Question

How does fraudulent research affect the research community? The medical community? The public?

Answer 1

Clinical research is very vulnerable to fraud due to no effective mechanism in place of detecting, investigating or prosecuting fraud in most of the countries. Fraud in research study results in the loss of its credibility. It leads to ineffective or harmful treatment given or patient being denied of effective behaviour. Fraud in clinicah research can be defined as violation of standard codes of scholarly conducts and ethical behaviour in scientific research. It is an intentional deception made for personal gain or damage to another individual, intentionally falsifying research data or misleading reports of the results. It includes intentional, unauthorized care, disclosure, removal or damage to research related property of another like apparatus, materials, writings or devices used in or produced by conduct of research.

Fradulent can result from professional or person causes. It can be professional over ambition to become famous, to gain prestige of participating in an international research or for financial interest. Fraud can be various types.Fraud can be fabricating, falsification and plagiarism or even deception in conduct.

• Fabricating is creating new documents, data or report like patient's informed consent and diaries.
• Falsifying is changing the existing records by omission or addition of data that is undesired.
• Plagiarism is presenting others research work or experiments as ones own. In simple words it is copying others.
• Deception in conduct is deliberate hidding or misleading statement in the research activities.

The effect of fradulent research is huge in research community, medical community and among the public. In research community fardulent research leads to loss of validity of data. It results in huge financial loss to the sponsor of the research study who may have to bear the additional expenses of investigating fraud and for reconducting the research study.It may result in the disciplinary action against the researcher and the person may not be allowed to be part of the research team or in any peer reviews.

It impact of medical community can endanger the lifes of many patients. The data pertaining to patients health and health management is highly confidential and its security is a challenge to every organization. The undesirable alteration in data, may be omission, addition, copying, creating new data or breech in the privacy of data, all will result in misdiagnosing, medication errors, violation of patients rights, sentinal events and even death. It not only tampers the code of conduct and ethics of the health personnels but also deteriotes the quality and standard of care.

Among public, the result of fraud research may cause harmful,ineffective and wrong molecules brought to the market. The researchers in order to gain familiarity and to for financial reasons tends to supply such products in public which may cause health hazards among them. This will break the trust and cooperation of the community. They may no longer support any other research or participate as subjects, if once they become the victim of fraud research.

It is important that the official research committee should find the research fraud. Every organization shoud have a clearly stated policy and guidelines to investigate and prosecute clinical research fraud.