经济学人下载:学术不端 一系列的错误(上)

Science and technology
科学技术

Misconduct in science
学术不端

An array of errors
一系列的错误

Investigations into a case of alleged scientific misconduct have revealed numerous holes in the oversight of science and scientific publishing.
对一起学术不端的调查揭示出在对科学以及科学出版的监督中存在着诸多漏洞。

ANIL POTTI, Joseph Nevins and their colleagues at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, garnered widespread attention in 2006.
2006年，ANIL POTTI, Joseph Nevins和他们在杜克大学的同事们引起了广泛的关注。

They reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that they could predict the course of a patient's lung cancer using devices called expression arrays,
他们在新英格兰医学杂志上报告说他们可以通过一种叫表达序列的设备预测病人的肺癌的扩散路径。

which log the activity patterns of thousands of genes in a sample of tissue as a colourful picture.
这种设备能够记录组织样本上成千个基因的活动模式，成为一幅彩色图像。

A few months later, they wrote in Nature Medicine that they had developed a similar technique which used gene expression in laboratory cultures of cancer cells,
几个月后，他们又在《自然-医学》杂志上发表说他们已经发展出了一种类似的技术-这类技术使用的是在实验室培养皿里癌细胞的基因表达，

known as cell lines, to predict which chemotherapy would be most effective for an individual patient suffering from lung, breast or ovarian cancer.
被称为细胞系，来预测对于某一位患肺癌、乳腺癌或者是卵巢癌的病人哪种化疗将会是最有效的。

At the time, this work looked like a tremendous advance for personalised medicine—the idea that understanding the molecular specifics of an individual's illness will lead to a tailored treatment.
这个工作在那时看起来是个人化医疗中的一个重大进步。

The papers drew adulation from other workers in the field, and many newspapers, including this one, wrote about them.
这些文章受到了一些同行以及包括《经济学人》在内的许多报纸的极力褒奖。

The team then started to organise a set of clinical trials of personalised treatments for lung and breast cancer.
于是研究小组开始着手组织一套针对肺癌和乳腺癌病人的个人化治疗临床试验。

Unbeknown to most people in the field, however, within a few weeks of the publication of the Nature Medicine paper a group of biostatisticians at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston, led by Keith Baggerly and Kevin Coombes, had begun to find serious flaws in the work.
可是大多数领域内的人不知道的是，由Keith Baggerly和Kevin Coombes领导的德州大学MD Anderson癌症中心的生物统计师们在这篇论文发表之后的几周就开始发现其中的严重问题。

Dr Baggerly and Dr Coombes had been trying to reproduce Dr Potti's results at the request of clinical researchers at the Anderson centre who wished to use the new technique.
在希望使用这项新技术的Anderson中心临床研究员的请求下，Baggerly博士和Coombes博士一直在尝试重现Potti博士的研究结果。

When they first encountered problems,
当第一次碰到问题时，

they followed normal procedures by asking Dr Potti, who had been in charge of the day-to-day research, and Dr Nevins, who was Dr Potti's supervisor, for the raw data on which the published analysis was based—and also for further details about the team's methods,
他们按照惯例向主管日常研究的Potti博士和他的导师Nevins博士索要他们发表的文章的原始数据和关于其研究方法的进一步细节，

so that they could try to replicate the original findings.
这样他们就可以尝试重现原先的实验结果了。

A can of worms
一罐虫子

Dr Potti and Dr Nevins answered the queries and publicly corrected several errors, but Dr Baggerly and Dr Coombes still found the methods' predictions were little better than chance.
Potti博士和Nevins博士回复了这些请求并且公布了几处修正后的错误，但是Baggerly博士和Coombes博士依旧发现由这个实验方法引出的结果几乎不比乱猜好。

Furthermore, the list of problems they uncovered continued to grow.
不仅如此，他们还发现了越来越多的问题。

For example, they saw that in one of their papers Dr Potti and his colleagues had mislabelled the cell lines they used to derive their chemotherapy prediction model,
例如，他们发现在Potti博士和他的同事们发表的一篇文章中，错误标记了一个用来建立化疗预测模型的细胞系，

describing those that were sensitive as resistant, and vice versa.
把敏感的和抵制的弄反了。

This meant that even if the predictive method the team at Duke were describing did work,
这意味着就算杜克大学的这个研究小组的预测方法起作用，

which Dr Baggerly and Dr Coombes now seriously doubted, patients whose doctors relied on this paper would end up being given a drug they were less likely to benefit from instead of more likely.
现在Baggerly博士和Coombes博士对这点都很怀疑，依靠这个研究给病人用药的医生也只会更可能得到坏的而不是好的效果。

Another alleged error the researchers at the Anderson centre discovered was a mismatch in a table that compared genes to gene-expression data.
另一个据Anderson中心的研究员指出的错误是一张表中基因和其基因表达数据的不匹配。

The list of genes was shifted with respect to the expression data, so that the one did not correspond with the other.
表中基因的一列相对于表达数据发生了调换，导致两项不相对应。

On top of that, the numbers and names of cell lines used to generate the data were not consistent.
最重要的是，用来产生数据的细胞系的序号和名称也互相不一致。

In one instance, the researchers at Duke even claimed that their work made biological sense based on the presence of a gene, called ERCC1,
比如，杜克大学的研究员甚至声称，基于一个叫做ERCC1的基因的存在，他们的工作是具有生物学意义的，

that is not represented on the expression array used in the team's experiments.
但是这个基因并没有出现在小组实验使用的表达序列中。

Even with all these alleged errors, the controversy might have been relegated to an arcane debate in the scientific literature if the team at Duke had not chosen,
即使已经有了这么多错误被指出，这个争论也本可以停留在艰深难懂的学术论文的辩论中。

within a few months of the papers' publication to launch three clinical trials based on their work.
可是杜克大学的研究组选择在论文发表后的几个月内就（此时试验数据的质量已经受到质疑了。

Dr Potti and his colleagues also planned to use their gene-expression data to guide therapeutic choices in a lung-cancer trial paid for by America's National Cancer Institute.
博士Potti和他的同事们还计划利用他们的基因表达数据指导一个肺癌临床试验的治疗，这个试验由美国国家癌症研究所赞助。

That led Lisa McShane, a biostatistician at the NCI who was already concerned about Dr Potti's results, to try to replicate the work.
这促使已经在关注Potti博士的研究结果的NCI生物统计师Lisa McShane尝试重现这个结果。

She had no better luck than Dr Baggerly and Dr Coombes.
她并不比Baggerly博士和Coombes博士更加幸运：

The more questions she asked, the less concrete the Duke methods appeared.
想了解的越多，杜克大学的这个方法就显得越不可靠。

In light of all this, the NCI expressed its concern about what was going on to Duke University's administrators.
考虑到这些，国家癌症研究所对杜克大学的管理状况表示了关注。

In October 2009, officials from the university arranged for an external review of the work of Dr Potti and Dr Nevins, and temporarily halted the three trials.
2009年10月份，杜克大学方面安排了一个对Potti博士和Nevins博士研究工作的外部复审，而且暂停了那三个临床试验。

The review committee, however, had access only to material supplied by the researchers themselves,
可是，这个复审委员会只能得到杜克大学研究员自己提供的材料，

and was not presented with either the NCI's exact concerns or the problems discovered by the team at the Anderson centre.
国家癌症研究所的疑问和Anderson中心发现的问题也没有提交给这个复审委员会。

The committee found no problems, and the three trials began enrolling patients again in February 2010.
后来委员会没有发现任何问题，三个临床试验在2010年2月又开始招募病人。

Finally, in July 2010, matters unravelled when the Cancer Letter reported that Dr Potti had lied in numerous documents and grant applications.
终于在2010年7月，癌症快报揭发Potti博士在多份文件和项目资助申请中撒谎。

He falsely claimed to have been a Rhodes Scholar in Australia.
他谎称自己是澳大利亚的Rhodes学者。

Dr Baggerly's observation at the time was, I find it ironic that we have been yelling for three years about the science,
Baggerly博士当时的感想是，我们对研究结果大声疾呼了三年，

which has the potential to be very damaging to patients, but that was not what has started things rolling.
因为它有可能对病人产生非常有害的影响，但这却不能使得事情进展。