New Zealand Listener – August 24, 2019

LISTENER AUGUST 24 2019

by Ruth Nichol

HEALTH

ThisLife

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have published before are now not

going into the journal.”

Klein, who is in New Zealand to

speak at the New Zealand Anaes-

thesia annual scientific meeting in

Queenstown, says what’s known as

the Carlisle method detects suspicious

data in papers based on randomised

control trials – often seen as the

gold standard for medical research.

His journal has used the method to

examine both previously published

papers and those being submitted

for publication. The results suggest a

growing use of fake data.

“When going backwards, we found

mostly genuine errors, but what we

are finding now is more and more

people fiddling with the data, rather

than making genuine mistakes.”

And he says it’s unlikely to be

just anaesthetists who are guilty of

fabricating data. It’s almost certainly

happening in all medical disciplines,

increasing the likelihood that patients

will be harmed as a result.

“We base our medical practice

on evidence, but if the evidence is

fabricated, then you could be putting

people at risk of harm or not allow-

ing them to get the best possible

outcome.”

Doctoring

the data

Fake news is no longer,

well, news, but now there

are revelations of made-up

medical studies.

NUTRITION • FOOD • WINE • PSYCHOLOGY • SPORT

Dr Andrew Klein

H

igh-profile cases of medical fraud,

such as the now thoroughly discred-

ited paper linking the MMR vaccine

to autism published in The Lancet

in 1998, may seem like occasional

aberrations. Surely scientists, those

systematic gatherers of empirical evi-

dence, don’t set out to deliberately mislead people?

And surely the few bad eggs who do – such as

the paper’s lead author, Andrew Wakefield – are

suitably punished by being publicly shamed and, as

Wakefield was, struck off the medical register?

Sadly, according to Dr Andrew Klein, a UK

anaesthetist and editor-in-chief of the journal

Anaesthesia, fake medical data is on the rise. Using

a data-pattern analysis technique developed by his

colleague Dr John Carlisle, staff at

the journal are now uncovering

possible scientific fraud in about

one in 40 papers submitted for

publication.

“There’s the odd mistake,

but nine times out of 10

people have clearly made their

data up or changed their data.

A lot of articles that we might