This case was described to me by an author who is about to submit a paper. He has discovered that a member of his team has produced a lot of fraudulent data for other studies, and has forged consent from ethics committees. This researcher has been reported to the GMC and his case is pending. The problem with the paper about to be submitted to us is that the fraudulent researcher falsely claimed that he had gained consent from three ethics committees for patients to be x-rayed. The author has gone back to the three committees and they have all agreed to give approval after the event. Their judgement is that it would be unethical to suppress these useful data because of the consent problem. The author came to see me to ask whether we would be worried about publishing this paper. I said that I thought it would be acceptable to publish the paper, but that we should be explicit about the problems surrounding it. Does the committee agree?
COPE agreed, on the proviso that the data collection and analysis did not go through the fraudster’s hands. The author of the fraudulent data has now been struck off the medical register because of the fraud and forgery. The editor is sure that the fraudster did not collect the data. Several members of COPE said that they would not publish the paper. The editor should be advised to get further assurance regarding the data and then publish the paper with a commentary explaining the history.
The paper was published, along with an explanation of its history.