Pharmaceutical companies
Reports on clinical trials of drugs often contain fabricated data
Their article was published in the journal Pharmacotherapy (Retracted Publications in the Drug Literature).
"We were surprised by the number of reviews of such articles due to scientific negligence – from plagiarism to falsification and the use of fabricated data," says Simon Pickard, professor of pharmacology, senior author of the study. – The percentage of reviews of pharmaceutical articles based on suspicion of negligence is higher than any other biomedical research."
According to scientists, about three-quarters of the recalled reports on the results of clinical trials of drugs were accused of "scientific negligence", which includes falsification of data, their dubious reliability, unethical research conditions and common plagiarism. And although pharmacological studies make up a small percentage of the total volume of all conducted scientific research, many doctors monitor new research, trust the results obtained and refer to them when prescribing medications to patients. At the same time, a refutation to the article can be published on average 3 years after its release, and during this time thousands of patients will be prescribed a drug whose effectiveness has not been reliably proven.
The first analysis of the withdrawn scientific articles was carried out in 1998. He revealed that during the period from 1966 to 1997, the refutation was printed to 235 results of scientific research, 37 percent of which were withdrawn due to "scientific negligence". Since then, this problem has been dealt with more thoroughly. In 2009, the Committee on Publication Ethics published the first list of recommendations for editors of scientific journals, which allows to identify articles whose reliability is in doubt. Professor Picard hopes that over time the number of publications with questionable data will decrease.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru01.06.2012