Doctors are not chosen for their moral rectitude. They will cheat as much as the next guy. It's like A-Rod taking steroids: cheating inflates statistics, improves performance, and leads to a bigger salary. For some that is hard to resist.

There seems to be a great deal of deception going on these days, and perhaps here is why:

1. Although some (like this fellow) find a job with Big Pharma, not all do. Someone said that the politics in academics is vicious because the stakes are so low. However for some doctors, the road to riches is publication and grant money or consultation money.

2. Academic medical centers are very much run top down. Deans and Chairman and prominent academic physicians rule with an iron fist. There is no room for dissent (which is interesting given that academic centers are to enjoy academic freedom). Powerful physicians do what they want often protected by the med school's administration. Disagree or point our cheating and other faculty members will meet with dismissal, or career-ending intimidation. There are alot of beaten dogs under these powerful doctors, afraid to speak out.

3. There is no accountability, Try to find out how a medical center works and you will be thwarted with road blocks. There is no sunshine about the inner-workings of power. Money, through grants or clinical income, rules.

4. There are many publications out there by academics who were found to cheat, who were found to be criminal, or who were found to be engaged in fraud. ALMOST NEVER are the publications withdrawn.

I know of a psychiatrist who worked at Yale, and who later was found guilty of insurance fraud, spending time in the federal pen. Not one of his scientific publications has been withdrawn. Although these are not directly related one might think that a doctor who cheats on insurance billings might have cheated on his research too. (obviously he is anti-social and narcissistic).

I agree that if the penalty were severe, and if the academic structure weren’t so top-down that academic fraud would be less prevalent. We all know of fraud that was covered up by administration, and then the lesser faculty intimidated to shut up.

Most people in academics and in Big Pharma are basically honest. However sociopathic narcissistic ones ruin it.

I used to run a small rehab hospital for children, run by a major academic medical center. Looking back, I now see the fishy, probably highly unethical clinical trials going on paid for by a pharma run by the biggest kingpin at that hospital. Puffy steroid-loaded inner city kids from a far-away city stayed there for a year being tested on asthma drugs. I didn't realize I was party to this most probably fraudulence until fairly recently.

What's this? You mean I can throw away my CPAP machine??? The one that Medicare supply companies call me about all the time telling me I need a new face mask? I don't have sleep apnea?

Now you tell me.

You just answered your own question:
"Fogel is now a director of clinical research at Merck's respiratory and allergy division."

It seems we are in a world that lost some of fundamental values.
In journalism it's harder to plagiarizes and quote but one can omit sources and make an article as if s/he did it.
The problem is getting caught.
I've been witnessing some incredible ways people are being lied to, deceived and impotent to fight for what they are paying for.
However Medicine is the field that should never, ever be conducted the way it is:
in a criminal way.

Pharma buys docs (2007):
http://docadvocate.com/?p=817
Blind Faith - four-part investigative series about bribery in academe - "What happens when science, money and drugs mix?"
http://www.thespec.com/specialsections/section/BlindFaith/267022

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edikv0zbAlU
How Merck vaccines brought AIDS to America.
Chilling footage of prominent medical author and famous Merck researcher laughing about sick monkeys being used to create vaccines... and how Merck covered it up and spread disease.

Many docs are fraudulent, big companies, publically traded is riff with corruption to publish bogus results and bloated claims to get tax payer white collar welfare from the joke NIH.

One major academic dump in the Boston changed the name of rezulin to the scientific name in order to dupe patients to sign up for those clinical expts even though the drug was well known amongst medical circle to cause liver problems!!! Beware, $$$$ from pharma runs the USA

It is really sad to think that researchers can just make up data like this and get away with it for so long. This person absolutely must be removed from the scientific community! I was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea and it is so scary to think that the Dr. may have used falsified information from studies like this to make this diagnosis. Thankfully, my sleep apnea mask works great so I am don't require surgery but many others rely on the data in these studies to make decision that eventually lead them to go under the knife. It shouldn't be this taken lightly.

As eloquently said from previous respondents, the research/paper publishings from MD (More Drugs=MD) and those PhDs can be vastly skewed either through cheating or leaving data out to bias the results if a negative result is detected. The key is to end the socialization of basic science "research" (no more tax payer monies) and let those docs earn a living in the real world----the PRIVATE sector. Most, would NOT last 5 min since they have been suckling the govt. for $$$ since their first "job". Most "researchers" are perpetual college kids that have NEVER grown up, hence their inability to earn a real living.

Sadly, much research is driven through funding by big pharma companies or government.

You might want to read the books on this subject matter by Melody Petersen, Alison Bass, or Christopher Lane.

Medicine and health is scary business these days!

Science research can be fraudulent. The "scientist's" primary way of living is government welfare and/or private grants from pharm or private foundations. They simply cannot earn a living in the private sector because they would be held to much higher standards of PERFORMANCE and PRODUCTION and being an ADULT.

Rather, many hide in academics with a bunch of asian or European vista workers who work like slaves sleeping in studio apartments sometimes (3 to a unit) while the westerner hides in her/his office collecting the checks and/or writing yet another welfare grant begging the USA for more hand-outs to commit useless research that will be rebuked in several years. These "scientists" jump up and down on the academic pogo stick publishing in "journals" whom the're friends with the editor and or course gets "published." People are just starting to wake up to the fraud called biomedical research.