Study: FDA hides scientific misconduct, fraudulent research

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published 13 February 2015

A journalism professor at New York University and his class combed through Food and Drug Administration (FDA) records and uncovered mountains of evidence of research misconduct. The concealed misbehavior ranged from the relatively mundane (faked lab tests) to the shocking (like secretly amputated limbs).

Writing at Slate, Professor Charles Seife explains:

When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn't notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community that the results of a medical experiment are not to be trusted. On the contrary. For more than a decade, the FDA has shown a pattern of burying the details of misconduct....The silence is unbroken even when the FDA itself seems shocked at the degree of fraud and misconduct in a clinical trial. [Slate]

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.