Harvard prof falsified sleep data

A former assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School (HMS) and the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston falsified and fabricated data in a study of sleep apnea, the Office of Research Integrity linkurl:reported;http://ori.dhhs.gov/misconduct/cases/Fogel.shtml last week. linkurl:Robert Fogel,;http://pulmonaryfellowship.hms.harvard.edu/NewFiles/Staff/FogelFrameset.html a pathophysiologist who worked in the Brigham's division of sleep medicine from 1998 to 2004, fiddled with approximately half the physiologic, anatomic, and sleep-related data in a 2003 linkurl:study;http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=25806 in the journal __Sleep__. He also made up some anatomic data that he claimed were obtained from computed tomography (CT) scans. The study investigated the role of obesity in obstructive sleep apnea, a breathing-related sleep disorder. "What I did was obviously horrendously wrong," Fogel, now director of clinical research in the respiratory and allergy division at the Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, NJ, told __The Scientist__. "I take whatever consequences come from that." The falsified paper was the first part of a longer...