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20. Davies, above n 3, p 26.

21. The Medical Act 1983, as amended. The GMC can also take steps to deal with concerns (eg agree undertakings or issue a warning) without the case needing to go to a panel.

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27. Lock has identified the ‘first’ reported GMC medical research misconduct case in 1975, which is also the only one before 1990. Lock's research was interested in case histories and in discussing their settings, their motives and identifying the disciplines particularly at risk: S Lock ‘Research misconduct: a résumé of recent events’ in Lock and Wells, above n 2.

28. Data related to year of registration, gender and age, as well ethnic identification, are not part of the present focus. Scholars have used freedom of information policies to study research misconduct. See eg M Shapiro and R Charrow ‘The role of data audits in detecting scientific misconduct’ (1989) 261 JAMA 2505; Lock, above n 27, p 38. For the present paper, the following keywords have been used by the GMC access to information team to locate decisions: ‘research’; ‘dishonesty’; ‘research misconduct’; ‘probity – research’; ‘experiment’; ‘principal investigator’; ‘dishonesty – false claims to qualification/experience’; ‘dishonesty – false certification/false reporting’; ‘dishonesty/criminality – clinical drugs trials and research’; ‘clinical trial’; and ‘clinical study’.

29. See C Tittle ‘Two empirical regularities (maybe) in search of an explanation: commentary on the age/crime debate’ (1988) 26 Criminology 75–86 at 76, as cited in B Arnold and J Hagan ‘Careers of misconduct: the structure of prosecuted professional deviance among lawyers’ (1992) 57(6) Am Sociol Rev 771–780 at 771.

30. For more details on the data set, see M-A Jacob ‘On the scope and typology of “research misconduct”: the gaze of the General Medical Council’ Med L Rev forthcoming.

31. Vismann, above n 9, p 126.

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36. Fanelli, above n 35, p 80.

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38. Alghrani and Chan, above n 2, pp 125–126.

39. See eg the AMS report: Academy of Medical Sciences A New Pathway for the Regulation and Governance of Health Research (London: AMS, 2011).

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47. The CHRE oversight applies to disciplinary decisions that it considers ‘unduly lenient’. In 2012, the adjudication of FtP moved to the Medical Professional Tribunal Services, under the scrutiny of the Professional Standards Authority.

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49. Ways to concretise these procedural reforms include changes in the composition of panels to include parity between lay and professional members, and the transfer the adjudication of fitness to practise to the Medical Professional Tribunal Service.

50. The Medical Act 1983, as amended; GMC Rules Order of Council 2004.

51. Smith 2004, above n 3; GMC, above n 46, pp 25–50.

52. Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE) v NMC and Grant [2011] EWHC 927 (Admin), [71], [74], [76] (referring to a decision from the Nursing and Midwifery Council); General Medical Council v Meadow [2006] EWCA Civ 1390. I will return to this forward-looking approach below.

53. Cohen v GMC [2008] EWHC 581 (Admin); Davies, above n 3; J Glynn and D Gomez The Regulation of Healthcare Professionals: Law, Principle and Process (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 2012).

54. ‘110. Research misconduct is a further example. The term is used to describe a range of misconduct from presenting misleading information in publications to dishonesty in clinical drugs trials. Such behaviour undermines the trust that both the public and the profession have in medicine as a science, regardless of whether this leads to direct harm to patients. Because it has the potential to have far reaching consequences, this type of dishonesty is particularly serious’: GMC Indicative Sanctions Guidance for the Fitness to Practise Panel, April 2009 (with 7 August 2009 revisions, March 2012 revisions and March 2013 revisions) para 110, at p 29.

55. The GMC's Good Medical Practice states that ‘You must act with honesty and integrity when designing, organising or carrying out research, and follow national research governance guidelines and our guidance’: GMC Good Medical Practice (London: GMC, updated March 2013) para 67. The GMC thus refers explicitly to additional norms that govern the conduct of those who do scientific research: the rules of scientific community, formal and informal, produced and distributed by employers (research institutions), research funders and sponsors, and academic journals. Research guidance outlines principles governing research and their applications into practice: GMC Good Practice in Research and Consent to Research (London: GMC, 2010); GMC Research: The Role and Responsibilities of Doctors (London: GMC, 2005). The areas covered by the guidance are: law and governance; good research design and practice; protecting participants from harm; honesty and integrity; avoiding conflicts of interest; consent to research; and respecting confidentiality. The 2005 version of the guidance included two additional areas: funding and payments, and teaching, supervision and managerial responsibilities for research.

56. Smith, above n 3, as cited in Glynn and Gomez, above n 53, at 1-078. Scholars have picked up on how such stylised aspirational publications get crafted mainly for outside consumption: Riles, A Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoning in the Global Financial Markets (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) p 13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Indeed, we should not overrate the influence of these statements on practitioners, since they most often do not have time to read through them: Chisholm, A, Cairncross, L and Askham, J Setting Standards. Final Report: The Views of Members of the Public and of Doctors on the Standard of Care and Practice They Expect of Doctors (London: Picker Institute, 2006)Google Scholar.

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59. That same year, Pearce published in the same journal a Randomised Controlled Trial involving 191 women with recurring miscarriages, a trial that never took place.

60. Professional Conduct Committee, 7 June 1995. The PCC stated: ‘Mr Pearce not only sought personally to mislead others, but implicated colleagues, including junior doctors, in a web of deceit which has had incalculable consequences for public confidence in the integrity of research.’ After having decided on the erasure of Pearce, the PCC expressed in more general language its concerns about the dangers of scientific fraud for future medical researchers who could follow in good faith ‘techniques and treatments described in published papers which are fraudulent’, and for future safe treatment of patients.

61. In generic terms, the PPC said that ‘the responsibility for published work rests on every participant – the main author, any co-authors, all others involved in the research, assessors, referees and the editorial board’. PCC, 7 June 1995.

62. R Smith ‘Research misconduct: the poisoning of the well’ (2006) 99(5) J R Soc Med 232–237; S Lock ‘Fraud and the editor’ in Lock and Wells, above n 2, pp 252–254.

63. My research in the GMC Minutes and secondary material indicates that the prior to Pearce, 13 research misconduct cases had been dealt with by the PCC, all to do with falsification and/or fabrication of data. Twelve cases took place between 1990 and 1995, and Lock identifies one additional PCC decision on research misconduct from 1975. See Lock, above n 27, p 17.

64. P Wilmshurst ‘Dishonesty in medical research’ (2007) 75 Medico-Legal J 3.

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67. FtPP, 28 January 2010 and 24 May 2010.

68. The Lancet retracted the infamous 12-authors article – notably only after the GMC decision came out – on the basis that the research was fraudulent. See http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(97)11096-0/abstract (accessed 18 January 2016); see also Dyer, above n 65.

69. What is known as the ‘Wakefield decision’ is in fact a trilogy (Wakefield, Walker-Smith and another), and the three decisions are not discussing fraudulent research processes strictly speaking. The determination on Andrew Wakefield catalogues the numerous breaches in detail: carrying out a programme of investigations of research on 12 children without REC approval; misleading and dishonest description of the patient population; the irresponsible and misleading description of the project and of the referral process in correspondence with journal and funders, contrary to the duty to ensure that information in the paper is accurate; a dishonest statement about REC approval; breach of ‘fundamental principles of research medicine’; and the use of invasive procedures when not clinically indicated. The FtPP carefully describes the funding arrangements in relation to the research, indicating how the misconduct also included the non-disclosure of conflicts of interests.

70. Dyer, above n 65. Graham Stringer MP confirmed this point during evidence-gathering meetings of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee: ‘the General Medical Council did not deal with whether his research was fraudulent or not’: House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, above n 2, at Q275; but see Kirkland, A ‘The legitimacy of vaccine critics: what is left after the autism hypothesis?’ (2012) 37 J Health Pol, Pol'y & L 69–97 Google ScholarPubMed.

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72. Walker-Smith v GMC [2012] EWHC 503 (Admin).

73. Personal communication with the author, 2013.

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103. PCC, 6 July 2001.

104. For a more detailed discussion of such customs in hospitals see Jacob, above n 9.

105. PCC, 6 July 2001.

106. FtPP, 13 January 2012.

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108. Ibid, at 17.

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119. Idem.

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