The leader of the epidemiology division at Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Camilla Stoltenberg, found the article suspicious at the end of 2005 because the data was supposedly from a cancer patient database which had not yet opened.
An independent Commission of Inquiry led by Swedish Professor Anders Ekbom, that also included a member from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, was set up by Rikshospitalet and the University of Oslo to discern the details of the fraud.
[9] The commission deemed much of Sudbø's work invalid because of manipulation and fabrication of raw data: of the 38 articles he had published since 1993, 15 were condemned as fraudulent, including his doctoral dissertation.
The commission found no evidence that any of his co-authors had taken part in the fraud or otherwise been party to the deceit, although Sudbø's supervisor accepted criticism for lack of vigilance and follow-up.
[12] Rikshospitalet and the University were both criticized for "a lack of preliminary control and organization with a view to the researcher's [Sudbø's] PhD project".
[14] Norway's scientific reputation could also be damaged by the affair, and "massive lawsuits" may be imminent from the national and international organisations that funded Sudbø's fraudulent papers.
[15] Dr. Atle Klovning, a leading European authority on evidence-based medicine, said in the article that Sudbø's co-authors had probably not lived up to their responsibilities according to the Vancouver rules.