connecticut, the University of Massachusetts Boston, or any other organization with which the authors are or have been affiliated.

Nature of ACE Reports

ACE reports are transparent, reproducible audits of published clinical research. They identify observable statistical errors, internal inconsistencies, image anomalies, discrepancies with trial registrations, and potential violations of publication ethics, as those issues appear in the public record. Findings are limited to what can be documented from published articles, supplementary materials, registrations, public databases, article metadata, and reproducible statistical checks, and every report shows how each finding was reached.

ACE reports do not accuse any author, researcher, institution, or publisher of deliberate fraud or intentional misconduct. Research Integrity Violation (RIV) labels are categories of documented concern; a finding under a category means that the record contains evidence matching that category, not that ACE has determined why the evidence exists. ACE is not an investigative or adjudicative body, and its reports are not findings of research misconduct. Formal determinations of misconduct rest with the institutions, journals, and regulatory bodies that have the authority and the access to underlying data required to make them.

Where a report goes beyond documenting the record, for example in assessing whether a study is credible as evidence or in recommending a correction, an expression of concern, or a retraction, that assessment is the authors’ professional opinion, offered in good faith and based on the evidence set out in the report.

Use of AI Tools

ACE uses AI assistants, currently Anthropic’s Claude, to help draft and edit text, to write and review the code behind this website and the report templates, and to check its own prose and formatting. ACE holds itself to the standard it applies to the literature it audits, so it states this plainly rather than leaving it to be inferred.

What that assistance does not extend to is the substance of a report. Every finding originates with the authors, and every figure, statistic, and claim about an audited article is verified by the authors against the primary sources, reproduced by the code published with the report, and checked before publication. AI tools are not used to decide what counts as a finding, to determine severity, to write the recommendation a report makes to a journal, or to generate any statistical result. The authors are responsible for everything ACE publishes, including any error an assistant helped introduce.

Not Medical Advice

ACE reports assess the reliability of published research. They are not medical advice and are not a basis for clinical decisions. Nothing on this website should be used to start, stop, or change any treatment. Patients should consult a qualified clinician, and clinicians should rely on their professional judgment and the applicable guidelines.

Accuracy, Corrections, and Withdrawal

Every effort is made to ensure that findings are accurate and reproducible, but ACE reports may contain errors. ACE welcomes corrections from any reader, including the authors of audited studies. Where credible evidence shows that a finding is wrong or overstated, ACE will correct it in a new version of the report and record the change in the report’s version history; where the evidence undermines a report as a whole, ACE will withdraw it and say so. Each published version remains archived on Zenodo with its own permanent DOI, so the state of any report at any time can be checked. A report’s DOIs appear on its page and in its version history once its deposit completes; where a report shows no DOI, its archive record is still pending. A report’s DOIs appear on its page and in its version history once its archive record has been created; a report that shows no DOI has its deposit pending.

Limitation of Liability

The information and analyses on this website and in ACE reports are provided for informational, academic, and scientific-integrity purposes only, and are provided “as is” without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including as to accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, ACE and its authors accept no liability for any loss, damage, or consequence arising from reliance on this website or on any report, or from any action or decision taken by a third party, including journals, publishers, institutions, clinicians, or readers, on the basis of their contents.

Editorial Review and Correspondence

ACE encourages open, post-publication discussion. Copies of finalized ACE reports are routinely forwarded to the editorial boards and/or publishers of the corresponding journals for their independent review.

Authors of an audited study who wish to provide data, clarifications, or a response are encouraged to write to contact@auditclinicalevidence.org. Substantive responses are considered for incorporation in a revised version of the report, and ACE will link to or summarize an author response on request where doing so serves readers. By corresponding with ACE about a report, you agree that your correspondence may be published or quoted in part, with personal or sensitive information redacted, unless confidentiality is explicitly agreed in advance.

Confidential Tips

ACE accepts confidential tips about potential statistical inconsistencies, publication irregularities, image anomalies, and other integrity concerns. ACE will not publicly identify a confidential source or whistleblower without their explicit permission and will make all reasonable efforts to protect anonymity and confidentiality; however, confidentiality cannot be guaranteed against legal process, and ACE cannot offer legal protection to sources.

Please do not send patient-identifiable data, or documents and datasets you are not permitted to share. Tips should rely on the published record and on material you are entitled to provide. Guidance on what makes a tip useful is on the About page.

Comments

Report pages carry a comment section provided by Giscus, which stores comments as GitHub Discussions in the ACE repository and requires a GitHub account to post. Comments are the views of their authors, not of ACE, and are not reviewed before they appear. ACE may remove comments that are abusive, defamatory, off-topic, or that disclose personal information, and may close discussion on a report at its discretion.

Fair Use and Copyrighted Material

ACE reports reproduce limited excerpts, data, tables, and images from published scientific literature strictly for the purposes of criticism, review, and statistical or visual audit, with full citation of the original sources. ACE relies on the fair-use provision of United States copyright law and on the equivalent exceptions for criticism and review in other jurisdictions. Reproduced material remains the copyright of its original rights-holders. A rights-holder who believes that a reproduction exceeds what is necessary for the purpose may contact ACE at the address above, identifying the material and the report concerned.

Funding and Conflicts of Interest

ACE receives no external funding; project costs are borne personally by its authors. ACE does not accept payment to conduct, shape, delay, or suppress an audit. The authors declare no financial or commercial conflict of interest regarding the studies, outcomes, authors, or institutions examined in any report. Should a relevant interest arise in relation to a specific report, it will be declared in that report.

Privacy

ACE does not run analytics or advertising and sets no tracking cookies of its own. The site is hosted on GitHub Pages, and pages load web fonts from Google Fonts, the MathJax library from the jsDelivr CDN, and the comment widget from Giscus; each of these services receives your IP address and standard request data when a page loads, under their own privacy policies. Email sent to ACE is retained for as long as needed to handle the correspondence and any resulting report, and is not shared with third parties except as described under Editorial Review and Correspondence above or as required by law.