The disputed journal article was written by a former Army orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Timothy R. Kuklo, who is now a medical professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Kuklo, the investigation found, forged the signatures of Dr. Andersen and other Army doctors on his study and never showed it to them before it was published.

The British journal that published Dr. Kuklo’s study retracted it in March and has banned him from its pages. His future at Washington University will very likely be determined by an inquiry the medical school is said to be conducting. University officials declined to comment for this article.

The Walter Reed episode also shows how medical journals may fail to conduct adequate due diligence on the studies they publish  information that other doctors rely on for guidance. As happened in the Kuklo case, for example, they often deal only with a study’s principal author, rather than all the credited contributors. In his study, Dr. Kuklo, who has not responded to repeated interview requests, reported that a bone-growth product sold by Medtronic, called Infuse, performed “strikingly” better than the traditional bone-grafting technique used to heal soldiers’ shattered shin bones. Other Walter Reed doctors told an Army investigator that claim was overblown.

Medtronic financed some of Dr. Kuklo’s research and travel while he was at Walter Reed and hired him as a consultant in August 2006 when he took his current academic post. But Dr. Kuklo did not disclose his Medtronic relationship in the journal article, which was published in August 2008.

Medtronic has declined to provide the financial details of its relationship with Dr. Kuklo, although the company said Friday that it planned to provide some of that information next week to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who is investigating the matter.