Doctor says he falsified sleep data while at Harvard

Harvard University
Doctor says he falsified sleep data while at Harvard
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney April 9, 2009 05:55 PM

A former Harvard researcher falsified data and fabricated results in a 2003 sleep study, two news outlets report online today.

Dr. Robert B. Fogel, who taught at Harvard Medical School and practiced at Brigham and Women's Hospital until 2004, said he altered numbers and invented anatomic details reported in an article about obesity and sleep apnea. The journal Sleep retracted the article in February and the federal Office of Research Integrity concluded its investigation last month.

"What I did was obviously horrendously wrong," Fogel told The Scientist magazine. "I never really thought through the consequences, and once I did this I got myself into a loop that I found I couldn't get out of."

The problem paper came to light when Fogel confessed to his former supervisor, Dr. David White, The Scientist and The Harvard Crimson report. Fogel had already left Harvard for Merck Research Laboratories, where he is now director of clinical research at its respiratory and allergy division in Rahway, N.J. White had asked Fogel to work on a followup study.

"He wanted the data to come out to meet the hypothesis,” White told the Crimson. “It wasn’t coming out that way, so he made it come out that way.”

The falsified paper concluded that the shape and volume of a person's airway combines with obesity to make those patients more likely to suffer sleep apnea, a breathing disorder.

Harvard's office of research integrity reviewed 30 studies in which Fogel was involved. Fogel told The Scientist only one paper was falsified. Harvard spokesman David Cameron said the medical school could not comment.

Brigham and Women's spokesman Kevin Myron said the hospital supported the investigation's findings.

Fogel agreed to be excluded from research funded by the US Public Health Service for three years unless he is actively supervised, the stories say.

His case follows allegations last month that a Massachusetts anesthesiologist fabricated results in at least 21 published studies about pain treatments.

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/ ... ys_he.html

rooster wrote:"He wanted the data to come out to meet the hypothesis,” White told the Crimson. “It wasn’t coming out that way, so he made it come out that way.”