Newspaper Aftenposten reported Monday that a commission led by medical professor Magne Nylenna of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim submitted its findings to the state Ministry of Health in December 2004. Commission proposals included a call for jail terms of up to one year for anyone caught forging medical research.
"We're surprised that nothing more has been done with this proposal," Nylenna told Aftenposten. New Health Minister Sylvia Brustad said the commission's work will now be re-evaluated, adding that "there's a need for new regulation in this area."
Brustad was calling in top health officials for a meeting on Monday, after it emerged last week that an otherwise respected health professional who's a doctor, dentist and researcher at Norway's Rikshospitalet-Radiumhospitalet had faked an article in the respected publication The Lancet. The 44-year-old researcher, whom Aftenposten and several other Norwegian media outlets have chosen not to identify, has admitted to fabricating what he claimed was a survey of more than 400 patients.
The survey allegedly involved falsification of the death- and birthdates and illnesses of 454 "patients." The researcher wrote that his survey indicated that use of pain medication such as Ibuprofen had a positive effect on cancers of the mouth. He's now admitted the survey was fabricated and reportedly is cooperating with an investigation into all his research.
The research scandal has shocked officials at Rikshospitalet-Radiumhospitalet in Oslo (Norway's newly merged National Hospital and major cancer hospital) and left them worried that such an embarrassment will prompt international partners to withdraw research funds.
Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reported Monday, however, that the MD Cancer Center in Houston won't end its cooperation with Rikshospitalet-Radiumhospitalet because of the researcher's fabrication. A spokeswoman for the National Cancer Institute in the US declined immediate comment on whether the scandal will have any consequences for its support of Norwegian research.
The researcher who's admitted to the fabrication has published nearly 40 articles in such prestigious journals as The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine, which had boosted his own profile both in Norway and abroad. Questions now are being raised about the validity of his earlier work, and a commission led by Anders Ekbom of the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm will lead an investigation into it. The researcher's colleagues are also being questioned.
