Class Journal Week 7
From LMU BioDB 2013
Lauren Magee
- Were you aware of this case of research fraud before viewing this video?
- I was not at all aware of this case of research fraud, but clearly many people were severely affected by the results.
- What are your initial reactions to hearing about this case?
- I want to believe that there is a possibility that Potti didn't know his methods were inaccurate. Potti could have believed in his research so much that he felt he needed to modify it, so it had the chance to prove itself in the patients. If his methods did work, he would be saving millions of lives, so maybe he felt using 112 patients to prove it works, was working for the greater good. Of course, this doesn't justify his desicion by any means, because he was putting 112 lives at risk, even if the treatment was successful. If Potti was purely motivated by money, then I think he is a disgusting and desipicable human being, but personally I think he purer reasoning for continuing his research.
- What role did data sharing play in uncovering this fraud?
- Originally, Potti was only sharing the data sets that had been modified to fit his predictions so collegues didn't notice anything strange about his conclusions. There was, however, two men from a seperate group involved in cancer research, who found numerous flaws in Potti's data. When they brought these issues up with Potti, he explained that they had been accounted for in more updated studies and were no longer relivant. The two men, however, continued to find problems with the conclusions Potti was making and eventually brought it up to higher authorities getting the cancer trails shut down.
- What additional information would you like to know about this case?
- I want to know how Dr. Potti thinks the data became modified to fit his desired results? He claims that when he started the cancer trials he didn't know that the data had been modified, but if he wasn't the one who changed the data, how did it become so warped? I would also like to ask why his laboratory advisor allowed him to be the only one to view the exact output of his study? The reason cross checking Potti's data didn't bring up errors was because Potti was the only one who had his hands on the original data sets. Why was this allowed? I think his advisor should have been much more suspicious of Potti's behavior, because this was such a revolutionary finding. I would also like to ask Duke why they allowed the cancer trials to continue when there had been numerous signs, brought to their attention, about the possible flaws in the research!
