Poldermans misconduct report finds lack of patient consent, sloppy data collection and data fabrication

November 21, 2011

Over the weekend Erasmus University published their executive summary (in Dutch) of the investigation which resulted in the dismissal of Professor Don Poldermans. The investigation commission included members from Erasmus, Leiden and Amsterdam Medical Centres.

Prof. Dr. P.J. van der Maas, former dean of Erasmus MC (Chair)
Prof. Dr. B. Löwenberg, Emeritus Professor of Hematology, Erasmus MC
Prof. Dr. R.J.G. Peters, Professor of Cardiology, Amsterdam MC
Prof. Dr. A.J. Rabelink, Professor of Internal Medicine, Leiden UMC
Mr. J.M. Oosting, head of Legal Affairs, Erasmus MC
Administrative support is provided by Dr. RE Juttmann and Dr. R.M. Struhkamp.
Poldermans was the leader of the Dutch Echocardiographic Cardiac Risk Evaluation Applying Stress Echocardiography (DECREASE) studies:

DECREASE I: In high-risk patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery, perioperative beta-blockade with bisoprolol significantly reduces cardiac death and MI in the short- and long-term

DECREASE II: Patients identified as intermediate risk on the basis of a simple clinical assessment do not need pre-operative echocardiographic cardiac stress testing, provided that they receive bisoprolol to maintain resting heart rate at 60–65 b.p.m.

DECREASE III: In high-risk patients undergoing major vascular surgery, fluvastatin XL significantly reduces myocardial ischaemia and the combined endpoint of cardiovascular death and MI

DECREASE IV: In intermediate-risk patients, bisoprolol significantly reduces cardiac death and MI, with a non-significant trend towards a beneficial effect of fluvastatin XL

DECREASE V: In high-risk patients with extensive stress-induced ischaemia, coronary revascularization (added to tight heart rate control with bisoprolol) does not produce any additional reduction in death and MI and delays surgery.

 DECREASE VI: is a trial for testing NT-proBNP for the evaluation of cardiac risk in patients undergoing vascular surgery.

The investigation concluded that there were serious deficiencies in getting patients’ consent for inclusion in the studies, that data collection was sloppy and that data was fabricated. However no patients were harmed. Data manipulation was not found. The responsibility for the misconduct was that of the Professor Poldermans and not of any of the other researchers. The Commission found several serious errors and protocol violations in the D2 and D6 studies and possibly in D4. Evidence of data fabrication was found in submitted abstracts for the D6 study (not published).

The D6 study sponsored by Roche Diagnostics is to be discontinued.

The Commission believes that the Journal which published the D2 study should be informed (The Journal of the American College of Cardiology) but that retraction of the publications was not needed.

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Zu Guttenberg starts his public comeback

November 20, 2011

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is serving his self-imposed 2 year exile on the other side of the Atlantic. But he is beginning the process of his own rehabilitation in the public eye. He seems to have subtly changed his look – probably part of a determined effort to create a new “cleaner” image.

Deutsche Welle:

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg

Guttenberg's developed a new look, sans glasses and hair gel: Deutsche Welle

Germany’s disgraced former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has returned to the political stage, albeit far away in Canada. After the dodgy doctorate debacle, is this the first sign of a comeback? …

Guttenberg, sporting a new look at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada, was referred to as “the honorable Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, distinguished statesman, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)” when introduced to the audience of some 300 people. Guttenberg moved to the US with his family in the summer, and works at CSIS, a think tank based in Washington.

….. Guttenberg’s doctoral title has since been revoked by the University of Bayreuth, and he may yet face trial on charges of violations of copyright law in writing his thesis. The former defense minister did not speak to journalists on the sidelines of the forum.

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BBC has been just a lobby group for global warming since 2006

November 20, 2011
BBC journalist Roger Harrabin

The less than objective “reporting” on global warming from the BBC was always fairly obvious but the role of Roger Harrabin, one of its senior environmental correspondents in driving that policy is now becoming clear. Christopher Booker has a long article in The Telegraph:

The BBC’s hidden ‘warmist’ agenda is rapidly unravelling 

Since 2006, the BBC has relentlessly promoted the global warming orthodoxy as a pressure group in its own right.

The story of the BBC’s bias on global warming gets ever murkier. Last week there was quite a stir over a new report for the BBC Trust which criticised several programmes for having been improperly funded or sponsored by outside bodies. One, for instance, lauded the work of Envirotrade, a Mauritius-based firm cashing in on the global warming scare by selling “carbon offsets”, which it turned out had given the BBC money to make the programme. ……

….

The irony is, however, that just as the BBC adopted its new hard line on climate change, in the real world the story was beginning to shift. Ever more searching questions have come to be asked about the supposed “consensus” on man-made warming, and the BBC’s coverage has come to look ever more one-sidedly absurd.

Last week, even Richard Black, another BBC proselytiser for man-made warming, was gloomily having to reveal the conclusion of a new IPCC report: that, over the next few decades, “climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variabilty”. In plain English, that means the great scare story is over. What a shame. But at what a price. …

Meanwhile the Daily Mail carries the following headline:

(Update! The Daily Mail article has been removed but has been reported here).

(Update 2! The Daily Mail article has now been restored)

BBC’s Mr Climate Change accepted £15,000 in grants from university rocked by global warning scandal

Alarmism is lucrative.

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Men Wanted

November 18, 2011

I had not seen this before but a classic if ever there was one.

Men wanted from 1913

Shackleton is said to have received 5,000 applications and his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition expedition finally consisted of 56 men with 28 on each of two ships.

 

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New tests support previous result of faster than light neutrinos

November 18, 2011

The CERN results in September indicating faster than light neutrinos have stood up to one set of tests to check the result.

Reuters:

The new experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory, using a neutrino beam from CERN in Switzerland, 720 km (450 miles) away, was held to check findings in September by a team of scientists which were greeted with some skepticism. Scientists at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) said in a statement on Friday that their new tests aimed to exclude one potential systematic effect that may have affected the original measurement. ….

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Padre Pio and religious misconduct

November 17, 2011

Perhaps there has to be a process for retracting sainthoods in cases of religious misconduct?

A new book by Italian historian Professor Sergio Luzzatto suggests that Padre Pio’s stigmata were a fraud and the result of using carbolic acid.

Padre Pio's stigmata are being called into question (Photo: AP)

The Telegraph:

Did Padre Pio fake his stigmata with carbolic acid? That’s the claim made by Italian historian Professor Sergio Luzzatto, who says he has discovered documents including a letter from a pharmacist who supplied carbolic acid for Pio, canonised by Pope John Paul in 2002. The professor has made this claim before, drawing the following reply from the Catholic Anti-Defamation League: “We would like to remind Mr Luzzatto that according to Catholic doctrine, canonisation carries with it papal infallibility. We would like to suggest to Mr Luzzatto that he dedicates his energies to studying religion properly.“

The doctrine of papal infallibility indeed.

The Catholic church and its own priests have done more to defame Catholicism than anybody else in recent times.

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Posted in Fraud, Religious misconduct | 1 Comment »

Erasmus University, Rotterdam sacks Professor of cardio-vascular medicine for scientific misconduct

November 17, 2011
Don Poldermans

Don Poldermans

Universities in Holland are having a torrid time with another dismissal for scientific misconduct, this time at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. But the seriousness with which investigations are carried out and the speed and decisiveness with which Dutch Universities act is quite impressive.

Professor Don Poldermans, MD, PhD, is was  Professor of Medicine and head of the section perioperative cardiac care of the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Dr Poldermans received his medical degree at the Erasmus Medical Centre in 1981. He is a fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and an honorary member of the Dutch Society of Anesthesiology. He is active within the Departments of Anesthesiology, Internal Medicine, and Surgery of the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Dr Poldermans is actively involved in patient care, education, research, and administration. He supervised 26 PhD students, all working on cardiovascular research. He has published more than 600 manuscripts in several peer-reviewed Journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Circulation, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Dutch News:

Erasmus University in Rotterdam has sacked a professor in cardio-vascular medicine for damaging the institution’s academic integrity and for ‘scientific misconduct’, the NRC  reports on Thursday.

The professor is accused of faking academic data and compromising patient trust, the paper says. In particular, he failed to obtain patient consent for carrying out research and recorded results ‘which cannot be resolved to patient information,’ the university said.

Don Poldermans has spent years researching the risk of complications during cardio-vascular surgery and has some 500 publications to his name.

A spokesman for Poldermans told the paper he admitted not keeping to research protocols but denied faking data.

Last month, Tilburg and Groningen universities said they planned to take legal action against behavioural science professor Diederik Stapel after an investigation showed he had faked research data in at least 30 scientific papers.

According to Elsevier, an investigation committee brought the fraud to light. It found that Poldermans had taken blood samples and heart echoes from patients without their permisssion and has reported results which cannot be traced to any patient.
“Patients were not physically harmed,” emphasizes Dean and Director Huib Pols. He said he was deeply shocked by the case. Patients who participated in the latest survey receive a letter of apology from the hospital.
Related: Diedrik Stapel faked at least 30 papers

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Medicine, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »

Inspector General finds that Department of the Interior manipulated a scientific report to fit a political agenda

November 17, 2011

The US Inspector General has issued a report of an investigation into how the Department of the Interior manipulated and altered a 30-day report from the National Academy of Engineers. It was in response to the explosion of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20th 2010, that the Department of the Interior declared a moratorium on deepwater drilling, which it extended for six months on  May 27th claiming support from the 30 day report. But the executive summary implied – falsely – that the moratorium decision had been peer-reviewed by the National Association of Engineers. The President’s Climate Change Advisor Carol Browner was the key figure involved in altering the language to make the false implication.

What is disturbing is not that politicians make political decisions but it is their cowardice in standing for their own views when they distort and manipulate what professional engineers and scientists say to imply – falsely – that there is objective support for their views.

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Now Holland cannot afford to subsidise off-shore wind power

November 17, 2011

Most subsidies for the introduction of  uneconomic technologies are in an effort to make them commercially viable. But after 30+ years in the power generation industry I have yet to see a case where this has happened. Instead, subsidies have nearly always been counter-productive. In virtually every case I have seen, subsidies have always been used first to maintain margins rather than to reduce costs. If costs are not reduced then the “indirect” costs for every taxpayer which a subsidy represents eventually end up becoming direct costs for the consumer when the subsidies end.

This is happening to an increasing extent with solar and wind power as subsidies are reduced or withdrawn in the current financial crisis. The costs have then to be borne directly by the consumers and it is not surprising that virtually all countries which have introduced wind power to any extent have seen electricity prices to the consumer increase.

Now it is the turn of the Dutch government to reduce subsidies and pass on the costs directly to consumers.

Reuters reports:

Dutch fall out of love with windmills

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Supposedly unbiased programs at the BBC were sponsored for millions by vested interests!

November 15, 2011

Many supposedly unbiased, objective BBC documentary programs have been sponsored by vested interests.

Programs about development were sponsored by the Malaysian government to the tune of £17 million. During the Arab spring a program was sponsored by Mubarak’s government. Another program about climate change was sponsored by Envirotrade – a carbon trading company based safely for taxes in Mauritius.  The BBC’s alarmist bias about climate change is notorious but sponsorship by organisations making millions from carbon trading goes a long way to explaining their “objectivity”. The broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, is to investigate.

One media company which made partisan programs for the BBC, FBC Media (UK), has gone into administration. “FBC, incorporated in 1998, was a vehicle for high-profile figures led by founder and chairman Alan Friedman.”

The Independent:

The BBC has owned up to a “nominal fee” programming scandal in which viewers of 15 editorial programmes were hoodwinked by “serious” conflicts of interest of programme makers and a failure to declare that documentaries had outside sponsors.

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