The Chronicle of Higher Education ran the following story, September 2003,

Johns Hopkins Researchers Retract Report on Ecstasy Study by Peter Schmidt

A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins University has retracted a widely publicized report on the harmful health effects of the drug Ecstasy after concluding that most of the laboratory animals in its study had mistakenly been given a different substance.

In a retraction scheduled to be printed this week in the journal Science, the researchers say that all but one of the 10 primates in its study were mistakenly given methamphetamine rather than the intended drug, which is popularly known as Ecstasy and technically referred to as methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA.

The report in question, "Severe Dopaminergic Neurotoxicity in Primates After a Common Recreational Dose of MDMA ('Ecstasy')" appeared in the September 27, 2002, issue of Science, and triggered alarm and controversy with its conclusion that recreational users of the drug might be doing extensive damage to their brains' dopamine neurons and increasing their risk of developing a condition similar to Parkinson's disease later in life.

The Columbus Dispatch ran the following headline from Science article - To date the Dispatch has yet to publish the retraction of the study.

STUDY LINKS ECSTASY, PARKINSON'S DISEASE Friday, September 27, 2002
Partying with Ecstasy several times a night, a common practice among users of the illegal drug, might damage key neurons in the brain and hasten the onset of Parkinson's disease, according to a study in monkeys.

But some researchers were skeptical that the results from the animal studies translate to humans.

The Chronicle article continues:

The report's findings had been based on experiments on squirrel monkeys and baboons. The researchers said they believed that they had injected the animals with MDMA, and only later determined that there had been a mix-up among the laboratory's drug samples, and that all but one of the animals had been given methamphetamine, or "speed," which is commonly linked to the health effects found.

The researchers discovered their error when they were unable to replicate their findings, and decided to examine the frozen brains of two animals that had died during the experiment to determine what substance the animals had been given, the retraction says. The retraction blames the error on the apparent mislabeling of bottles that a chemical supplier had shipped to the laboratory.

The researchers' report on their findings had been controversial at the time it was published. Other scientists who had been studying MDMA said that the animals in the Johns Hopkins study were given much larger doses of the substance than most human users typically consume. Some critics of the report accused its authors of trying to influence a debate in Congress over a measure, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, intended to create stiff penalties for the organizers of "raves" and other events where Ecstasy and other drugs are consumed.

The Johns Hopkins researchers denied having any political motives. Among those who had strongly defended their findings was a Alan I. Leshner, a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which had helped finance their work, and who is now the chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science.

NOTE: Leshner was director when the "cats on meth" experiments were approved and funded to be conducted at OSU

In the meantime, a second study was retracted, September 12, 2003.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have retracted a second study linking the drug Ecstasy to a certain type of brain damage - because once again, the wrong drug was given to lab animals.
Dr. Una D. McCann, a neuroscientist involved in both experiments, said a letter of retraction was sent yesterday to a medical journal, which she declined to identify until editors there decide how to handle the matter.

Prominent scientists who raised concerns about (the ecstasy) paper now say Science should publish referees' reports