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A good research project always begins with the researcher studying the available literature to learn
what is already known and what is unknown about the subject. It is unscientific and unethical to
waste time and resources and put participants to potential risk for a study in which the results can
be predicted on the basis of existing knowledge. The appropriate scientific method must be used, for
obvious reasons. Records must be maintained with great care — this may also be of use in the future
when there are questions of priority in discovery. Further ethical aspects of research publication are
discussed elsewhere in the book.

Stephen Lock (1997) writes that most modern histories of scientific fraud begin with William
Summerlin, a dermatologist and immunology researcher at the Sloan Kettering Institute, New York
in 1974. Of course, there have been multiple earlier examples of serious research misconduct and just
some of them include the Nazi experiments on humans in the 1940s, the release of Thalidomide as a
drug for morning sickness in pregnant women, without adequate safety data, and the Tuskegee trial
in the USA which went on for 40 years from 1932 to 1972, until a whistle-blower alerted the world to
it. More recent examples (and a far from complete list) of misconduct in biomedical science include:
Malcolm Pearce and his fictitious patient with a successful reimplantation of an ectopic gestation
in 1994, as well as his non-existent cohort of women with polycystic ovaries; Andrew Wakefield
and his views on the MMR vaccine and autism in 1998; Werner Bezwoda and his publications on
autologous bone marrow transplantation with chemotherapy as a cure for breast cancer in the 1990s;
Jon Sudbø and his concocted research on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and
oral leukoplakia/ cancer in 2005; Hwang Woo-Suk and his pseudo-research on stem cells in 2006;
and perhaps the biggest fraud of them all, Scott Reuben and his misguided papers on anaesthesia,
detected in 2010 (Mukherjee, 2010; Tharyen, 2012; Wells and Farthing, 2008). Paulo Macchiarini,
the tracheal transplant surgeon at the Karolinska university Hospital provides another very recent
example, in 2018, of fraudulent science (Berggren and Karbag, 2019). The details of all these examples
of misconduct are beyond the scope of this article; nevertheless, they make for fascinating reading and
readers should look up these stories of treachery in detail.
India and Indians have had their own share of unethical experimentation. Vijay Soman, Ranjit Kumar
Chandra, and Anil Potti are examples of Indians who were exposed for research misconduct in North
America. In India, the study evaluating the follow-up of women diagnosed with cervical dysplasia on
Pap smear in the 1980s and the Regional Cancer Centre, (Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala) trials on oral
cancer are prime examples (Mudur, 1997; Pai, 2018; Srinivasan and Pai, 2001). India has also been a
fertile ground for clinical trials for the past 15 years and there have been concerns that many of these
trials do not follow the tried and tested principles of ethical medical research. These are, of course,
extreme examples and there are many ‘lesser’ amounts of research misconduct such as, plagiarism,
predatory journal publishing, gift authorship, among others, and therefore, it is a matter of shame to
read the statement, “Along with economic strength, space technology and software expertise, India
is also a leading nation in fraudulent scientific research” (Patnaik, 2016). I have covered the Indian
studies mentioned above as well as some other aspects of research misconduct elsewhere and I
encourage the interested reader to study that as well (Pai, op. cit.).

Causes of Research Misconduct

The reasons for fraud in medical research have been discussed by Lock and include pressure on
researchers to publish, greed, vanity, mental illness or deviancy, and the Messianic complex (Lock, op.
cit.). The first three are the most common but deviancy (mental illness) and the Messianic complex
(the belief that one’s views are always correct) are also of importance. It has been shown that most of
the offenders indulge in serial misconduct and that fraud is rarely a one-off phenomenon and thus,
perhaps, the last two examples are more common than we think.

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