A high-profile scientist who spearheaded a campaign on medical research has admitted to fabricating research published in two international journals.

A number of papers written by Dr Anna Ahimastos have been withdrawn from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and a journal published by the American Heart Association.

Dr Ahimastos was working for Melbourne's prestigious Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute at the time.

She has admitted to making up some of the data in the study, and has resigned.

The paper looked at whether Ramipril or Prilace, a well-known blood pressure drug, could help people with peripheral artery disease to walk pain free.

The study had found that after almost six months on the drug, patients could walk without pain for maximum periods of time on a treadmill.

Two journals, JAMA and Circulation Research, both said the paper was retracted after an internal analysis by Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute "revealed anomalies that triggered an investigation which resulted in an admission of fabricated results by Dr Ahimastos".

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Actions compromised study: Baker

Dr Bronwyn Kingwell, from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, said the organisation took action as soon as the fabrication came to light.

"Dr Ahimastos admitted to fabricating records for some patients," she said.

Specifically, Dr Ahimastos made up data about trial participants that did not exist.

"These actions compromised the overall findings of the study and so we moved quickly to correct the public record by retracting the relevant papers," Dr Kingwell said.

"The institute does take these matters very seriously and every effort has been made to correct the record and contact all affected parties as quickly as possible."

She said the main results from the retracted JAMA study had since been corroborated in a small clinical trial.

Dr Ahimastos is a member of the Australian Society for Medical Research and is involved in science communication.

She was also named a Tall Poppy — an Australian Institute of Policy and Science campaign which recognises scientific excellence — in Victoria in 2010.

According to Research Gate, Dr Ahimastos is listed as an author on 23 publications and the paper in question has been cited 35 times.

Dr Ahimastos did not respond to the ABC's inquiries.

Authors apologise, vow to strengthen audit procedures

A statement published in the two journals said Dr Ahimastos was solely responsible for data collection and integrity of the study.

"According to the institute's findings, no co-authors were involved in this misrepresentation," it stated.

"In addition, no data from the Townsville and Brisbane recruitment centres were included in this publication and data from those centres remains valid."

The authors of the paper have apologised and the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute has vowed to strengthen its governance and audit procedures to minimise the chance of it happening again.

'Publish-or-perish' research culture

Dr Virginia Barbour, the chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics, said while corrections were fairly common in academic journals, a full retraction of a paper was more rare.

"If you talk to academics nowadays, there is a real publish-or-perish culture," she said.

"A study in the UK last year found ... researchers explicitly said the pressure to publish led them to cut corners, which is a pretty alarming finding.

"We do feel one of the problems is that authors are pressured to publish, and publish in very high journals."

She said there were cases of substantial misconduct where grants had to be handed back.