Kristin Roovers didn’t mention her problems with U.S. authorities when she walked into the Ottawa Health Research Institute as a post-doctoral fellow in 2005 and landed a job exploring how cancer cells turn bad.
She walked out this week when her record of “extensive” data falsification and manipulation caught up with her.
“We don’t have any reason to believe scientists are any different in Canada than the U.S., unfortunately, with regards to scientific misconduct,” said Dr. James Wells, director of the office of research policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who co-authored the study. Only a handful of cases a year ever come to the attention of Canada’s research agencies, which have been under pressure to be more proactive.