Family medicine
-
Historical Article
Misconduct in science: does family medicine have a problem?
Through several recent and widely publicized cases, misconduct in science has caught the public's attention and reached the agenda of Congress. After a brief historical overview, this article presents a number of cases from family medicine raising issues of duplicate publication, plagiarism, inappropriate authorship, citation errors, inappropriate attribution, and data manipulation and fabrication. Misconduct policies from national organizations are noted, and specific recommendations are made that would limit growth of misconduct in the family medicine research community.
-
Research techniques reflect the approach of a discipline to the issues it faces. The annual North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG) meeting has been a forum for family medicine research since 1973. A cross-sectional content analysis was conducted on all 1,295 printed NAPCRG abstracts from 1977 to 1987, classifying the research design and methods. ⋯ The major methods were surveys (34%), chart reviews (24%), or surveys combined with chart reviews (7%). One fourth of all abstracts were cross-sectional surveys. NAPCRG research designs and methods have not changed substantially during these 11 years.