cljanney
03-16-2009, 04:41 AM
http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2009/03/massive_academic_fraud_in_anes.php
Massive Academic Fraud in Anesthesia Research
Category: Medicine
Posted on: March 12, 2009 9:19 AM, by Mike Dunford
Several news agencies are reporting that a massive academic fraud case has surfaced. A single researcher apparently fabricated data used in the publication of at least 21 journal articles published over a 12-year period.
After an internal reviewer raised concerns, Baystate Medical Center conducted an investigation into research conducted by Dr. Scott S. Reuben, who was - at that time - the chief of their acute pain service. As the phrase "at that time" suggests, the results of the investigation did not exonerate Dr. Reuben. Anything but, in fact. In late January, Baystate sent out a letter to a number of journals recommending the retraction of articles, and Dr. Reuben is now reported to be on "medical leave".
I'll tack the full list of affected articles on the end of this post for those who are interested, but the problems go well beyond just those 21 papers. The extent of the revealed fraud will necessarily call into question all of the work that Reuben has ever published. Any other work - clinical protocols, published articles, ongoing research - that relies on the veracity of Reuben's articles will also need to be re-examined.
All academic misconduct is bad, but this particular case is particularly destructive. Dr. Reuben's work has served as the basis for the use of what's known as "multimodal anesthesia" - using a combination of NSAIDs and neuropathic pain medications after orthopedic and spinal operations instead of narcotics. This practice has become very common in the field, and the vast majority of the evidence-based support for these protocols no longer exists.
Anesthesiology News' report on the case provides a good description of the extent of the problem:
Jacques Chelly, MD, PhD, MBA, director of the Division of Regional Anesthesia and Acute Interventional Perioperative Pain at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), said that the Reuben episode has left multimodal analgesia "in shambles concerning many of the drugs we use"--particularly celecoxib and pregabalin. "The big chunk of what people have based their protocol on is gone."
In light of the situation and economic concerns, UPMC has stopped giving celecoxib and pregabalin to surgery patients "until we have some very formal evidence that we should do something else," Dr. Chelly said. "In this day and age, doing multimodal [therapy] is expensive. Any institution is going to look at evidence-based clinical decisions, and unless we have very strong data, it is a problem."
It appears that whatever Dr. Reuben's motives might have been, he may have received some financial benefits as a result of his work. Much of his research focused on the use of celecoxib and pregabalin instead of opiates. These two drugs are better-known as Celebrex and Lyrica, and both are manufactured by Pfizer. Pfizer provided Reuben with research grants from 2002 to 2007, and he was a member of their speakers' bureau.
Money - whatever the source - is a potential corruptive influence in science. Researchers who receive funding will have an incentive to make sure that the money keeps coming, no matter what the source of the funding might be. Most researchers - I hope and believe - will be able to resist any urges they might have to falsify their results in order to make themselves more attractive to funders. A few - hopefully, only a very, very few - will not. Fortunately, science is self-correcting - eventually.
Peer review, as it stands now, is not equipped to catch fraud. Reviewers necessarily start their work assuming that the actual data presented in the paper is real and accurate. There's no way they can reasonably be expected to do anything else. Any pre-publication attempt to catch fraud would require physically replicating some of the study, and that's expensive and time consuming. more....
Massive Academic Fraud in Anesthesia Research
Category: Medicine
Posted on: March 12, 2009 9:19 AM, by Mike Dunford
Several news agencies are reporting that a massive academic fraud case has surfaced. A single researcher apparently fabricated data used in the publication of at least 21 journal articles published over a 12-year period.
After an internal reviewer raised concerns, Baystate Medical Center conducted an investigation into research conducted by Dr. Scott S. Reuben, who was - at that time - the chief of their acute pain service. As the phrase "at that time" suggests, the results of the investigation did not exonerate Dr. Reuben. Anything but, in fact. In late January, Baystate sent out a letter to a number of journals recommending the retraction of articles, and Dr. Reuben is now reported to be on "medical leave".
I'll tack the full list of affected articles on the end of this post for those who are interested, but the problems go well beyond just those 21 papers. The extent of the revealed fraud will necessarily call into question all of the work that Reuben has ever published. Any other work - clinical protocols, published articles, ongoing research - that relies on the veracity of Reuben's articles will also need to be re-examined.
All academic misconduct is bad, but this particular case is particularly destructive. Dr. Reuben's work has served as the basis for the use of what's known as "multimodal anesthesia" - using a combination of NSAIDs and neuropathic pain medications after orthopedic and spinal operations instead of narcotics. This practice has become very common in the field, and the vast majority of the evidence-based support for these protocols no longer exists.
Anesthesiology News' report on the case provides a good description of the extent of the problem:
Jacques Chelly, MD, PhD, MBA, director of the Division of Regional Anesthesia and Acute Interventional Perioperative Pain at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), said that the Reuben episode has left multimodal analgesia "in shambles concerning many of the drugs we use"--particularly celecoxib and pregabalin. "The big chunk of what people have based their protocol on is gone."
In light of the situation and economic concerns, UPMC has stopped giving celecoxib and pregabalin to surgery patients "until we have some very formal evidence that we should do something else," Dr. Chelly said. "In this day and age, doing multimodal [therapy] is expensive. Any institution is going to look at evidence-based clinical decisions, and unless we have very strong data, it is a problem."
It appears that whatever Dr. Reuben's motives might have been, he may have received some financial benefits as a result of his work. Much of his research focused on the use of celecoxib and pregabalin instead of opiates. These two drugs are better-known as Celebrex and Lyrica, and both are manufactured by Pfizer. Pfizer provided Reuben with research grants from 2002 to 2007, and he was a member of their speakers' bureau.
Money - whatever the source - is a potential corruptive influence in science. Researchers who receive funding will have an incentive to make sure that the money keeps coming, no matter what the source of the funding might be. Most researchers - I hope and believe - will be able to resist any urges they might have to falsify their results in order to make themselves more attractive to funders. A few - hopefully, only a very, very few - will not. Fortunately, science is self-correcting - eventually.
Peer review, as it stands now, is not equipped to catch fraud. Reviewers necessarily start their work assuming that the actual data presented in the paper is real and accurate. There's no way they can reasonably be expected to do anything else. Any pre-publication attempt to catch fraud would require physically replicating some of the study, and that's expensive and time consuming. more....