In Context: 5 Web Perspectives On A Story In The News

One in eight U.K. scientists has witnessed research fraud

(Times Higher Education) British Medical Journal says research misconduct is "alive and well" at U.K. universities. Findings published Wednesday from its survey show that 13 per cent of U.K.-based scientists and doctors have witnessed colleagues altering research data ahead of publication in peer-reviewed journals. Of the 2,700 scientists and doctors who responded, 6 per cent admitted misconduct when preparing or presenting research papers. BMJ's editor in chief, said the survey shows there is a substantial number of cases of misconduct that U.K institutions are failing to investigate adequately.

1.

University Suspects Fraud by a Researcher Who Studied Red Wine

The New York Times
Article written in The New York Times by Nicholas Wade on January 12, 2012, says a charge of widespread scientific fraud involving 26 articles published in 11 journals, was leveled by the University of Connecticut today against Dipak K. Das, one of its researchers, whose work reported health benefits in red wine. Many of the articles reported positive effects from resveratrol, an ingredient of red wine thought to promote longevity in laboratory animals. The charges, if verified, seem unlikely to affect the field of resveratrol research itself, because Dr. Das's work was peripheral to its central principles, several of which are in contention. The significance of the case seems more to reflect on the general system of apportioning research money. Researchers complain that federal grants are increasingly hard to get, even for high-quality research, yet money seemed to have flowed freely to Dr. Das, who was generating research of low visibility and apparently low quality.

2.

Fraud in medical research: A frightening, all-too-common trend on the rise

naturalnews.com
Article written by Alexis Blackmost and published by naturalnews.com on April 18, 2006, talks about how most people must have heard of Dr. Hwang Woo-suk, a once celebrated, but now disgraced, Korean scientist saw his shining reputation quickly dulled when a peer review panel discovered that his published research claims on stem cell cloning, thought to be groundbreaking, were, in reality, fraudulent. The article points out that the incident has made headlines all over the world, raising significant questions about the future of stem cell research. Blackmost says the more important question in the article might be: what about the future of medical research in general? While Dr. Hwang's fraud is rightly being regarded by many medical researchers as one of the most significant scientific frauds in history, it is not the first in history, nor is it the first in the past few years. In fact, statistics suggest scientific fraud is much more common than one might think.

3.

U.S. Scientists Commit Most Research Fraud: Study

Business Week
Written by Jenifer Goodwin and published Nov. 16, 2010. Article says new study finds that nearly 800 research papers were retracted by medical journals for serious errors or faked data over the past decade, many of them authored by U.S. researchers. It adds that in fact, U.S. scientists were responsible for 169 of the papers retracted for seemingly inadvertent yet serious errors, as well as for 84 of the papers retracted for outright fraud, more than any other country. It however says that finding doesn't necessarily mean U.S. researchers are more prone to deception. It says this could perhaps reflect the fact that U.S.-based researchers publish a larger volume of English-language medical studies than scientists from other nations.

4.

University research needs fraud oversight, MD says

CBC
In this article published by the CBC on July 7, 2011, the editor of a leading medical journal says there should be outside agencies that can investigate university researchers when they commit fraud. Paul Hebert, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal says: "Our mechanisms of tracking, monitoring, exposing and punishing are non-existent." When researchers fake results, the consequences can be dire both for science and for patients, says Hébert. But unlike the U.S., Canada has no power to investigate an allegation of research fraud at universities. He says universities have an inherent conflict of interest when it comes to revealing scandals that will harm their reputations. Martha Crago, the director of research at Dalhousie University, adds that Canadian researchers are subject to the pressures that come with vying for research dollars.

5.

New Discovery Shakes the Foundation of Cancer Research

mercola.com
This article was written by Dr. Mercola and was published by mercola.com on October 15, 2011.  In it, Dr. Mercola wristes about how a scandal that followed the news that a Boston University cancer scientist fabricated his findings reverberated around the world of cancer research and the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health. Mercola writes that the scientist has been ordered to retract his work published in two journals in 2009. He adds that it seems fairly evident that the cancer industrial complex is a highly lucrative, well-oiled system that tends to support funding for expensive drug treatments that don't address the cause of the problem, and have yet to make a significant dent in the decrease of the overall cancer rate in the US despite investing hundreds of billions of dollars.