Word: poissonality
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...takes an extraordinary amount of self-confidence to wield a scalpel with skill, but most surgeons never approach the audacity of Dr. Roger Poisson. From 1977 to 1990, the French-Canadian physician falsified data on scores of patients so that he could enroll as many people as possible in important research studies on the treatment of breast cancer. To conceal the deception from the trial's American coordinators, the former head of oncology at St. Luc's Hospital in Montreal kept a double set of medical files labeled "true" and "false." His office even submitted progress reports for one woman...
Maybe not. But last week, after the Chicago Tribune broke the news of Poisson's misconduct, it was clear that his "white lies" were a breach of science's code of honor. Physicians were aghast, government officials were embarrassed, and breast-cancer victims were fretting about whether they had received the best treatment. Coming in the wake of a whole series of highly publicized allegations of fraud in the scientific world -- some unjustified -- the clear-cut case against Poisson dealt a new blow to the reputation of the research community. Said a federal scientist involved with the investigation: "This...
...Poisson affair was so unsettling because his work dealt with matters of life and death. One of his main studies was part of the research that led in 1985 to a major change in the way surgeons treat breast cancer. Until that time, patients almost always had the entire breast removed -- a mastectomy. But the new research showed that a less disfiguring procedure called lumpectomy -- in which only the tissue surrounding the tumor is cut out -- is just as effective when the cancer is in its early stages...
Experts were quick to reassure patients last week that the disclosures about Poisson's work did not undermine the evidence of the value of lumpectomies. His research was part of a much larger study, and when his statistics are removed, the conclusions do not change. And other studies have had the same results. Even with such assurances, many patients were still uneasy. Said Donna Brogan, an Emory University biostatistician who had a lumpectomy in 1986: "The whole research enterprise operates on trust among scientists. When someone betrays that trust, it is upsetting...
Equally disturbing was the way some scientists knowledgeable about the case -- and some government officials -- kept quiet about Poisson's misdeeds for years. The fraud was detected in 1990, Poisson admitted at least some culpability in 1991, and yet most patients and doctors didn't learn of the problem until the Tribune publicized it in 1994. To many, the affair smacked of a scientific cover...