EMBARGOED UNTIL 2 JUNE 2004
Can we trust scientific research?
Doctors, patients and the general public depend on results of scientific research to provide information about the safety and effectiveness of medical treatments. Following the controversy surrounding the Andrew Wakefield study on the link between MMR vaccines and autism, the public is now considering the reliability of medical research in Britain today. Dr Neville Goodman of Southmead Hospital in Bristol investigates the issue in the June issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
How do we prevent dishonest research?
The problem of monitoring research fraud has been discussed
publicly for the last twenty years but little has been
done to provide possible solutions. COPE (the Committee
for Publication Ethics) was formed by a group of editors,
and ‘research governance’ was set up, but ‘official
mechanisms for preventing and detecting research fraud
are not evident in the UK,’ Dr Goodman states. Research
governance puts the responsibility on the institution,
and few are trained or equipped to handle cases of suspicion.
Fraud investigators, he writes, are not needed in every
research establishment as his hospital has only had ‘one
fraud investigation in 20 years.’ Dr Goodman argues
that the regulating body needs to be centralised.
‘Whistleblowers
are the key’
Although some whistleblowers try to actively cause trouble,
they are key in the process of identifying and investigating
causes of misconduct, the article claims. ‘External
random checking has too many flaws’ and the ‘English
libel laws are at fault’ rather than journal editors.
Dr Goodman’s preferred solution is that ‘institutions
have to act and have to retract’ when research
fraud is suspected. This process, however, starts with
the whistleblower; this was very clearly demonstrated
in the case of David Franklin and Pfizer, as reported
in a recent issue of the British Medical Journal.
Finding a solution
If an independent council was formed to respond to research
misconduct, Dr Goodman points out that most fraud occurs
in studies carried out by large pharmaceutical companies.
Research also varies greatly from one institution to
another, and it would be difficult for a regulating body
to acquire enough knowledge to police all types of specialties.
Despite these discrepancies, he supports a unified way
of dealing with all cases. There are significant challenges
in finding a solution but, particularly with medical
research where ‘fraud more demonstrably harms people,’ the
UK needs to bring its standards up to those in the United
States. ‘Maybe research is just capitalism in microcosm,’ he
concedes, ‘but if research is not honest then it
is nothing.’ We don’t know the prevalence
of research fraud, and we can’t ‘go out looking
with suspicion.’ The cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst,
who has experienced many accounts of research malpractice,
feels that institutions can no longer be trusted. ‘If
we can’t trust our hospitals and universities’,
Dr Goodman says, ‘then who can we trust?’
Read the full article [PDF 44k]
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