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Fake it! It’s taxpayer cash! And they’re stupid!

image Governments do such excellent work at our universities, all of which are state-funded.  Bastions of liberalism and overt anti-conservatism, they are also bastions of BS it seems, when scientific test don’t go their way.  I’m sure none of this happened when the environmentalist industry was hashing out that Kyoto science though.

REMINDER: on a related theme, be sure to read our columnist Steve Milloy’s latest column called Hot Air Hysteria, posted today in our columnist section.  We’ve been hosting Steve Milloy’s column for about two years so read lots of his earlier columns too!

Medical researchers caught faking it

Federal grant recipients

More than a dozen scientists and doctors, several of them recipients of sizable federal grants, have been faking research, destroying data, plagiarizing or conducting experiments on people without necessary ethics approvals, the country’s lead research agencies report.

One medical researcher, who was awarded $1,347,445 for various projects, fabricated and falsified data and was permanently barred last year from receiving more federal money, according to documents obtained by CanWest News Service.

Another researcher altered and destroyed data and cannot apply for funding for three years.

A third researcher, who engaged in “academic dishonesty in publication,” has been barred from receiving more federal research money until next year.

Officials at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) say they cannot, under federal privacy laws, identity the researchers.

[…] But CIHR says it awarded more than $12-million to projects in which researchers have been found to be violating research ethics or integrity rules since 2003. They worked at Dalhousie University, McGill University, McMaster University, Sunnybrook & Women’s College Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, the University of Alberta, the University of British Columbia, Universite de Montreal, and Universite de Sherbrooke.

No effort has been made to recoup the funds. The $1.3-million awarded to the researcher permanently barred from applying for CIHR funding has been transferred to his research partners, says Dr. Mark Bisby, the agency’s vice-president.

[…] American authorities appear to take a more direct approach.

Last year, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity tracked down Dr. Eric Poehlman at the Universite de Montreal and charged him with faking research on menopausal women between 1992 and 2002.

Dr. Poehlman moved from Vermont to Montreal in 2001 and subsequently received more than $1-million in Canadian research funds.

Dr. Poehlman’s job at the Universite de Montreal was terminated in January, 2005. He pleaded guilty in March, 2005, in what U.S. investigators called the worst case of scientific fakery in two decades.

U.S. investigators also revealed in 2003 that University of Alberta researcher Jianhua (James) Xu had been sneaking into a lab and doctoring experiments and altering results of a project funded by a U.S. agency. The university fired Mr. Xu, and U.S. authorities ruled that he had engaged in “significant” scientific misconduct and barred him from receiving U.S. funding for four years.

CIHR has also complained that its investigations are hampered by government secrecy and unco-operative universities.

Joel Johannesen
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