BMJ 2012;344:e457 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e457 (Published 16 January 2012)
By Clare Dyer
A researcher on flu vaccines who forged colleagues’ signatures, asked a nurse to
sign a false declaration, and recruited himself into a study under a disguised
name has been suspended from practice for four months for research fraud.
Iain Stephenson, honorary consultant physician at the University Hospital of
Leicester NHS Trust and a clinical senior lecturer at Leicester University, was
the principal investigator in one study, an open label study, and a
co-investigator in a second, known as the “prime boost study.”
Dr Stephenson’s actions, which also included destroying an original log sheet
and replacing it with new sheets, were dishonest on a number of occasions and
amounted to research fraud, a General Medical Council fitness to practise panel
held.
Dr Stephenson admitted forging the signature of a colleague, Tristan Clark, six
times on the vaccine log for the open label study and forging the signatures of
Dr Clark and Karl Nicholson, professor of infectious diseases at Leicester, on
their curriculum vitae in the study file
The panel found that Dr Stephenson had recruited three volunteers into both the
open label study and the prime boost study but “went to some lengths” to
disguise this. He recorded that the three had been given the open label vaccine,
when they had received only the vaccine for the prime boost study.
He admitted recording that the three volunteers had had the open label vaccine
when they had not, asking the nurse to countersign the vaccine log, and forging
Dr Clark’s countersignature.
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