This is an excerpt from a letter published in the current edition of Nature by Keith Baggerly of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA and seven co-authors. It's not online but many thanks to the reader who sent a copy. The authors describe the investigation leading to the withdrawl of three clinical studies at Duke University, NC. They note that this investigation has taken thousands of hours, and that this was necessary because the source data was not available in full.
To counter this problem, journals should demand that authors submit sufficient detail for the independent assessment of their paper’s conclusions. data are backed up with adequate documentation and sample annotation; all primary data sources, such as database accessions or URL links, are presented; and all scripts and software source codes are supplied, with instructions. Analytical (non-scriptable) protocols should be described step by step, and the research protocol, including any plans for research and analysis, should be provided (see go.nature.com/ UaF2Kv). Files containing such information could be stored as supplements by the journal.