More studies fudged

Last updated: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 Print

A Norwegian doctor who last week said he fabricated a mouth cancer research article that was published in October in the journal The Lancet has confessed to faking data for mouth cancer studies that appeared in two other journals

Dr Jon Sudbo, a cancer expert at Norway's Radium Hospital, is said to regret the medical bluff he mounted over the past several years, his lawyer, Erling Lyngtveit, told the Aftenposten newspaper in Norway.

Sudbo admitted he also made up data for an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that appeared in April 2004, and another article that ran in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in March 2005.

Wants to be completely open
Lyngtveit said Sudbo wants to be completely open about the faked studies and will cooperate with a hospital-appointed commission to investigate the research scandal, the Aftenposten reported.

Sudbo worked with some of the world's top cancer researchers. His admission about fabricating data could also have a serious impact on the other researchers' work. None of the fraudulent studies had any impact on patients, Lyngtveit contended.

For the 2004 oral cancer study in the NEJM, Sudbo determined that a new biopsy technique could help oral cancer specialists determine which patients would most likely benefit from surgery.

Sudbo's admission marked the second time in recent weeks that seemingly significant research has proven to be fraudulent. Earlier this month, the journal Science said it was retracting two papers by South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who acknowledged false data that claimed to show he created stem cells from the world's first cloned human embryos. – (HealthDayNews)

January 2006