Didier Raoult and the IHU of Marseille targeted by a new investigation into ethical breaches

No respite for Didier Raoult and the University Hospital Institute of Infectious Diseases of Marseille (IHU). If the former director of the hospital was already banned from practicing medicine for two years, he is now being questioned by an international team of nine scientists. In an investigation published on August 12 in the journal Research Integrity and Peer Review, spotted by Le Parisien, they report “ethical and legal” problems in the articles published by Didier Raoult and his team, between 1994 and 2024.

Serious failings

Out of 2,674 publications, 853 present these discrepancies. We note in particular an absence of authorizations required by law. Thus “343 do not mention local approvals”, “194 describe research carried out abroad without mention of local approvals” or even “426 describe sample collection from healthy volunteers”. Shortcomings that go back well before the creation of the IHU, in 2011.

Fabrice Franck, computer scientist who signed the analysis, indicated to Le Parisien that “for around twenty studies”, the IHU provided them with justifications which they “found legitimate”. He continues: “But the number of problematic studies we have identified is monstrously enormous. » He points out a discrepancy between the samples announced in some of these studies, and those ultimately used. “Sometimes we don’t even know what type of sample was taken,” notes Fabrice Franck.

“Wasted” money

As L'Express notes, Didier Raoult is co-author of 758 of these contentious articles. Lonni Besançon, researcher at Linköping University in Sweden and also a signatory of the scientific investigation, assures the weekly that the bad practices of the IHU have led to “wasting” millions of euros of funds devoted to research. It also calls into question the teaching conditions of the establishment.