As I was first to report in 2007, Merck and then-partner Schering-Plough delayed analyzing the study, called ENHANCE, for months over what they believed were dataqualityproblems.
One of the worst cases occurred in September 2004 when the tiny biotech firm Atherogenics had to call in Nissen to help reinterpret results of a troubled IVUS study that suffered from dataqualityproblems.
They said they didn't like how the big consulting firms outsourced much of their research to third parties, which created dataquality control problems.