Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5362
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Publication type: news
Mellgren D.
Commission says researcher guilty of fraud
Associated Press 2006 Jul 1
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/07/01/ap2853722.html
Full text:
Commission says researcher guilty of fraud
By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press WriterSat Jul 1, 2:29 AM ET
A commission investigating a high-profile Norwegian cancer researcher has announced that most of his work was invalid because he manipulated and fabricated data.
Jon Sudbo, 44, has admitted falsifying data about cancer of the mouth for articles he wrote in prestigious medical journals: Britain’s The Lancet and U.S. publications The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The commission, appointed by Norway’s national hospital in January, said Friday that Sudbo manipulated and falsified data in many of his 38 scientific papers and urged that his doctoral thesis be withdrawn.
“The errors and gaps that have been discovered are too many, too big, and too obvious that they can be blamed on coincidental errors, incompetence or such like,” the commission’s report said.
The commission said Sudbo’s cheating could have affected patients and their use of medication, but it did not investigate specific cases.
The panel also criticized Sudbo’s employers – the University of Oslo medical school and the National Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center in Oslo – for failing to adequately review his work.
The case has shaken academic circles both in Norway and abroad. Stein Vaaler, the hospital’s strategy director, called it the worst research fraud case in Norwegian history.
“Fabrication of research data is a bitter pill to swallow for the country’s leading research hospital,” Vaaler said. “Now we will do everything in our power to learn from the criticism.”
Sudbo, who resigned from the University of Oslo and was on sick leave from the hospital, has blamed his falsified data on a psychological disorder and on academic pressure to publish. He is both a medical doctor and a dentist, and Norwegian health authorities are now considering whether to revoke one or both his licenses.
The commission was appointed after Sudbo admitted falsifying data in an article published in The Lancet in October 2005 claiming to show that common pain relievers such as Motrin, Advil and Aleve lower the risk of oral cancer but raise the risk of heart problems. The Lancet later withdrew the article.
A 2001 article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that a Sudbo paper published in April 2001 contained two photographs claiming to represent two patients with different stages of oral cancer, but actually showed the same patient. A second article, published in April 2004, was believed to involve the same “set” of patients.
The report said Sudbo had acted alone and that none of the roughly 60 co-authors of his various publications were implicated.
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On the Net:
http://www.radiumhospitalet.no
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