A investigation by a panel set up by the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists have discovered that a particularly productive doctor named Yoshitaka Fujii has been faking a whopping 172 papers over the past 19 years:
Fujii's findings have been under a cloud since 8 March when an analysis in the journal Anaesthesia raised questions about his data. On 9 April, 23 journal editors publicly asked seven Japanese institutions named in the papers to investigate. The anesthesiology society took on the task because "it would have been difficult for any one institution to clarify what happened," says Koji Sumikawa, an anesthesiologist at Nagasaki University who headed the investigation.
The panel focused on 212 of 249 known Fujii papers. It tried to review the raw data, laboratory notebooks, and records on the patients or animal subjects involved. Committee members also interviewed relevant people.
Among the 172 papers judged bogus, the report claims that 126 studies of randomized, double-blind, controlled trials "were totally fabricated." The committee identified only three valid papers. For another 37 papers, the panel could not conclusively determine if there had been fabrication.
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That beat the record for faked scientific papers, previously set by Joachim Boldt (curiously, another anesthesiologist) who fabricated 90.