A PROFESSOR whose sloppy preparation of a research report landed him in hot water during a court case last month will have his future considered by Glasgow University chiefs next week.
An inquiry by a panel of experts cleared Professor Peter Behan of intent to deceive when he prepared the study on the effects of organophosphate poisoning.
However, they said that the mistakes introduced into the research papers were the result of lack of attention to detail in their preparation, and that, in particular, his use of statistics and his reference to control groups used in different studies were inaccurate.
A university spokesman said that the Clerk of Senate had passed the panel's report to the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Professor Brian Whiting, to consider what lessons could be drawn from the case, and to consider Professor Behan's future role in the Faculty.
The errors came to light when Professor Behan, a neurologist based at the Institute of Neurological Sciences at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, was appearing as an expert witness at the High Court in London last month in a case involving a farm worker who was suing his employers over alleged exposure to organophosphate sheep-dip.
The paper cited by Professor Behan compared the results of tests on 10 farm workers exposed to organophosphates with results from ''10 healthy males'' used as controls.
However, he admitted under cross-examination that the controls were in fact 15 men and 15 women, all hospital staff being used as controls for another test, for a PhD thesis by a lecturer in his department.
But he said the discrepancy was not deliberate, and pointed out that the results would have been even more pronounced if the controls had all been men.
''Borrowing'' control group data from previous studies or existing records is an accepted practice so long as their status is made explicit in the research report and they are statistically sound. They are normally expected to be matched for age, sex, and other factors which may have a bearing on whether they make for a valid comparison.
The obvious discrepancy in this case was that some of the real controls were women while the patient group was all male, though ironically - as Professor Behan pointed out - this diluted rather than exaggerated his findings.
The inquiry panel was chaired by Professor Keith van Rijsbergen, from the Department of Computing Science, and also included Professor Fraser Davidson (Law), Professor Rona MacKie (Dermatology) and Mr Peter Breeze (Department of Statistics).
The inquiry was not a disciplinary inquiry and was set up to establish the facts. But Professor Behan, already regarded by colleagues as something of a maverick, may come under peer-group pressure to consider early retirement.
He is associated with pioneering work linking organophosphate poisoning with chronic fatigue syndrome - the illness suffered by the litigant in the court case - and had already conducted unchallenged research on similar lines to the study that became unravelled during his testimony.
Perhaps the most controversial episode in his career was his declaration last year that a 15-year-old girl patient was a victim of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease brought on by eating hamburgers.
He based this on a test developed in America whose validity had not been established, and his diagnosis has been repudiated by the head of his hospital department. The girl, meanwhile, has conspicuously failed to succumb to the disease, left hospital a year ago, and has returned to school.
Professor Behan was not available for comment last night.
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