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The pressure to fudge medical research findings

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copy pasted from; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-25/scott-selling-science/5043620?topic=health

The medical research community has uncovered a worrying trend: why are large numbers of medical researchers apparently misrepresenting their findings? Sophie Scott investigates.

Australia has a proud tradition of being a world leader when it comes to medical breakthroughs.

Think of the 'bionic ear', the cervical cancer vaccine and the Nobel prize-winning discovery of Helicobacter pylori, just to name a few.

These discoveries have had world-wide impact and saved thousands of lives.

While there is much to be proud of, when it comes to biomedical research there appears to be a disturbing trend in Australia.

Three major Australian universities are currently investigating serious allegations of alleged research misconduct.

The claims range from possibly manipulated images, falsified data to - unbelievably - allegations that a study with published results never actually took place.

How is this possible, with the systems of checks and balances within universities and the international peer review process for published research?

The ABC has detailed new allegations about alleged research misconduct at one of Australia's leading universities.

The University of New South Wales is already embroiled in a long-running inquiry into research overseen by professor Levon Khachigian, the scientist behind a cancer compound called DZ13. Now they're investigating whether images in a scientific paper he co-authored last year on cardiovascular disease were duplicated.

Findings in 90 per cent of the important cancer papers published in significant medical journals could not be replicated.

 

The latest allegations centre on a scientific paper looking at how smooth muscle cells change into plaque, a key cause of heart attacks.

The UNSW is investigating a paper co-authored by Professor Khachagian published in a scientific journal PlosOne last year.

The core of the complaint is whether images in the scientific paper were manipulated. One image appears to have been rotated to show a different result.

In an email to the ABC Professor Khachigian says it was a genuine error and says he's never engaged in research misconduct.

It's not the first accusation levelled at research overseen by Professor Khachigian. In August this year, the ABC detailed serious concerns about research into a cancer compound DZ13. The drug had been tested on a small group of skin cancer patients and was about to be trialled on people with melanoma.

But with growing concerns about the science, the tests were suspended pending the outcome of the university's inquiries. The investigation is still on-going.

In another case this year, it appears that a patient-based study wasn't even conducted, despite positive 'results' being published.

At the University of Queensland, senior management was forced to return a grant of $20,000 from Parkinsons Australia and retract a scientific paper co-written by former staffer Professor Bruce Murdoch, from the Centre for Neurogenic Communication Disorders Research.

The university discovered that a study into trans cranial magnetic stimulation for Parkinson's disease may not have actually been carried out.

"No primary data can be located and no evidence has been found that the study described in the article was conducted," according to the University of Queensland.

A paper on the study was published online in 2012 in the European Journal of Neurology which was subsequently retracted. The University is still investigating the matter.

A further case concerns a wound healing cream developed at the Queensland Institute of Technology.

Luke Cormack was a PhD student who alerted a scientific journal about what he believes are inconsistencies in research on growing human embryonic stem cells in the laboratory. While an internal investigation cleared researchers involved of misconduct, there are now claims that research grants may have been paid upon the basis of false information.

The National Health and Medical Research Council has referred the matter to the Australian Research Integrity Committee, a body which can look into procedural matters regarding research integrity.

In Australia, scientists are governed by the Australian Code on the Responsible Conduct of Research. Any allegations of research misconduct are investigated directly by the universities or institutions involved.

While it may convene an external enquiry panel to look into any prima facie case of research misconduct, it's still the university itself which has a final say on penalties. What Australia needs, according to Professor David Vaux, from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, is an independent office for research integrity or an ombudsman, to advise institutions and handling allegations of misconduct.

He proposes a model similar to the United States office for research integrity which handles hundreds of research allegations each year.

He says having an independent umpire, removed from universities and research institutions, would ensure matters could be handled fairly. Without an independent office like that, it's difficult to know just how widespread research misconduct is. But around the world, there is an increasing focus on re-testing accepted findings to check their veracity.

In a commentary published in journal Nature in 2012, scientists from biotech company Amgen found that findings in 90 per cent of the important cancer papers published in significant medical journals could not be replicated, even with the help of original scientists.

In another review, scientists at the pharmaceutical company Bayer looked back at 67 scientific projects, covering the majority of Bayer's work in oncology, women's health and cardiovascular medicine over the past four years. Of these, they found results from internal experiments matched up with the published findings in only 14 projects, but were highly inconsistent in 43 (in a further 10 projects, claims were rated as mostly reproducible, partially reproducible or not applicable.)

"People take for granted what they see published," John Ioannidis, an expert on data reproducibility at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California wrote in Nature in Sep 2011. "But this and other studies are raising deep questions about whether we can really believe the literature, or whether we have to go back and do everything on our own."

While some of the un-reproducable results could be due to sloppy research, it appears that much of it is a result of deliberate misconduct. This was clear from a paper published last year.

Dr Ferris C Fang conducted a detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012. It revealed that only 21.3 per cent of retractions were attributable to error.

Dr Fang's findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science in 2012. It revealed that 67.4 per cent of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4 per cent), duplicate publication (14.2 per cent), and plagiarism (9.8 per cent).

"Incomplete, uninformative or misleading retraction announcements have led to a previous underestimation of the role of fraud in the ongoing retraction epidemic," he wrote. "The percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased 10-fold since 1975."

The reasons why some scientists might engage in research misconduct remain unclear but it's likely that multiple factors are at play.

With scientists constantly having to compete for precious research grants, the pressure to come up with successful findings is intense. To prosper, scientists need to publish as many papers as possible, ideally in well-respected journals.

Dr Fang told the New York Times in April 2012, that "the scramble to publish in high impact journals may be leading to more and more errors".

And the peer review process for identifying anomalies in research before it is published is clearly failing.

So much so, that in August 2010 two medical reporters, based in the United States, set up a website called Retraction Watch.

Since Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky launched RetractionWatch, they say it's been a struggle to even keep up with retractions as they happen. Marcus is the managing editor of Anesthesiology News, a monthly magazine for anaesthetists. Oransky is the vice president and global editorial director of MedPage

Today and teaches medical journalism at New York University's Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program. So far, their blog has analysed more than 250 retractions in nearly 350 posts since its launch.

RetractionWatch averages 150,000 page views a month with around six posts about retracted papers each week, something the web sites creators did not expect when they set it up.

Reducing the incidence of research misconduct will not be easy. With all the checks and balances in place, there could be some willing to cut corners, and rejig findings to gain some advantage. The challenge is making it as difficult as possible for that happen.

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"Three major Australian universities are currently investigating serious allegations of alleged research misconduct.


The claims range from possibly manipulated images, falsified data to - unbelievably - allegations that a study with published results never actually took place."



That cant be right... I've never ever seen such dishonest (vested) activity here in my 40 plus years. let anone on an almost daily basis...


Well, i simply don't believe it.....


NOT.


It's a well known fact here that uni's manipulate data to suit the wishes of their "customers". Monash uni is one of the biggest players in this field.. but we all knew that right?


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it's not just medical research, there's a reproducibility problem in a lot of sciences:

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An ambitious effort to replicate 100 research findings in psychology ended last week — and the data look worrying. Results posted online on 24 April, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, suggest that key findings from only 39 of the published studies could be reproduced.

But the situation is more nuanced than the top-line numbers suggest (See graphic, 'Reliability test'). Of the 61 non-replicated studies, scientists classed 24 as producing findings at least “moderately similar” to those of the original experiments, even though they did not meet pre-established criteria, such as statistical significance, that would count as a successful replication.

The results should convince everyone that psychology has a replicability problem, says Hal Pashler, a cognitive psychologist at the University of California, San Diego, and an author of one of the papers whose findings were successfully repeated. “A lot of working scientists assume that if it’s published, it’s right,” he says. “This makes it hard to dismiss that there are still a lot of false positives in the literature.”

But Daniele Fanelli, who studies bias and scientific misconduct at Stanford University in California, says the results suggest that the reproducibility of findings in psychology does not necessarily lag behind that in other sciences. There is plenty of room for improvement, he adds, but earlier studies have suggested that reproducibility rates in cancer biology and drug discovery could be even lower1, 2. “From my expectations, these are not bad at all,” Fanelli says. “Though I have spoken to psychologists who are quite disappointed.”

http://www.nature.com/news/first-results-from-psychology-s-largest-reproducibility-test-1.17433

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It blew my mind to find out that science journals dont have labs full of scientist making sure they can replicate the experimental data they have received before publishing it.

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Worse still, if you try to replicate something, and can't, it's often very hard to get published.

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Just do what everyone else is doing, publish some bullshit and cash in. Just print up some tables and charts to prove your point and make a nice powerpoint presentation to go with it.

The University will sweep it under the rug if anyone finds out.

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^^ not a bad idea :lol:

Dear http://www.nature.com/nplants/

I have conducted thousands of experiments and have obtained conclusive data indicating the moon cycle effects the rate of germination in certain species of plants, please find attached a 5000 word discussion on my theory about an alien race genetically modifying certain plants to only germinate in certain phases of the moon cycle.

I look forward to receiving a giant pay check for all my years of dedicated research

Kind Regards

Change

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It blew my mind to find out that science journals dont have labs full of scientist making sure they can replicate the experimental data they have received before publishing it.

profit and self interest are far more important than truth.

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^^ not a bad idea :lol:

Dear http://www.nature.com/nplants/

I have conducted thousands of experiments and have obtained conclusive data indicating the moon cycle effects the rate of germination in certain species of plants, please find attached a 5000 word discussion on my theory about an alien race genetically modifying certain plants to only germinate in certain phases of the moon cycle.

I look forward to receiving a giant pay check for all my years of dedicated research

Kind Regards

Change

That's the idea, all you need now is to discover a propriety compound or seed treatment that will overcome the adverse effects of the genetic modification.

Seriously though, it would be a good experiment to do for shits and giggles. Publish a paper based on bullshit just to see if it flies. It would be more of a social anthropological study/psychological study than anything.

There's obviously an entire culture that is primed to accept research if it's presented the right way. If it has a perceived commercial value then maybe it would add to the appeal and acceptance $$$$$ :drool2: . If you follow the accepted format and write an incredibly complex bogus paper and present a well written abstract, chances are it would gain acceptance on some level if it doesn't seem too far fetched or contradict any dogma.

I mean who reads the whole paper anyway, if the charts and tables start getting too hard to decipher or the paper exceeds the modern attention span, most people will just read the abstract and accept it as gospel.

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True, I think a pretty serious grounding in stats is needed to interpret results in papers these days - in order to tell if the researchers' conclusions are actually justified. I see a bunch of graphs and numbers and I just say 'hmm science has occurred - must be true'. I suspect that if you take a hard look at significance and effect size (I've heard a a stats & quant guru use those words) some things are not quite so straightforward.

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Change you will pull it off far easier if your findings don't rock the boat. Just go along with consensus. Palatable bullshit is, well, easier to sell.

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What about computer simulations as science?

Yep universe must be 13 billion years old. Experimental data see?

Cant study a black hole up close? Sorry then you cant falsify shit, move along, shut up, nobel prize pls kthx science-god right here. Fuck bitches, collect grants.

Edited by ThunderIdeal

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What about computer simulations as science?

Yep universe must be 13 billion years old. Experimental data see?

Cant study a black hole up close? Sorry then you cant falsify shit, move along, shut up, nobel prize pls kthx science-god right here. Fuck bitches, collect grants.

Or you can "normalize" infinity with planks constant to force equations to work and get a nobel prize, thus missing the philosophical message of an infinite existence.

I hate that this bit of math is accepted because its backed up by experiments. No one stops to think that its a simply a matter of the resolution of the measuring equipment. I believe that we can keep dividing sub atomic particles infinitely, without finding a fundamental unit. The math tells us this. But if we cheat the math with normalization, we make the equations work for the resolution of our best equipment in experiments. Science doesnt like the beautiful irrationality of infinite and zero. But thats all there is. Everything and nothing.

Edited by Conv3rgence
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lol...you wanna work in a government department assessing the shit that gets put forward as "science"

Thats the shit that changes stuff :wink: Need good folk to battle that crap.

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The math tells us this. But if we cheat the math with normalization, we make the equations work for the resolution of our best equipment in experiments.

what's wrong with this? i'm sure if you spoke to any physicist they'd say yes, the resolution of our equipment is lacking but it's the best we have so we'll work with what we've got. without experimentation its all just theory

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We need research police. It would solve the problem.

For all research taking place, a research officer could be consulted, and validity could be standardised.

At the moment it's just a bunch of kids with cash running around trying to look important and feel respected.

If there's one thing i've learned, it's that most in these fields are just trying to get ahead, and will fuck anyone,

just as long as they further themselves - these people aren't puritans, and are liable for the same sneaky shit as any other.

You guys hear about that antidepressant they recently found was bad for kids' health? It's because the folks who directed and approved it's use,

got their dicks wet. Now we have a bunch of (even more) fucked up kids, having to double-treat themselves - and that's not just a social problem,

but financial costs x 2.

Never stop asking questions.

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We need research police. It would solve the problem.

GAHAHAAAAAAAAARK AAAARGHHHHHH SPEW

No. No. NO. Do not feed the stupid. More police isn't even the beginning of an answer

For all research taking place, a research officer could be consulted, and validity could be standardised.

No. What on earth makes you think that is a good idea. I do not have words for what an absolutely sincerely fucked up idea that is

How in hell did you get the idea that adding a layer of potential corruption favouring larger companies and richer and more vested interests would give an incentive for people employed thus to just take the money and tick the boxes?

What makes you think adding an extra layer of bullshit for smaller non-profit groups, community groups, individuals or even perfectly legally run corporations is going to do anything other than stifle research and promote corruption and poor reporting

At the moment it's just a bunch of kids with cash running around trying to look important and feel respected.

Like that doesn't happen in any other field.

Never stop asking questions.

Here's my question- do you sincerely believe your proposal is a good idea? I'll keep asking it. I'll keep adding swear words tho

One part of a workable solution would be to ensure that all pharma approvals require the publication of all clinical trials data- not just the successful outcomes- as proposed by the Alltrials mob at www.alltrials.net.

More comprehensive and honest clinical reporting could show up anomalous patterns in studies. Or at least make forged data harder to achieve without a statistical tell

( Other main advantage of Alltrials is, I believe, allowing the extension of data from clinical trials to discover new uses for pharma compounds- saving time and money developing new clinical compounds )

I want to eat your liver for even thinking such a half arsed idea has any kind of merit

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Research police sounds like a good idea to me,

It could help identify highly bias data being published by researches with agendas that include faking results for their own benefit.

Why is reviewing the legitimacy of scientific data a bad idea ?

wouldn't reviewing results lead to more accurate publications and less rubbish being published in the first place ?

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Change, I think the point is: who watches the watchers? Do you think these "research police" won't have their own agendas & biases?

So then you need some kinda internal affairs organisation to fight research-cop corruption, and eventually end up introducing mongeese to eat the snakes...

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Why is reviewing the legitimacy of scientific data a bad idea ?

aren't you talking about the peer review process for publishing?

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isnt peer review anonymous? so anybody with a barrow to push can throw their weight around as much as they please. same applies for the journals administrators to some degree.

where this falls flat IMHO is that outlier scientists don't get a voice. i don't like popularity contests.

Edited by ThunderIdeal

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peer review is best done double blind, the reviewers don't know the authors and the authors don't know the reviewers.

so anybody with a barrow to push can throw their weight around as much as they please. same applies for the journals administrators to some degree.

how is a "research police" any different to peer review now though? and why aren't they subject to the same supposed biases?

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Officially peer review is anonymous and you don't know the people doing the review...

Unofficially its two people that look through your manuscript to decide whether it sounds legitimate or not and there are many (if not most) cases of PhD candidates and their mentors having a good old chat with the "anonymous peers" reviewing their thesis.

But just unofficially ;)

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