Often times it seems as though people have this immense need to be right. This can be both good and bad. It can be good because it fuels a desire to do more research and make sure you have all of your facts straight. On the other hand it can cause an extreme sense of competition and make people do unethical things. This is exactly what drives people to commit scientific fraud.
I found yesterday’s lecture to be incredibly eye opening. It was very interesting to learn about all of the scientists who have committed fraud in their work. It also made me a bit sad to learn about. Each of those scientists skewed their work and instilled false hope into the population. This got me interested in other scientific fraud that has been committed. After much research, I came across the story Anil Potti. According to an article written by the Office of Research Integrity, Potti was a researcher at Duke University when he claimed to have found a miracle cure for cancer. He published many documents boasting about his findings. Cancer patients everywhere caught wind of Potti’s “findings” and began to feel some hope that they could be cured. Unfortunately for them, all of Potti’s “findings” were fabricated. The article goes on to describe all of Potti’s wrong-doings. For example, Potti claimed to have done a trail with a large amount of patients using his cancer treatment. He reported that a good portion of the patients were helped. In reality, Potti only tested a few people with his cancer-treating method, and none of the participants in the study responded. 
According to an article on CBS’s website, a multitude of people bought in Potti’s scheme and believed this would be a miracle treatment for them. They enrolled for Potti’s trail, believing it was their chance to be cured. I simply can’t imagine the heartbreak they felt when they heard the news that Potti was a fraud. This made me very sad and angry. As I have mentioned before in previous posts, my grandfather had a long battle with cancer that he eventually lost. I simply can’t imagine what it would have been like if he had invested in this trial and been given a sense of false hope. It would have made me mad beyond belief.
It truly blows my mind that someone could willingly give sick people such a false sense of hope. The CBS article writes that Potti was a trusted and respected scholar. It makes me wonder- what went wrong? Scientists are incredibly smart human beings who have lots of knowledge. With that knowledge comes a great responsibility to humanity. My hope is that people will learn from the mistakes of people like Potti and realize that being honest and ethical in their work are of the utmost importance.
Maggie, I found this post to be incredibly eye-opening and concerning. We are taught from a young age to believe the professionals in life because they know more about their fields than the average person. However this brings up the concern that everyone needs to be held accountable. Just because someone earned a higher degree or title, that does not give them the ability to vary in their practice ethics or principles. Everyone must be held to the up-most standards and entrusted that they are in fact reported correct information. This reminds me of a discussion we had in my social psychology class where in an experiment participants were twice as likely to listen to a person’s instructions if they were wearing a lab coat. It demonstrates that those positions possess a certain power and authority and your blog post proves the downside in which people can take advantage of it.
Margaret, I found this post interesting because I too have had scientific fraud and peer review on my mind after attending yesterday’s, lecture. Prior to taking this course, you could hand me pretty much any scientific paper that involved case studies and numbers and I would have believed it. I would have easily taken it for face value after seeing “Study by Dr….”. I now realize how stupid and naive my previous thought process was in regards to scientific theories. I have to admit, seeing examples like Potti kind of makes me angry. I found an article from Stanford that goes more in depth into how scientist fabricate their own data.
http://news.stanford.edu/2015/11/16/fraud-science-papers-111615/