LONDON, Sep 18 (Reuters Health) - Leading figures from Britain's medical royal colleges called on Tuesday for a new body to be set up to stamp out fraud and misconduct in biomedical research studies.

Writing in the Proceedings of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, they said a government-funded National Panel for Research Integrity should be established to prevent and investigate research misconduct.

This would bring the UK in line with other countries such as the United States and Denmark, where procedures had already been tightened, and close the loophole by which the General Medical Council investigates suspected cases of deliberate research misconduct by doctors but not by others involved in the biomedical sciences.

The physicians pointed out that a recent international survey of biostatisticians found that 51% of respondents knew of fraudulent research projects including fabrication and falsification of data, deceptive reporting of results, suppression of data, and deceptive design and analysis.

They warned that non-intentional scientific misconduct by researchers almost certainly caused more harm to patients than deliberate deception and also needed to be tackled.

Professor Gordon Lowe, representing the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, said, "The medical royal colleges have developed debate around this subject, and this blueprint is the first stage in developing a model for a system which would allow health professionals and the public alike to have full confidence in the quality and standard of biomedical research in the UK."

Last week, more than a dozen leading medical journals announced they would refuse to print studies where pharmaceutical companies had sole control of trial data in order to prevent biased reporting.