Anaesthetist John Carlisle works in a hospital in Torquay, UK, and in his spare time finds statistical errors in medical research trials.Credit: Emli Bendixen for Nature
If John Carlisle had a cat flap, scientific fraudsters might rest easier at night. Carlisle routinely rises at 4.30 a.m. to let out Wizard, the family pet. Then, unable to sleep, he reaches for his laptop and starts typing up data from published papers on clinical trials. Before his wife’s alarm clock sounds 90 minutes later, he has usually managed to fill a spreadsheet with the ages, weights and heights of hundreds of people — some of whom, he suspects, never actually existed.
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