{"id":37975,"date":"2013-08-20T08:42:05","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T12:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=37975"},"modified":"2013-08-20T08:42:05","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T12:42:05","slug":"a-path-to-prevent-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/08\/20\/a-path-to-prevent-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pathway to Preventing Research Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent years, allegations of misconduct and fraud in the Netherlands and Japan have resulted in retractions of important clinical trials. The Dutch case<\/a> may well lead to significant revisions in the guidelines for perioperative beta-blockade. The Japanese case<\/a> involves a Novartis employee who participated in clinical trials without\u00a0without disclosing his relationship with the company.<\/p>\n

When I hear about manipulation and fabrication of data, I am unfortunately not surprised. With the pressure to succeed, some people will act unethically. Concerns about studies are raised only through uncommon observations about something suspicious in the published material. Certainly that approach has to have a low sensitivity for detecting fraud \u2013 or error.<\/p>\n

The bigger problem is that we have no opportunity to verify most studies because the data are not available to the scientific community. Wouldn\u2019t the situation be different if we had an expectation that people would share their data? We are asked to trust the studies that are published \u2013 but shouldn\u2019t we be able to examine the data in detail and verify the findings? If everyone had access to the raw data, wouldn\u2019t that deter fraud and increase the conscientiousness of investigators? Of course, only a small number of people can make sense of raw data. But if the data were available to students throughout the world, to investigators working in the same field, to regulatory agencies interested in the topic \u2013 the prospect of verification alone might raise the level of rigor in the work.<\/p>\n

The quality of research may vary notably across groups, but that may be hard to tell from published articles. The raw data are likely to reveal much more about a research group’s work.<\/strong> The documentation and organization of the data can provide insight into the care with which the research was conducted.<\/p>\n

Maybe it is time to push data sharing, not only to make science more collaborative and efficient but also to provide the opportunity to verify results. Otherwise, what is really to stop some researchers from fabricating their data or manipulating the results \u2013 and who can detect an error in coding?<\/p>\n

Many details are worth considering, but this might be the pathway to higher-quality, more trustworthy research.\u00a0What’s your perspective?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the road to fraud-free research paved with publicly accessible raw data?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1494,1555,1404,969],"class_list":["post-37975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-data-sharing","tag-fraud","tag-research","tag-scientific-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}