Article content continued

The news comes on the heels of a new Canadian study that appears to highlight the fierce competition to get into a desired residency.

Nearly one in four medical graduates who claimed they had been published in a peer-reviewed journal actually misrepresented that research history, the study found. Some graduates cited journal papers that did not exist, articles they did not author or ones where their contribution was less significant than advertised, it found.

It was a surprise and a concern that so many applicants for popular spots may have padded their resumes, said Dr. Lily Nguyen of McGill University, an ear, nose and throat specialist who headed the study.

The competitive programs are the ones where everyone has good reference letters, everyone has good dean’s letters

It could also be a sign of just how intensely graduates fight for what are considered the best – or the rarest — residency positions, Nguyen said.

If administrators are seeking “the top of the top of the top” to be their residents, they look beyond just marks, she said.

“The competitive programs are the ones where everyone has good reference letters, everyone has good dean’s letters,” Nguyen said. “So one objective way to be able to distinguish between students is to look at the quality and quantity of their academic publications.”

The study examined 182 applicants to otolaryngology – earn, nose and throat — programs across the country, from 2006 to 2008. Of the group, 124 claimed to be authors on a published research paper. And 24 per cent of those had misrepresented their publication history, said the study in the journal Medical Education.

However, the researchers were not able to check why the misrepresentations occurred, and admitted that in some cases students may simply have been confused about their participation – or lack thereof — in a study.

Honesty in any profession is crucial and deliberately padding a CV is unacceptable, Moineau said. But she stressed that it may have been an honest mistake in some instances, and that other research has found a high rate of misrepresentation on resumes among the general population.

National Post

tblackwell@nationalpost.com