![]() The trials were all published in prestigious neurosurgery journals and had multiple co-authors. They all had a lead author who purported to come from an institution that didn’t exist and who killed himself a few years later. He didn’t, but he set about investigating the trials and confirmed that they hadn’t ever happened. ![]() The Cochrane Collaboration, which purveys “trusted information,” has now taken a step in that direction.Īs he described in a webinar last week, Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, began to have doubts about the honest reporting of trials after a colleague asked if he knew that his systematic review showing the mannitol halved death from head injury was based on trials that had never happened. As I’ve been concerned about research fraud for 40 years, I wasn’t that surprised as many would be by this figure, but it led me to think that the time may have come to stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported, and assume that the research is fraudulent until there is some evidence to support it having happened and been honestly reported. But about 20% of the time, said Ben Mol, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Monash Health, they would be wrong. ![]() ![]() Health professionals and journal editors reading the results of a clinical trial assume that the trial happened and that the results were honestly reported. ![]()
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