The fraudulent research which led to an Erasmus University professor being sacked last year was more serious than originally thought, the NRC reports on Tuesday.

The paper says the teaching hospital professor, Don Poldermans, wrote other academic papers based on made-up patient details. In one study, three patients had not even had operations in the hospital, the Volkskrant says, quoting a report by the committee investigating the fraud.
Poldermans was sacked at the end of last year after another commission concluded he had made up research data.
Poldermans spent years researching the risk of complications during cardio-vascular surgery and has some 500 publications to his name. He denies faking data and says the commission’s conclusions are either demonstrably wrong or based on speculation and one-sided witness statements.