Technology and Medicine: Academic Dishonesty and Risks to Global Health

Technology has promoted global health. Yet advancing technology has also allowed physicians and trainees to cheat, and inappropriate experimentation with medical technology has resulted in study patient deaths. Further, journal editors have not made significant inroads in employing technology to identify dishonesty. Unfortunately, this continues to be strongly within the culture of the profession. Due to corruption of medicine, global health promotion will be severely retarded by falsified and suspect data that lower-and-middle income countries cannot afford to reproducethemselves and must rely upon for clinical decisionmaking. Further, clinical environments that facilitate dishonesty will result in poorer patient care. In addition, emerging markets rely on research to produce advanced therapeutics such as biosimilars that will be used by developed and developing economies, compounding the potential risks of dishonesty globally. By employing relevant antiplagiarism technology and accessing funding sources for all parties including authors, reviewers, and journal editors; “honesty” accreditation that includes mandated participation by journals; and external audits and whistleblowing of dishonesty, medical culture globally can move toward honesty and take advantage of technological evolution to promote global health.


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