Scientist Ousted From Cancer Study Declines to Testify to House Panel
From The Embassy of Good Science
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Scientist Ousted From Cancer Study Declines to Testify to House Panel
What is this about?
This is a factual case. This newspaper article describes a case of scientific misconduct in a series of studiesheaded by Bernard Fisher, that aimed to determine the best treatment for breast cancer. It was shown that one of the doctors responsible for admittance of patients to the trail committed fraud. The fraud included changing data to make patients eligible for inclusion in the study, even when they had explicitly stated that they did not want to participate.
Why is this important?
The article shows that fraud in clinical trials can happen in many forms and at various levels. Although the fraudulent actions sometimes may seem trivial, they can have a large impact. Cheating in a clinical trial may not only endanger the health of the patients participating in the study but also that of future patients.[1] As pointed out by the article, these malpractices in clinical trails may be more frequent than some scientific leaders are willing to publicly admit. Therefore, clinical trail data should be reviewed via a central statistical review by independent committees or algorithms designed for this purpose.[1]
