A day of reckoning could be coming for Bristol University and Professor Esther Crawley, the ethically challenged pediatrician whose work has come under official scrutiny (that is, under scrutiny from people with greater authority than me) on multiple fronts. According to the Health Research Authority, the National Health Service unit that overseas research ethics (or in this case, the lack of research ethics),
Bristol’s supposedly “independent” investigation of Professor Crawley’s decision to exempt multiple studies from ethical review on the questionable grounds that they were “service evaluation” is due out this week–more than three months late. That’s on top of the
massive “correction/clarification” posted in July by Archives of Disease in Childhood about the methodological violations involved in the conduct and reporting of the pediatric study of the woo-woo Lightning Process.
I have written dozens of blog posts about these two egregious studies. Instead of acting like a bonafide Russell Group university and addressing serious questions about breaches of the scientific process by high-profile investigators, Bristol has generally taken a more Sopranos-like approach by complaining about my “behaviour” to my own academic institution. The university agreed to undertake this current review of Professor Crawley’s studies only after being pressed to do so by the HRA, which took my concerns seriously. I am extremely curious to see how Bristol will choose to explain the anomalies of these purported “service evaluation” studies. (I have discussed at length
elsewhere the differences between “research,” which requires ethical review, and “service evaluation,” which does not.).......................
