By Richard Saltus
A visiting Japanese scientist working at the National Cancer Institute has admitted that he rigged part of a vaccine research project and fabricated data, his coauthors say in a printed retraction of a report on the project.
The coauthors said they were unaware that the lead author, Tatsumi Arichi, had rigged the experiment by ''spiking'' a cell fluid with quantities of a virus to make it seem that the virus had grown in the cells. His coauthors called it a ''serious problem.
''The original paper describing the vaccine work appeared in the Jan. 4, 2000, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That paper said that a DNA vaccine being tested in mice in the experiment was a ''potential candidate'' for a vaccine to prevent hepatitis C, which affects about 4 million Americans.
In the wake of that paper, scientists tried repeatedly to duplicate the results, but were unable to do so.
The retraction appeared this week on the journal's Web site, and will be published in the May 8 edition of the publication. Such retractions are occurring more frequently, said an official of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Boston Globe Newspaper 5/3/2001 page 4
The sad tragedy is that when we read published research, we assume that the scientists, doctors, or others involved with the research have integrity.
As this article shows, this is not always the case. Just how frequently this happens is anyone's guess, but it is probable that it occurs far more often than we would care to believe.
If you have time you might want to review the link page below that does an outstanding job of documenting the many conflicts of interests that are common in the health field.
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Conflicts of Interest and Ethics in Healthcare