There is a worrying amount of fraud in medical research
And a worrying unwillingness to do anything about it
IN 2011 BEN MOL, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Monash University, in Melbourne, came across a retraction notice for a study on uterine fibroids and infertility published by a researcher in Egypt. The journal which had published it was retracting it because it contained identical numbers to those in an earlier Spanish study—except that that one had been on uterine polyps. The author, it turned out, had simply copied parts of the polyp paper and changed the disease.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Doctored data”
Science & technology February 25th 2023
From the February 25th 2023 edition
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