Consumer Reports retracts article on child seats

The New York Times is reporting that Consumer Reports retracted an article about the safety of child seats after a federal government agency provided them data. The consumer magazine, which accepts no advertising, had contracted with an outside firm to conduct its testing.

Matthew Wald wrote, “The tests were supposed to simulate an impact at 38 miles an hour, but actually simulated more than 70 m.p.h., according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which was so startled by the article that it tried to duplicate the magazine’s results at a government laboratory last weekend. The agency does not have a standard for side impacts but said that at 38 m.p.h., the seats all appeared to do well.

“The magazine said it had decided to retract the article after receiving data from the highway traffic agency. The magazine’s tests were performed under contract at an outside laboratory, said a spokesman, Ken Weine, and an internal investigation was under way to determine what went wrong. Consumer Reports did not name the laboratory.

“The car seat article was flagged on the cover of the current issue with a headline that said, in red letters, ‘Safety Alert.’ Consumers Union, the nonprofit group that publishes the magazine, distributed the article in advance to newspapers and television stations.

“The article said that of a dozen models tested, some fell apart in side-impact tests, and that one model should be recalled by the government because it did not meet the standard for front-impact tests.”

Read more here. A statement on the magazine’s web site said, “A new report will be published with any necessary revisions as soon as possible after the new tests are complete.”