Two of the world’s leading medical journals have retracted papers related to COVID-19 after the company that provided the data failed to comply with independent audits.

Overnight, both the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) each pulled influential studies after infectious diseases clinicians sounded the alarm on data inconsistencies.

Earlier this week, the journals had each published “expression of concern” declarations to alert readers that serious scientific questions had been raised about the studies’ findings.

The little-known US company that supplied the disputed data, Surgisphere, had refused to release the full dataset for an independent peer review, saying it would “violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements”.