Witness an example now threatening to emerge from the Medical University of Innsbruck, where there are worrying signs that investigations into a scandal of unprecedented dimensions in this small country may be thwarted.

According to a report from the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, a urologist at the university, Hannes Strasser, has conducted a high-profile clinical trial so inappropriately that it must be considered entirely invalid (see page 922). Moreover, that trial represents just a fraction of the total number of patients who paid handsomely for the stem-cell treatment for urinary incontinence without knowing it was experimental.

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Austria is a small country, and networks between power-brokers are small and tight. But something, it seems, is rotten in the state of Austria, and it needs to be faced and dealt with openly.