Dishonesty and research misconduct within the medical profession.

While there has been much discussion of how the scientific establishment's culture can engender research misconduct and scientific irreproducibility, this has been discussed much less frequently with respect to the medical profession. Here the authors posit that a lack of self-criticism, an encouragement of novel scientific research generated by the recruitment policies of the UK Royal Training Colleges along with insufficient training in the sciences are core reasons as to why research misconduct and dishonesty prevail within the medical community. Furthermore, the UK General Medical Council's own data demonstrates a historic inattentiveness to the ease with which doctors can engage in research misconduct.

Dishonesty, misconduct and fraud in clinical research: an international problem.

Clinical research misdemeanours include a broad spectrum of misdeeds that misappropriate an unfair advantage or harm the rights of others. There is no internationally accepted definition of such malpractices and no generalized procedure to facilitate their reporting or correction. Those who do report research misdemeanours are often stigmatized as 'whistleblowers', a term that has acquired many negative connotations.

The pharmacokinetics of suriclone after single- and multiple-dose administration in healthy elderly volunteers.

Healthy elderly people aged 70 or more should receive a starting dosage of the anxiolytic drug suriclone half that recommended for younger people; frail or ill elderly people may require further dosage reduction. These conclusions were based on a study of the pharmacokinetics and tolerability of orally administered suriclone after a single dose of 0.2mg and after multiple doses of 0.

A pharmacokinetic and dynamic study of single nightly doses of conventional and controlled release formulations of trazodone.

We studied the pharmacokinetics and dynamics of single evening oral doses of conventional capsules (100 mg) and a controlled release formulation (150 mg) of trazodone in 12 fasting and non-fasting young healthy volunteers. When corrected for the different doses used, there was no significant difference among the areas under the plasma concentration-time curves (AUC) for the conventional capsules and the controlled release tablets under fasting and non-fasting conditions. Both conventional and controlled release formulations were followed by a reduction in critical flicker fusion threshold (CFFT) and this effect was not influenced by the administration of food before dosing.