Medics are always plagiarising each other
The operation that my dad had on his knee this year was IDENTICAL to the one I had performed by a completely different surgeon several years ago. The scar even had rounded corners.
Three doctors face the withdrawal or suspension of their licences to practise medicine after being accused of releasing an iPhone app which allegedly plagiarised material from an award-winning medical textbook. One of the three stands further accused of writing a "misleading" review praising the app on the App Store. The trio …
There isn't anything wrong with copying with attribution an explanation.
There is a problem with copying without attribution or your whole work being copied with attribution and sold. The former is unethical which is frowned on in doctors, the second falls under copyright laws I believe and is probably less of interest to the GMC.
Things to lose your license to practice over are things like causing real harm to people through fraud or incompetence. A guy that performs an unnecessary procedure on you and then mutilates you should lose his license. Nonsense like this doesn't even come close.
As a lawyer and medical ethicist, I'm very much on the side of those who wonder what the hell the GMC is wasting time on this for. If, and only if, they are found guilty of something in a court should this become a Fitness to Practice hearing. With all the piss-poor care that seems to be being reported, one would hope that the GMC has more than enough actual, genuine cases in which fitness to practice should be questioned.
These doctors are not being "tried" in a "court", they are appearing before their organisations governing body. This body controls who is licensed to practise medicine.
I believe that doctors are held to a high standard of honesty and integrity and the actions they are accused of bring those qualities into question, even though what they did might not be illegal.
As an aside it was only when I got to the bottom of this article I realised that these were British doctors: a hint nearer the top might have been useful!
Seems a bit heavy-handed - it may well be that they have indulged in a bit of unprofessional plagiarism, but how does that affect their medical skills? Personally I don't give a damn if my GP is regularly downloading 'pirate' music, or parks his car on a double yellow line, so long as he's medically competent.
While working in an Acute Hospital I have been constantly asked to 'Turn (X) into a word document so we can use it' - where (X) is normally a book, leaflet or PDF.
When I explain about copyright and the requirement for reasonable use and attribution, I am met with blank stares - usually followed by 'We don't have the time/budget for that'.
I'd be happier if they just stated the truth - 'But then I'd have to do the work myself and understand it, rather than just use this and take the credit'
Nice to see at least an attempt to enforce professional standards. If someone is willing to cheat and rip off another's work in the publication of material then it's reasonable to conclude that they may well have done this elsewhere too.... in their medical exams, for example.
Doctors occupy a position of the highest trust, you must be literally able to trust them with your life. Will a doctor who is prepared to lie and cheat for money be also willing to prescribe drugs based on whether he is being given a kickback to prescribe them, instead of what might be the best drugs to heal you?
Its more than that.
People are also looking at the amount that a doctor can make and wondering why they feel the need to lie to make more money.
Trust is hard to gain and very very easy to loose.
Shameless greed has the power to tar the industry with a big big brush, especially when you look at all the sound bites that a lazy media can copy and paste (ironic hey?) apps iDoc fake reviews on iStore etc
Throw the greedy fuckers to the wolves
"......but how does that affect their medical skills?"
Doctors are far more than flesh mechanics!
A doctor must behave like the wife of Caesar, anything that might bring their reputation into question, their judgement or their professionalism is sufficient to have them considered unsuitable to occupy that position of trust.
And trust is pivotal when considering they have the power of life or death in their hands.
No, if they have committed an offence, they have crossed the Rubicon and no longer can they be trusted to make value judgements when their own values have been proved flawed.
I hope they are innocent, but I hope more that the high standards are maintained, standards which they were fully aware of when they joined the highly paid profession.
Well that sounds amazing, but in reality there are bound to be lots of doctors of mediocre or less character, just as with every profession. It took twelve years to get Andrew Wakefield struck off the Medical Register, and parents all over the world still question whether the MMR vaccine is a good idea based on what he told the press. Think how many doctors there are who didn't do anything that obviously and publicly bad.
> A doctor must behave like the wife of Caesar,
Good luck actually holding up that kind of absurd standard.
The problem of course is that while you are busy creating a standard that no honest man can satisfy, the rest of us will have to suffer for it while all of the competent people that care about their profession are cast out. The only people left will be the really hard core sleazebags that can game this kind of system.
and let's not forget, while they were busy putting this app together, they were most probably getting paid to look after their patients, a role that is supposed to be very demanding of your time and energy.
Maybe, if the money made from the app, was given to their employer, the NHS, all could be forgiven.
"and let's not forget, while they were busy putting this app together, they were most probably getting paid to look after their patients"
So you're saying that doctors never have free time? Never an evening or a weekend off, never go on vacation?
Maybe, just maybe, (and I'm spitballing here), they put the app together outside working hours?
Not that I'm saying what they did is ok, but plagiarism has nothing to do with fitness to practice medicine.
Would a doctor who receives a speeding ticket also be struck off? Both are offenses, but not crimes, and neither should have an impact on a doctor's fitness to practice medicine.
> Breach of patient trust
Due to lying or cheating someone else? Really.
No. "Breach of patient trust" is something like falling asleep on duty or prescribing something to a patient when they are allergic to it. Nonsense that happens out of the operating theater really doesn't matter.
You know: the "do no harm thing".
Even a pervassive inability to get your bills right doesn't qualify as "breach of patient trust".
"Personally, I don't want to be treated by a doctor who has been proven to think, "Rules for doctors? Ha! They don't apply to me!""
Doctors are fallible like everybody else; they get speeding tickets, shout at their kids, smoke, and don't always recycle properly.
If the next time you're ill enough to need a doctor you decide to wait for one who's never ever broken a rule, even one totally unrelated to their profession, then you're going to be in for a long painful illness.
Well, there's the rub. What's related to their profession and what isn't?
Do you think Roy Meadow should have been struck off? Genuine question; reasonable people can disagree on this one. After all, his infraction amounted to misinterpreting some statistics and being mistaken -- not the same as lying -- when testifying in court, neither of which had much to do with treating patients per se. He certainly committed no crime. But the GMC thought he should be struck off, and I agree with them.
I have actually been in the position of needing doctors pretty damn urgently, and have a lot of experience of dealing with them. That experience has taught me quite a bit about the differences between the good ones and the bad ones. Contrary to what a lot of people commenting here think, it's not medical knowledge that's the clincher. A doctor who doesn't understand what's wrong with you can still be brilliant if they acknowledge that they don't know and so defer to another doctor. The big problem you run into with doctors -- the problem that can kill you all too quickly -- is arrogance. When they're not sure what's wrong with you but would never admit that, when they're sure that their years of experience mean they can just tell what's wrong with you and so they don't need no stinking tests, when they don't listen to their patients because they know better than some unqualified hypochondriac pleb, when, in short, they are convinced of their own brilliance: that's when you need to get the hell out and find another doctor, urgently. Not that you always have that option. Read the headlines: this is what a large proportion of malpractice and wrongful death cases boil down to. "My husband had brain cancer but his doctor told him to take an aspirin." We've all seent hat one, far too many times. My own wife's life was saved when a doctor overruled the arrogant idiot who was treating her, thank God. I met an old freind a couple of weeks ago who I'm pretty sure is going to die soon, largely due to his misplaced trust in his arrogant moron of a GP.
Trust is a big deal. When misplaced, it can kill. But, even when it doesn't, breach of trust has a knock-on effect: if a patient has plenty of experience of untrustworthy doctors, they will cease to trust the medical profession as a whole, and so will avoid perfectly good doctors in future. Thus, having a run-in with an untrustworthy doctor in 1980 can lead to your death in 2020. This happens. Speak to people who go see alternative quacks instead of doctors: they're not all just delusional; plenty of them avoid conventional medicine because they've learnt the hard way that its practitioners are not to be trusted. Which is why crowing at them that it's "evidence-based" has no effect. This being the case, it is obviously in the interests of the medical profession to purge themselves of anyone untrustworthy.
For me, this plagiarism is indicative of arrogance; of contempt for rules and a readiness to lie. In the UK, for better or worse, we have a breezy laugh-it-off attitude to speeding tickets, and so you don't need to be particularly arrogant or contemptful of socety at large to get one -- which is why you bring it up as an example, of course. But it does depend. 35 in a 30 zone? Who cares? 60 in a 30 zone? Yes, strike the bastard off.
@Squander Two:
"Contrary to what a lot of people commenting here think, it's not medical knowledge that's the clincher. A doctor who doesn't understand what's wrong with you can still be brilliant if they acknowledge that they don't know and so defer to another doctor. The big problem you run into with doctors -- the problem that can kill you all too quickly -- is arrogance."
It isn't just doctors - anyone you deal with that is confident enough to say "I don't know, but I do know how to find out" is worth their weight in gold, whether it is your local shopkeeper or a professional. The problem is, as I was once seriously asked by a surgeon, "If I'm going to be cutting you open and rummaging about in your insides, do you want me to come into the room with confidence bordering on arrogance or do you want me to tell you all the times I've had things go awry?" The point is, most of us want the people with our lives in their hands to appear more godlike than human. However, a little humility helps to temper that - the surgeon that failed to act appropriately to save my father's life was retired early as a result of our complaint about his offhand manner when we praised the care but asked why he wasn't transferred to the local centre of excellence. Had he said "I made a mistake" he wouldn't have triggered he investigation that showed he had not followed best practice in his treatment ...
"When they're not sure what's wrong with you but would never admit that, when they're sure that their years of experience mean they can just tell what's wrong with you and so they don't need no stinking tests, when they don't listen to their patients because they know better than some unqualified hypochondriac pleb, when, in short, they are convinced of their own brilliance: that's when you need to get the hell out and find another doctor, urgently. Not that you always have that option. Read the headlines: this is what a large proportion of malpractice and wrongful death cases boil down to. "My husband had brain cancer but his doctor told him to take an aspirin.""
Yes, but the medical training system leads to this. The concept of the differential diagnosis, which essentially places a premium on the most probable cause for any given symptoms, means that an atypical presentation will not necessarily lead to a correct diagnosis. The only option is to send anyone that complains of e.g. recurrent headaches immediately for a brain scan (which might not pick up the problem anyway), instead of suggesting that a trip to the optician is a good idea (which is more likely to pick up the problem).
"Speak to people who go see alternative quacks instead of doctors: they're not all just delusional; plenty of them avoid conventional medicine because they've learnt the hard way that its practitioners are not to be trusted."
We have a difference of opinion about the level of delusion of people that go to unlicenced, unregulated, and/or openly fraudulent "alternative" practitioners. The only way they might be considered to be better off is that they possibly don't risk side-effects from non-active substances. What these doctors have done is make the best available information easy to access for practitioners, thus making it less, rather than more, likely that mistakes will occur. Otherwise, people believing in "woo-medicine" are totally delusional.
"For me, this plagiarism is indicative of arrogance; of contempt for rules and a readiness to lie."
To be fair, my fairly extensive experience of doctors is that they think plagiarism is restricted to cheating in exams. Copyright means as little to them as it does to the average person that downloads music from unofficial sources. You are holding them to higher level of knowledge than they have. That the authors and publisher of the book didn't think of this shows greed and untrustworthiness that concern me far more than the actions of the people that wrote the app.
"But it does depend. 35 in a 30 zone? Who cares? 60 in a 30 zone? Yes, strike the bastard off."
No, it depends on a lot more - had he taken account of all considerations? What was the time and what were the road conditions? Why was he speeding? Was there an emergency situation? 60 in a 30 zone in a heavily built up area with children crossing the road to go to school isn't ever safe (despite the way some of the plod drive when it suits them), but it might be at 4am. Context is all.
Intractable Potsherd,
> The problem is, as I was once seriously asked by a surgeon, "If I'm going to be cutting you open and rummaging about in your insides, do you want me to come into the room with confidence bordering on arrogance or do you want me to tell you all the times I've had things go awry?" The point is, most of us want the people with our lives in their hands to appear more godlike than human.
Agreed, but there's a difference between how they appear and what they actually do. No matter how confidently we might want our surgeon to behave, we wouldn't want them to be opening us up without first getting us X-rayed or scanned because they're so brilliant they don't need to. Of course, surgeons never do this (except on the battlefield), but there are plenty of people who never get to the surgeon in time because other doctors have such faith in their own diagnostic intuition that they don't bother with tests.
Airline pilots are trained to appear arrogant for the same reason: to give passengers confidence. The way they sound rather bored over the tannoy is something they're taught, to convey the impression that they could fly a plane in their sleep. But they don't fall for the bullshit themselves to the extent of refusing to listen to air traffic control and not looking at any of the instruments.
> Yes, but the medical training system leads to this. The concept of the differential diagnosis, which essentially places a premium on the most probable cause for any given symptoms, means that an atypical presentation will not necessarily lead to a correct diagnosis.
True, the first time. The problem with medical arrogance is that this still happens when the patient is coming back for the eighth time after being unsuccessfully treated by everyone else -- or even coming back with a previously correctly diagnosed condition, fully explained in their notes, which the doctor chooses to ignore because they're too damn brilliant to need to read other doctors' notes. I've seen that first hand more than once.
I think people who haven't been at the sharp end drastically underestimate the damage done to the reputation of the profession by arrogance. I can see why the GMC would come down like a ton of bricks on any case like this they came across, even if it might look like an overreaction to some of us outsiders.
"If a patient has plenty of experience of untrustworthy doctors, they will cease to trust the medical profession as a whole, and so will avoid perfectly good doctors in future. Thus, having a run-in with an untrustworthy doctor in 1980 can lead to your death in 2020"
Yup. My old doctor was not good. I don't have much experience with my new doctor, but since my mother had an allergic reaction to a medicine and he went and prescribed the exact same thing under a different name, I have little trust in him.
I will visit my doctor when it is a choice between seeing him or going to emergency.
Fail icon: him, and me :-)
>Would a doctor who receives a speeding ticket also be struck off?
Honesty offences are treated differently than violence offences, are treated differently than traffic offences. This is not just medicine: there are a lot of jobs you can't get (storeman, shop assistant, lawyer, etc) if you have a dishonesty offence record.
I don't know if they will be struck off for this offence, but falsely claiming that you wrote a "Guide to Critical Appraisal" seems to me to be very close to falsely claiming that you know something about medicine.
I think I would be very worried about being treated by a surgeon who had a record of lying about his qualifications. Or a critical-care doctor who I knew had lied about how much he knows about critical-care.
It is a little worrying that you cant have an app like this because someone wrote it in a book first.
I somehow doubt the authors of the book wrote it completely off their own backs - they have taken standard best practices used across the world and written them down but I doubt if they can be said to own them in any real sense of the word.
There may be a technical breach of copyright but then there is fair use and its not like the original authors tried to patent the methods.
The authors should put out a free app for android.
It is a little worrying that you cant have an app like this because someone wrote it in a book first.
It certainly would be, if that were the case. But that's clearly not what's going on here.
The allegation is that specific substantial parts were copied without permission or attribution. In other words, creating an app like this is probably fine, so long as the content is original, or proper permission is granted and credit given for copied content. That's pretty much how copyright works in every industry.
I somehow doubt the authors of the book wrote it completely off their own backs - they have taken standard best practices used across the world and written them down but I doubt if they can be said to own them in any real sense of the word.
AIUIBIANALSTWAGOS, recipes in the US are not eligible for copyright, but collections thereof are -- the creative part being considered the selection and organization of the recipes. This might be considered a reasonable parallel to a selection and organization of standard practices. If that is what was copied for the app, I can see a case.
If these three fine upstanding British gentlemen are struck off, they can just pack their bags, move to Ireland or Holland and apply to practice medicine there. Job's a good 'un.
The EU needs a pan-european database of medical practitioners to prevent jokers like these from practicing medicine in any EU country.
Not just the EU, but the civilised world. There have been cases of doctors struck off for malpractice in other countries (I remember one case from Canada) subsequently getting jobs in the NHS. And then committing malpractice again. And only then having their original case discovered.
"The EU needs a pan-european database of medical practitioners to prevent jokers like these from practicing medicine in any EU country."
YESSSS Let's DESTROY them!!! Make it so they can NEVER threaten human civilisation in this way again!! Plagiarism is EXACTLY THE SAME as murdering 250 people like Shipman did!!!
Except wait, it's not the same thing at all, is it. Silly me.
Destroy their careers and livelihoods because they wrote an app which allegedly plagiarised somebody elses' work - if this is your idea of justice then I hope and pray you never end up on a jury.
Absolute last comment on the matter now, but the reason why Shipman was able to kill so many was not because he was trusted, but because a systemic failure to apply checks and balances meant that he was simply left to his own devices. In actual fact he WASN'T trusted; during the inquiry there were many examples of patients, relatives of patients and staff members who had raised serious concerns, but these were ignored as 'yellow' flags as opposed to 'red' flags. The problem was that nobody was paying attention to the sheer number of 'yellow' flags which were being raised.
It was only after he tried to falsify somebody's will, a genuine red flag, (and the forgery was detected) that he was investigated, and after his conviction a number of structural changes were made to reduce the likelihood of this happening again.
> he was simply left to his own devices.
Or, as it is otherwise known, trusted. I didn't say he was trusted by everyone. But, had he not been trusted by anyone, he would have been stopped much earlier.
> In actual fact he WASN'T trusted
Nonsense. He was trusted to treat patients. Had he not been, he couldn't have killed them. Patients trusted him enough to let him into their houses without anyone else there to witness his actions. His bosses trusted him enough to let him practise as a GP.
Now, you might argue that a lot of his patients were wary of Shipman the individual but trusted his official status as a GP, his badge of office, so to speak. And you might be right. But that, of course, is exactly the problem, and the very reason why the GMC believe it so important to purge the untrustworthy from their ranks. Either we trust the profession because they deserve it or we don't because they don't; the middle ground, where we trust them when they don't deserve it, is dangerous.
YESSSS Let's DESTROY them!!! Make it so they can NEVER threaten human civilisation in this way again!! Plagiarism is EXACTLY THE SAME as murdering 250 people like Shipman did!!!
Except wait, it's not the same thing at all, is it. Silly me.
Bit of a logic fail on your behalf.
Doctors are quite rightly held to a much much higher moral standard than the rest of us mere mortals, and quite rightly so.
If some fucker's willing to write fake reviews (and pass off somebody else's work as his own) in the pursuit of money, what's to say he wouldn't accept money from your wife to smother you with a pillow next time you're in hospital?
>The EU needs a pan-european database of medical practitioners to prevent jokers lik
You can, and should, require references before handing any person any responsible job requiring experience.
The failure of medical administrators to do basic background checks in Aus. had lead to several medical misadventures.
But it's not through lack of a pan-global-NSA-everything-about-you-database. They hired desperate doctors because they didn't have enough money to hire anybody but the desperate. And they wouldn't admit it because part of their job remit is to avoid political problems.
I am a physician (Iimagine one of the few who frequent this site). I practice in Canada, but we have a similar governing body in our jurisdiction. I don't know the precise rules for this kind of scenario, but I pretty sure anyone who had this type of complaint made against him or her would be sanctioned by the college. A first offence would likely involve a formal reprimand, and a mandatory ethics at one's own expense. Of course, these individuals may still face a separate copyright infringement court case.
Yes, but to me the case should come first. A finding by the GMC against them will be prejudicial to any legal case brought, especially if there is a jury. This is definitely the wrong way round, since it does not in any way affect patient care, no-one will die or become disabled as a result of their actions, and so there is absolutely no urgency at all.