Dive Brief:
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The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has declared cancer research data generated by Dr. Anil Potti, a former researcher at Duke University, flawed and "false." The agency's report, published in the Federal Register, stated the data was altered to produce results the researchers wanted and additional false data were submitted to gain federal grants and used for papers published in nine medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine. The articles have been since retracted.
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ORI's finding was not a huge surprise to those following the case, which first raised suspicions in 2008 after the initial research was published when additional researchers reported they were unable to replicate Potti's work. He also falsified claims on grant applications about having been a Rhodes Scholar. In 2011, Duke University determined his trial data were flawed and he resigned. The university also settled a lawsuit brought by subjects in clinical trials based on Potti's research.
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Potti has entered into a "voluntary settlement," according to ORI whereby he "neither admits nor denies" the ORI findings. The agreement requires any research conducted by Potti using federal funds must be supervised for five years and any institution employing him in federally-funded research must certify any data he provides "are based on actual experiments and are otherwise legitimately derived." The Washington Post reported Dr. Potti is still practicing medicine, now working at the Cancer Center of North Dakota.
Dive Insight:
The initial news of Dr. Potti's research in 2007 - a genomic technology he claimed could predict with 99% accuracy which early stage lung cancer patients would benefit from chemotherapy - was met with claims it could save "10,000 lives a year," and was a "new frontier" in cancer treatment, according to The Washington Post. But a year later, doubts started to surface when other researchers weren't able to replicate Potti's work.
Furthermore, The Washington Post reported a Duke medical student had written a letter to the Duke Medical School deans warning of Potti's misconduct in 2008 when clinical trials were first starting. But, as per The Cancer Letter, the university ignored the warning and pressured the medical student into not pursuing the matter further. Instead, Duke used Potti's research in advertising for its cancer center.
There have been many other researchers who tinker with their research results. A stem-cell scientist last year, who wrote two highly publicized articles in Nature, committed suicide after the research was found to be fraudulent. Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, who run Retraction Watch, wrote in a New York Times op-ed, "Every day, on average, a scientific paper is retracted because of misconduct." The authors also stated, "In each of the last few years, ORI, part of the [HHS], has sanctioned a dozen or so scientists for misconduct ranging from plagiarism to fabrication of results. Not surprisingly, the problem appears to get worse as the stakes get higher."