Class Journal Week 7

Lauren Magee

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 Duke, who asked someone to investigate the findings. The investigation supported Potti and Duke continued their cancer trails. It wasn;t until much later, when a reporter found that Potti had lied about his credentials, that his advisor finally took a look at Potti's original data. It become abundantly clear that the data did not support Potti's conclusions and that someone must have manually changed the dataset to produce significant results.
4. 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!

Laurmagee (talk) 14:24, 8 October 2013 (PDT)

Kevin Meilak

1. Were you aware of this case of research fraud before viewing this video?

• I was unaware of this case of research fraud before viewing the video.

1. What are your initial reactions to hearing about this case?

• My initial reaction is one of revulsion. It is clear from the language used by his colleague in charge of the lab that the data Potti presented was intentionally altered in order to push forward with a treatment method that did not in fact work. Doing this was a deliberate attempt to become rich and famous for a cure that did not exist that intentionally deceived patients desperate for any hope.

1. What role did data sharing play in uncovering this fraud?

• Data sharing is how the fraud was uncovered. The analysts who initially contacted Duke with the claim that the data was inaccurate had access to the data, as well as the review committee who temporarily vindicated Dr. Potti. It was due to further sharing with institutions like the National Cancer Institute that further uncovered the fraud. Without data sharing, it is possible that it would have taken much longer to uncover the problems in the data.

1. What additional information would you like to know about this case? (We will be visiting it again in subsequent weeks in the course.)

• I would like to know exactly how this failed treatment was attempted, why so many were convinced that it did in fact work, and anything Duke or other institutions did after this case to prevent further research fraud.

Kmeilak (talk) 18:25, 8 October 2013 (PDT)

Kevin McGee

1. I was not aware of this research fraud happening before I viewed this video.
2. My initial reaction to this video reminds me of the importance of honesty in data. This also makes me think about how a scientist should not be influenced by a desire to be rich or famous, like Poti did. He put other's lives at risk for his own means.
3. Data sharing was very important. A analysists who first found the fraud were given the data, along with a review committee and the National Cancer Institute. The fraud would never have been uncovered without data sharing.
4. I would like to know how the rest of the investigation plays out. I would also like to know what the procedure that failed consisted of.