The retracted paper, "Prioritising primary care patients with unexpected weight loss for cancer investigation: diagnostic accuracy study," appeared Aug. 13, 2020. The researchers, led by Brian D. Nicholson used electronic health records data to look for people diagnosed with cancer within six months after a recording of unexpected weight loss.

The retraction notice, published October 16, stated the authors and journal agreed to retract the flawed paper, and linked to the updated version. The original study included nearly 64,000 patients with unexpected weight loss recorded in their medical records between 2000-2012, of which 1.4% ended up receiving a cancer diagnosis within six months. In the update, the authors analyzed records from about 326,000 patients with unexpected weight loss between 2000-2019. This time, 4.8% had received a cancer diagnosis half a year later.