丑闻:哈佛医学院助教论文造假

【字体: 时间:2009年04月13日 来源:生物通

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  生物通报道,不久前,美国知名的贝斯泰医学中心的著名麻醉医师Scott Reuben十多年来一直编造假数据发表研究文章,成为美学术界历年来最大的医学造假丑闻。时隔不久,美国研究诚信办公室(Office of Research Integrity)上周又爆出一起哈佛大学医学院助教造假事件。

  

生物通报道,不久前,美国知名的贝斯泰医学中心的著名麻醉医师Scott Reuben十多年来一直编造假数据发表研究文章,成为美学术界历年来最大的医学造假丑闻。时隔不久,美国研究诚信办公室(Office of Research Integrity)上周又爆出一起哈佛大学医学院助教造假事件。

 

造假人员是一名哈佛大学医学院和波斯顿Brigham妇女医院的前助理教授Robert Fogel,据悉他在睡眠性呼吸暂停研究中涉嫌捏造数据。Fogel是一名病理生理学家,从1998-2004年在Brigham睡眠医学中心工作,2003年发表了多篇关于睡眠相关的研究性文章在《Sleep》期刊上,其中有一半的数据涉嫌捏造。同时他还伪造了部分解剖学数据,并称这些数据来自CT扫描结果。他所研究的项目是肥胖与阻塞性睡眠呼吸暂停课题。

 

Fogel在接受记者采访时表示,他从前做的这些事情十分的可怕,现在他将勇于承担一切的后果。目前,Robert FogelMerck研究实验室担任临床研究主任。

 

(生物通 小茜)

More Details

The falsified paper was the first part of a longer term study that followed 14 severely obese people suffering from sleep apnea both before and after undergoing gastric bypass surgeries. The misconduct came to light in 2006, two years after Fogel joined Merck, when Fogel's former supervisor, David White, asked him to coauthor the follow-up study. Fogel then confessed that he had fudged his original data to create the appearance of a positive result. His move to Merck was unrelated to the fraudulent study, he said.

 

"I moved numbers around to make the data look like there was something there," he said. "I never really thought through the consequences, and once I did this I got myself into a loop that I found I couldn't get out of."

 

Fogel contacted HMS's research integrity office with his confession. Harvard officials then conducted a thorough review of Fogel's 30-odd studies stemming from his time at the Brigham, and found no other instances of wrongdoing. "This is the only paper where I ever did something wrong," Fogel said. The case was then brought forward to the ORI, and quickly settled.

 

"He's both the complainant and the respondent," John Dahlberg, director of the division of investigative oversight at ORI, told The Scientist. "It's the only time I remember seeing that."

 

The falsified paper, which has been cited 16 times, according to ISI, reported that the shape and volume of the airway tract interact with obesity to predispose patients to sleep apnea. "The conclusion is not supported by the data," said Fogel, but he noted that other studies have also implicated airway shape in the development of sleep apnea. Some of the research also appeared in a preliminary abstract published in the same journal in 2001. Both the paper and abstract were retracted in February.

 

White and Gretchen Brodnicki, HMS's dean for faculty and research integrity, declined to comment for this story. "All HMS reviews of such matters are, and remain, confidential," HMS spokesperson David Cameron, wrote in an email.

 

Fogel voluntarily agreed to exclude himself from Public Health Service-funded research for a period of three years unless he is under active supervision. "If I hadn't come clean, this probably never would have come to light," he said. "I hate to say it, but this probably happens more often than we think."

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