Fraud in medical research: A

frightening, all-too-common
trend on the rise

Profesor dr. Delfi Lutan MSc. SpOG

Medan, 21 April 2015
 Fraud: is a crime
• Fraud is generally defined as knowingly
and willfully executing, or attempting to
execute, a scheme or artifice to defraud
any health care benefit program or to
obtain (by means of false or fraudulent
pretenses representations, or
promises) any of the money or property
owned by, or under the custody or control
of, any health care benefit program.
Humana webarchieve, 10-10-14
 Real-life examples of fraud in medicine

• In 2004, Korean scientist Dr. Hwang Woo-suk, a specialist in

veterinary medicine and animal cloning, and his research team,
claimed to have created the world's first stem cells from a
cloned human embryo. The implications were huge. The ability
to clone stem cells suggested the potential for human cloning
and the use of stem cell therapy to treat incurable diseases.
However, an eight-member peer review panel at Seoul National
University, where most of the research was conducted,
 Real-life examples of fraud in medicine
con’t one

• Concluded in January 2006 that the research claims,

published in the prominent journal Science, were
fraudulent. The researchers had not, in fact,
successfully cloned human embryonic stem cells.

• Shortly after the incident with Dr. Hwang and his

research team in South Korea, news of another
medical fraud surfaced,
 Real-life examples of fraud in medicine
con’t two
• This time in Norway. Jon Sudbo, a researcher at Norway's
Comprehensive Cancer Center, reportedly admitted to
fabricating research results to show that common over-the-
counter painkillers like ibuprofen lowered the risk of oral
cancer but increased the risk of heart problems and death from
heart disease. As it turns out, Sudbo's study, published in the
prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, was completely
fictitious. Apparently, Sudbo made up patients for his
supposed review of 454 people with oral cancer.
Britain’s most dramatic
case of fraud
August 1996: a major breakthrough

• Worldwide media coverage of doctors in London

reimplanting an ectopic pregnancy and a baby being
born

• Doctors had been trying to do this for a century. It

was a huge achievement
August 1996: a major breakthrough

• Achieved by Malcolm Pearce, a senior lecturer in at

St George’s Hospital Medical School in London

• A world famous expert on ultrasonography in

obstetrics

• A story from a paper in the British Journal of

Obstetrics and Gyneacology. Pearce was an
assistant editor.
August 1996: a major breakthrough

• A second author on the case report was Geoffrey

Chamberlain, editor of the journal, president of the
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists,
and professor and head of department at St
George’s.

• The same issue contained a randomised controlled

trial also by Malcolm Pearce -- and others.
 Autumn 1996: both papers are
fraudulent
• A front page story in the Daily Mail exposed the two
papers as fraudulent.

• It had a full length picture of Geoffrey Chamberlain

saying that he hadn’t known that the work was
fraudulent despite his name being on the paper.

• Chamberlain said it was common within medicine for

people to have their name on papers when they
hadn’t done much.
 Autumn 1996: both papers are
fraudulent

• A front page story in the Daily Mail exposed the two

papers as fraudulent.

• It had a full length picture of Geoffrey Chamberlain

saying that he hadn’t known that the work was
fraudulent despite his name being on the paper.

• Chamberlain said it was common within medicine for

people to have their name on papers when they
hadn’t done much.
 What had happened?
• A young doctor at St George=s Hospital Medical
School had raised questions about the two papers.

• An investigation was promptly started and showed

• The patient did not exist.

• The patients supposedly in the randomised trial

could not be found

• Among studies investigated back to 1989 - three

others fraudulent, two of them in the BMJ.
 What had happened?

• All the papers were retracted. Questions about ones

before that.

• Pearce was fired and subsequently struck off by the

General Medical Council

• Chamberlain retired or resigned from all his

positions, a terrible end to a distinguished career.

• His crime was gift authorship, which was normal at

the beginning of his career, scandalous by the end.