Deliberate malfeasance or innocent error? Misrepresentation in pain medicine fellowship applications.

Abstract

The phenomenon of misrepresentation of academic performance and scholarly activity should be of great interest to program directors and those who recruit physicians into academic or private practice. Misrepresentation of publication authorship in post-graduate training program applications has been reported in several previous studies, with an average incidence of 14% across medical specialties ⇓. Although misrepresentation may result from innocent error, admittedly, deliberate or fraudulent misrepresentation does occur. In this issue of Pain Medicine, Thompson et al. present their analysis of applications to a single ACGME-accredited Multidisciplinary Pain Medicine fellowship program in the Midwest over a three-year period. They cite a 5.3% rate of deliberate misrepresentation in publication authorship by fellowship applicants in this study. On further examination, a rate of deliberate misrepresentation of 12.5% was noted in fellowship applicants from fields other than anesthesiology and physiatry. There was no difference in the rate of …