Researchers fake AIDS study data

Three Maryland researchers have admitted fabricating interviews with teenagers for a study on AIDS prevention that received more than $1 million in federal funds.
Lajuane Woodard, Sheila Blackwell and Khalilah Creek were employed by the University of Maryland at Baltimore's department of pediatrics as researchers on the study, funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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The study was designed to evaluate the impact of "safe sex" counseling on black teens in Baltimore housing developments. Congressional staffers said the study, titled "Effectiveness of Standard Versus Embellished HIV Prevention," received more than $1 million in NIH funds in 1999.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031204-113809-8229r.htm

Your post shouldn't get locked because you weren't cautious about the rules; this is an interesting subject and would like to hear other DUer's talk about it. Please edit it now!

It is a legit news source and I have no idea what you are talking about with the edit comment. ! The only thing I changed was to leave out the paragraph explaining that HIV is the AIDS virus, I didn't think it contained near the information of the next paragraph.

Ok, these people may have just killed a few kids because of their greed. They should each have to pay back the million dollars and do work in the inner city till it is paid off.

The Washington Times’ Hair-Raising Tall Tale

Lynx fur "hoax" story shows the power of right-wing media

By Paul Tolme

Former Delaware Gov. Pete du Pont wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (3/27/02) condemning "scientific fraud" by environmentalists. His first example: "the December revelation that employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service had planted fake wild lynx hair in states where there were no lynx, so that the areas could be labeled critical habitat, and thus off limits to human use."

Unfortunately, du Pont garbled virtually every aspect of the story. Perhaps he made the mistake of believing what he read in the newspapers--particularly right-wing ones.

more ...
http://www.fair.org/extra/0205/lynxgate.html

not Maryland. So that is fishy, and usually people who do interviews are not scientists--but students who have BAs. It is terrible whenever data is faked, but believe me, it happens in all fields regardless of political leanings. The point is that there is no evidence the study itself was designed to be biased or that the leading researcher encouraged lying, or that all 817 interviews were made up. If that is the case, then this is terrible, but I'm still not convinced that having non-scientists evaluate scientific grants (ie., lawmakers of any stripe) is a good idea. These things already go through peer review.

The gall of the Republican, Souter, quoted in the article of saying that we need to have lawmakers investigate scientific grants to make sure taxpayer's money was well spent is ludicrous. Uh, what about investigating where all those billions are going in Iraq. I'm sure he really really cares about where our money is going. This is a witchhunt.

I own a small consulting business that works with non-profit organizations in evaluating the goals and objectives of their federally funded grants. My largest share of business comes from the HIV/AIDS sector.

Many programs that target safe sex practices and the cessation of the spread of HIV within certain high risk populations get their fudning from NIH, HRSA, or SAMHSA. These programs are evaluated using various means, some of which are interviews. The federal government and the agencies who fund these programs are very much aware of the evaluation components, and scrutinize these components regularly. There are instances where data are faked, but they are rare. In the instance described in this article, it seems that a few of the 800 and some odd interviews were faked. If so, this is a serious breech of research protocol, however, it is not a commentary on the usefulness of such programs nor on the quality of evaluative research being conducted.

The larger issue is an attack on HIV and sex programs by conservatives. They hate these programs because they do not correspond to their misguided preconceived notions that we should not even discuss sex. They find one instance of impropriety and will use this instance to torpedo funding for all HIV and sex related programs funded by the federal government.

While it is sad that these researchers felt the need to falsify data, this incident should not be used in funding decisions for HIV and sex programs. But unfortunately, it will be used by the conservatives to eliminate programs.

liberals of all stripe need to ''label'' conservatives as superstitious and backwards.
put them on the ropes -- so that they have to defend themselves and so that liberals can begin to change perception in the larger community about what is real in society and what is false.
if we don't like the ground we are fighting on -- change the ground.

as you stated, it appears the oversight worked. I think it only helps the research maintain it's legitimacy. Research should look for the truth, not politics.

In any other situation, this would have been handled internally, and never have been propelled to a level where congress members would comment on it.

The problem is that it will be used for partisan political goals, as is evidenced by it being in the newspaper.

Yep, it is proof that all research is bad, particularly if it proves a point that the right doesn't like.