Study claims 1 in 4 cancer research papers contains faked data

You could be forgiven for thinking there's a bit of a crisis going on in biomedical science these days. Tenured academic positions are few and far between—and are often dependent upon the researcher's success in obtaining scarce funding. The pressure to succeed, measured by publications, is sometimes blamed for leading less-scrupulous scientists to break the rules. A new paper by Morten Oksvold, a Norwegian scientist, will fan those flames, as it makes the bold claim that 25 percent of cancer biology papers contain duplicated data. Is something rotten in our research labs?

There has been a real uptick in scientific misconduct in recent years, but it's not going unchallenged. Post-publication peer review, where papers are critiqued publicly on the Internet by other scientists, is putting the literature to the test. And journals are taking a tougher line with authors to ensure that they include all the relevant details, not just the ones that make them look good.

Some of this comes in response to high-profile publications like one from researchers at the biotech company Amgen, who tried to reproduce the findings of 53 "landmark" preclinical cancer research papers but were only able to do so for six of them.