Posts Tagged ‘ethics’
August 21, 2011
The Medtronic story is not just about ghost- writing and paying for favourable peer-reviewed scientific papers and supporting researchers to the tune of millions but it is also about all the surgeons in their pocket and how they exploit and “rape” Medicare.
Earl Stevens writes:
Norton Hospital in Louisville, Ky., may not be a household name nationally. But five senior spine surgeons have helped put it on the map in at least one category: From 2004 to 2008, Norton performed the third-most spinal fusions on Medicare patients in the country.
The five surgeons are also among the largest recipients nationwide of payments from medical-device giant Medtronic Inc. In the first nine months of this year alone, the surgeons — Steven Glassman, Mitchell Campbell, John Johnson, John Dimar and Rolando Puno — received more than $7 million from the Fridley, Minn., company. Medtronic and the surgeons say the payments are mostly royalties they earned for helping the company design one of its best-selling spine products.
Corporate whistleblowers and congressional critics contend such arrangements—which are common in orthopedic surgery—amount to kickbacks to stoke sales of medical devices. They argue that the overuse of surgical hardware ranging from heart stents to artificial hips is a big factor behind the soaring costs of Medicare, the government medical-insurance system for the elderly and disabled. ….
Using a Medicare database that tracks hospitals’ billing, The Wall Street Journal was able to ascertain that Norton is among the most aggressive practitioners of spinal fusion in the country.
Spinal fusion has become one of medicine’s most controversial procedures. It involves fusing together two or more vertebrae to alleviate back pain, usually with the help of metal plates, rods and screws implanted in the patient’s back. Tens of thousands of dollars of hardware can go into a single surgery. ….. Conservative spine surgeons argue that a spinal fusion is appropriate only for a small number of conditions, such as spinal instability, spinal fracture or a severe curvature of the spine known as scoliosis, and that financial incentives have caused the procedure to become overused. …
One health insurer, the nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, announced in September that it would stop paying for spine fusions performed on such patients beginning on Jan. 1. The insurer said that the procedures are “considered not medically necessary.” …
Some recent studies have suggested poor outcomes for spinal fusion.
So much for the Hippocratc Oath which requires “prescribing regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never doing harm to anyone“.
Related: Medtronics and others – “supporting doctors with multi – million dollar payments”
Tags:ethics, Medicare, Medtronic, Scientific misconduct, Spinal fusion, Spine Journal, surgeon kickbacks
Posted in Business, Ethics, Medicine, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Medtronic pays 5 surgeons $7m kickbacks in just 9 months: The rape of Medicare
August 7, 2011
The Sangiliyandi Gurunathan and Kalasalingam University story was covered by earlier posts here and here.
I have today received replies from the University and from the Society of Scientific Values reporting on the actions already taken. The head of Department – Sangiliyandi Gurunathan – had been instructed to and has resigned. Four students registered for a PhD have had their registrations cancelled. Pending PhD registrations for two further students have also been cancelled.
This is a remarkable, speedy and very commendable response from the Vice Chancellor Dr. S Radhakrishnan. In the Indian context (and perhaps in the context of any University) the speed and decisiveness is unprecedented and it gives me hope for the future of ethical and academic standards at Indian Universities.
Press Release (pdf) Kalasalingam release
The replies from Dr. Radhakrishnan, Vice Chancellor and from Prof. Chopra of the Society of Scientific Values to the mail I had sent to Chopra (copied to Radhakrishnan) follow:
| date |
 Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 8:13 AM |
| subject |
Re: Action taken by Kalasalingam University |
Dear Sir,
Please refer the attached pdf file regarding the action taken against Dr. G. Sangliyandi and the research scholars who are found to be involved in scientific misconduct (Image manipulation and the potential of scientific fraud)
Thanking you for bringing this issue to our notice immediately.
With Regards
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan
Vice-Chancellor
Kalasalingam University
Krishnankoil – 626 126
Tamilnadu INDIA
From SSV copied to me
Dear Prof Radhakrishnan:
On behalf of the Society for Scientific Values (SSV), I wish to thank you and congratulate you on taking a right and an exemplary decision on unethical practices by your colleague and students. We will post this news on our website as also in our next News&Views. Very rarely do VCs take such strong and correct action as you have done.
SSV will be very happy to join hands with your faculty colleagues to organise one day seminar on Ethical Values for S&T at your University at a mutually convenient date. Please do let me know.
Best wishes
Prof (Dr) K. L. Chopra (Padamshri)
FNA, FASc, FNASc, FNAE, D.Sc.(hc)
(Former Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur)
President, Society for Scientific Values
| date |
Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 9:32 PM |
| subject |
Wholesale retractions of papers at Kalasalingam University |
Dear Professor Chopra,
You will be aware of the wholesale findings of image manipulation in at least 8 papers from the Biotechnology Department of Kalasalingam University. Sangiliyandi Gurunathan is the primary investigator on these papers and the list of retracted papers which bear his name is now getting very long.
There seem to be two issues here:
1. the widespread manipulation of images and plagiarism by doctoral students, and
2. the lack of leadership and supervision which seems to encourage such scientific misconduct.
I draw your attention to:
Retraction Watch – Angiogenesis retracts two papers, cites image manipulation in eight, as PI blames unethical students
ktwop blog – At least 8 more papers from biotechnology department at Kalasalingam University manipulated as 2 are retracted.
I would hope that the Society for Scientific Values could conduct an investigation because something is seriously amiss at this university.
I have also copied this to Dr. S Radhakrisnan, Vice Chancellor since I have corresponded with him earlier (February 2011) about the earlier retraction of Sangiliyandi Gurunathan’s paper.
best regards
(ktwop)
Tags:Actions against scientific misconduct, Colleges and Universities, Dr. S Radhakrishnan, Education, ethics, Kalasalingam University, Sangiliyandi Gurunathan, Scientific misconduct, Society for Scientific Values
Posted in Ethics, India, Science, scientific misconduct | 6 Comments »
July 13, 2011
For the last 10 days the Rupert Murdoch / Rebekah Brookes/ NoTW scandal (broken by The Guardian and their intrepid reporter Nick Davies) has been raging in the UK. It is now a full grown 3-ring circus.
The story has all the ingredients of a new TV mini-series – a media tycoon, spineless politicians, amoral journalists, a red-headed siren, a multi-billion take-over bid, some corrupt policemen, some Clouseau-like investigators and a bunch of small-time criminals.
Yesterdays hearings of policemen at a House of Commons select committee was fascinating not just for the ineptness of the witnesses (with the exception of Sue Akers) but also for the smugness of the middle-aged, middle-class, self-righteous politicians putting the questions.
Making sense of the torrent of allegations now engulfing News Corp., its subsidiary News International and their newspapers is difficult. But Crikey has a good summary of events so far:
Closing down News of the World may have been James Murdoch’s second attempt at putting this problem “in a box”, but the allegations of phone hacking and criminal activity are now bleeding beyond the besmirched masthead, as British parliament calls for Rupert and James Murdoch and News International CEO Rebekah Brooks to front up to answer questions.
As News International continues to try to staunch the blood, now upgraded to a full blown haemorrhage, here’s a guide to the allegations thus far — where they’ve come from, and the subsequent response …
Read more
The story moves on into the House of Commons today…..
Tags:corruption, ethics, hacking scandal, News of the World, Nick Davies, Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch
Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Media | Comments Off on Rebekah in Murdoch’s wonderland: Hackers, blaggers, Clouseaus and dodgy geezers
June 29, 2011
Churnalism is a form of journalism in which press releases, wire stories and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media in order to meet increasing pressures of time and cost without undertaking further research or checking.
Now we have Johann Hari (who I had never heard of till yesterday) apparently just lifting the writings of people he has interviewed and reproducing them as if they were said to him. The Telegraph:
Johann Hari, a multiple award winning political journalist who writes for newspapers around the world, was exposed after a reader noticed that a quote in one of his stories had been cut and pasted from a book.
Such was the controversy that he was forced to respond in a personal blog, but his defence only further fuelled the intensity of the attacks against him.
Within 24 hours the discovery had sparked a massive backlash as other examples of his alleged plagiarism were uncovered.
On Twitter, the micro-blogging website, users posted a series of jokes in which famous sayings in history were re-created as if Mr Hari had been told them in intimate interviews, while blogs from rival journalists accusing him of so-called “churnalism”. ….
Calls also grew for him to hand back his George Orwell prize, the most prestigious in political journalism, while the Independent, his main newspaper, received demands that he should be sacked.
His reversal of fortunes has been dramatic. Just a few days ago Mr Hari remained the darling of the left wing and was recently named as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain. He has reported from wars all over the world and been a regular art critic on television and a book reviewer.
As well as the Orwell Prize he has won awards from Amnesty International, the British Press Awards and Stonewall, the gay right activists. He has been a renowned critic of other organisations if he believed they strayed from the truth, especially those on the right, and has more than 60,000 followers on Twitter. ….
Last night the Media Standards Trust, which funds the Orwell prize, demanded an investigation to see whether he should be stripped of the award. It said that the issue had “the potential to damage its reputation”. The organisers of the award said they were following a “process” normally carried out in “situation such as this”.
Toby Young writes on his blog:
For some time now, Hari has been under fire for his cut-and-paste technique – that is, passing off things that his subjects have said elsewhere as things they’ve said to him during his interviews.
A typical example was his 2009 interview in the Independent with Malalai Joya, billed as “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” (hat tip Brian Whelan). Here’s an extract from the interview:
I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. “I am never frightened when I tell the truth.” She is speaking fast now: “I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me.”
But did she actually say this to Hari? The words Hari quoted are identical to those in a press release for her book, Raising My Voice: The Extraordinary Story of the Afghan Woman Who Dares to Speak Out:
I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who have condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me.
The furore has forced Hari to respond in a personal blog entitled Interview Etiquette.
He does protest too much.
Churnalism is nothing new and neither is plagiarism by journalists. But Mr. Hari seems to have plagiarised not merely for “improving” the quality of his articles but also for mis-representing his interviews (and by inference his interview techniques) as being far more productive and effective than they actually were.
Not just plagiarism in the service of an over-inflated journalist ego but actually a lack of ethics which is tantamount to corruption.
Tags:Churnalism, ethics, Johann Hari, Plagiarism, Political journalism
Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Media | 3 Comments »
June 24, 2011
Victor Muller continues pimping Saab around the world and dragging it through the mud to a slow and undignified demise — all just to satisfy his own inflated ego. He continues jetting around the world ostensibly to find new money to rescue Saab but he has never addressed the fundamentals. Saab now cannot pay its workers (but Muller took out a fat bonus on the grounds that Saab had achieved 80% of its business plan!!!!!).
There are demands from the unions that the government should step in — one wonders why and to what purpose? Or that the government should allow Russian dirty money into the company. But these are both incredibly short-sighted suggestions and little more than the empty posturings of an obsolete and decadent trade union.
The fundamentals don’t work and subsidising Saab with taxpayer money is no solution. For 12 years I always drove a Saab (a Saab 9000 and later Saab 9.5’s) and I admire the car and the brand which is still strong. But the cars are no longer competitive and it is time to end the agony and call it a day.
From the FT:
Labour unions have threatened legal action after the owners of Saab, the struggling Swedish carmaker, said it could no longer pay employees’ wages.
Netherlands-based Swedish Automobile – which used to be known as Spyker Cars – said that Saab Automobile, which it owns, would be unable to pay employees’ wages because it had not yet obtained the short-term funding that it was seeking.
The news will fuel doubts about the survival of Saab. Production at its plant in Trollhättan, north of Gothenburg, has been closed for most of the past two months because of a dispute with suppliers over unpaid bills.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d1a78c26-9d68-11e0-9a70-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1QAFzI4Y7
Tags:ethics, SAAB, Saab bankrupt, Spyker Cars, Victor Muller
Posted in Automobiles, Business, Ethics, Sweden | 1 Comment »
May 6, 2011
Der Spiegel:
Former German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg always insisted that he had never meant to plagiarize portions of his Ph.D. dissertation. On Friday, however, the University of Bayreuth said that he copied intentionally.
… On Friday, the University of Bayreuth, which awarded Guttenberg his Ph.D. title in 2006, announced its conclusion that the former conservative ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel had intentionally plagiarized. Guttenberg, the university said in a statement, “extensively violated academic standards and intentionally cheated.”
It is a sentence which completes one of the most rapid and stunning political downfalls Germany has ever seen. Prior to the questions about his doctoral thesis, the member of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats, had been among the country’s most popular politicians. Many had even tipped him as a possible successor to Merkel in the Chancellery. But in late February, the University of Bayreuth revoked his doctor title pending an investigation and on March 1, Guttenberg resigned from Merkel’s cabinet. He went on to step down from all other political offices.
zu Googleberg: image b92.net
Related posts: The zu Googleberg affaire
Tags:Bayreuth University, ethics, fraud, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Plagiarism, zu Googleberg
Posted in Ethics, Fraud, Germany, Politics | 2 Comments »
April 18, 2011
It is what passes for civilised behaviour which is the true test of whether we are truly developing as homo sapiens .
Ryanair lost this case but will still appeal the £1750 fine. They even offered more to settle and suppress their behaviour. But they seem to have forgotten – if ever they knew it – that ethics is more than a matter of law.
Terminal U
A disabled woman has successfully sued Ryanair after her husband resorted to carrying her onto a plane when the airline failed to provide boarding assistance. 
Jo Heath, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and is wheelchair-bound, spoke of her “humiliation” when her husband felt he had no choice but to carry her onto the plane at Luton airport, after being told their flight to Brest Brittany would leave without them. Northampton Country Court heard how the couple were left waiting by the plane for over half an hour, when a hydraulic airlift that they had requested at the time of booking didn’t arrive. Airline staff then allegedly refused to offer any boarding assistance for health and safety reasons. Mrs Heath says they proceeded to prepare the plane for departure. “They treated me like an inconvenience, not a passenger. I was made to feel like it was my fault,” Mrs Heath said. “When I was carried onto the plane, everyone was looking over their seats to see what was happening.”
The court forced Ryanair to pay the couple £1,750 compensation for its breach of contract and breaking disability discrimination laws. Mr Heath said: “We feel vindicated because we have had to fight to get where we are.”
“I don’t think Ryanair will learn from this because they tried to brush us under the carpet. The airline actually offered us more money [out of court] than we eventually received [in court], but we refused it because they wanted us to sign a confidentiality clause. But we wanted open justice.” The ruling Judge in the case, Paul McHale said: “She is a disabled person and she made arrangements with the airline to avoid humiliation in embarking the plane. The defendant did not provide that service.
“All Ryanair was interested in was getting the plane airborne in time”. The court heard how Ryanair staff, including the plane’s pilot, had said that it was their policy to leave disabled passengers behind if they could not be boarded in time for the flight – a point that Ryanair did not dispute in court, the Northampton Herald & Post reports.
Ryanair is appealing the court’s decision, blaming what happened on Luton airport.
A spokesman for the airline said: ‘Under EU law airports, and not airlines, are responsible for the provision of special assistance to passengers. ‘This service is paid for by Ryanair and the failure of Luton Airport’s service provider to assist Mr and Mrs Health in this case was not the responsibility of Ryanair.’
Tags:ethics, London Luton Airport, Ryanair, Uncivilised behaviour
Posted in Behaviour, Business, Ethics | 1 Comment »
March 7, 2011
Does every civilisation go through a period of decadence and excess and crassness and vulgarity or is it just the normal behaviour of the famous and the wealthy?
I find it inexplicable that in spite of such behaviour Prince Andrew and bunga bunga Berlusconi still maintain their followings.
The Duke of York is facing new pressure to resign over his association with a convicted paedophile (Jeffrey Epstein), after ministers admitted that there would be “conversations” about his future role.
Andy at a Scotch tasting in Wasington photo: AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
The Daily Telegraph disclosed this morning that the Government had decided to downgrade his position as Britain’s trade ambassador. Vince Cable appeared to confirm that the Duke’s role and responsibilities were under review as he declined to give the royal his firm backing in a radio interview today. …
Chris Bryant, the Labour former Foreign Office minister, repeated his calls for the Duke to be relieved of his duties, telling the BBC: “I think we should be dispensing with his services. I think the charge list now against him is so long that he is a bit of an embarrassment.”
In the meantime Berlusconi is facing 4 trials simultaneously:
Berlusconi’s pimps Lele and Fido: Photo: REX FEATURES
The aging ‘pimps’ at the heart of the Berlusconi scandal. Emilio Fede, 79, and ‘Lele’ Mora, 55, are accused of playing a key role in organising Mr Berlusconi’s ‘bunga bunga’ parties.
While attention has focused on the parade of glamourous young women
who allegedly prostituted themselves with the prime minister, the men alleged to have masterminded what was in effect a vast pimping network are anything but youthful.
79-year-old Emilio Fede, a television anchorman, finds himself at the epicentre of the extraordinary prostitution scandal engulfing the Italian prime minister. Mr Fede (“Fido”) is accused along with Dario ‘Lele’ Mora, 55, a celebrity agent, of procuring escort girls to attend “bunga bunga” sex parties with the 74-year-old prime minister, who is due to face trial himself next month accused of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute. Prosecutors are expected within days to present a dossier of evidence to a judge in Milan in which they will request that Mr Mora and Mr Fede face court on related charges, along with Nicole Minetti, 25, an Anglo-Italian former television showgirl.
Tags:bunga bunga, Emilio Fede, ethics, Lele Mora, paedophile links, pimping network, Prince Andrew, Silvio Berlusconi
Posted in Behaviour, Corruption, Ethics, Italy, UK | Comments Off on The Prince and the paedophile and Berlusconi and his pimps
March 3, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
UK MP’s have been, for a long time, using expense claims to pad their incomes and many of these expenses are for generating income for family members as part of their staff. The Telegraph took the lead in exposing the culture of greed among these “servants of society”. Some rules have changed but it is not a culture that will be changed easily.
Now the Telegraph reports that even those MP’s already found to have been cheating on expenses and who had decided not to stand again have now claimed – and received – substantial sums for closing down their operations:
More than 200 MPs claimed the payments of up to £42,732, which they were entitled to use for staff salaries and office costs if they were leaving Parliament, receiving a total of £6.8 million. A large number of employees who would have received the payments were MPs’ relatives hired to run their offices, meaning that the cash would have gone straight into their household income.
- Labour’s Jim Devine, who was convicted last month of false accounting on his expenses, was paid £19,832.
- David Chaytor, who was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for cheating on his Commons allowances, received £10,089.
- Jacqui Smith, quit as home secretary after putting her husband’s pornographic films on her expenses. He worked as her office manager and would have been entitled to some of the £37,868 she claimed.
- Mark Oaten, the disgraced ex-Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester, claimed £41,518 to wind up his office – four years after announcing he would not stand again after his affair with a male prostitute emerged.
- Several MPs who have now become peers also claimed the winding-up allowance, despite now being entitled to set up new offices just yards away from their former rooms in the House of Commons. Lord Howard, the former Conservative leader, and Lord Boswell, Tory MP for Daventry until May, received £26,590 and £42,708 respectively to wind up their offices having both announced that would not stand again in 2006.
- Lord Reid, the former Labour home secretary was paid £37,157 after announcing that he would not contest his Airdrie & Shotts seat at the election in 2007.
As well as a winding up allowance, departing MPs are also entitled to a “resettlement grant” of up to £64,766, a year’s salary, to allow help them make the “transition” to normal life. The former MPs received a total of £10.3million in “golden parachute” payments.
For parliamentarians, and not just in the UK, serving a party line has long ago replaced the notion of serving constituents’ interests and the allure of becoming a parliamentarian remains the many different ways of generating income that it affords.
Tags:David Chaytor, ethics, expenses fraud, Jacqui Smith, Jim Devine, Lord Boswell, Lord Howard, Lord Reid, Mark Oaten, MP corruption, UK MP expenses
Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Politics, UK | 1 Comment »
February 27, 2011
Guttenberg has given up his PhD and the University of Bayreuth has now rescinded it after the Googleberg affaire. But it seems that for Guttenberg plagiarism is a long standing and regular habit and not just an opportunistic effort for his PhD and certainly not the unwitting mistake he claims it was.
"zu Googleberg" the Copycat Minister: photo DPA
Der Spiegel carries an article about the moral bankruptcy in Germany and reports on the discovery by the Gutenplag Wiki that he had plagiarised also in 2004.
The GuttenPlag Wiki website also found a 29-page analysis from 2004 that Guttenberg, then a representative in the German parliament, wrote for the Hanns Seidel Foundation. According to the site, the document contains passages that have been taken from other sources with minimal changes and not attributed. A spokesperson from Guttenberg’s legislative office told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the case involved an “editorial text” and not an academic one, and pointed out that the sources were all listed in an attached literature review.
Meanwhile, Bild published a survey Thursday in which 87 percent of the respondents said they believed Guttenberg should stay in office. More than 260,000 people called and faxed in to the toll line. The headline on the newspaper’s front page Thursday was “Yes, we stand behind Guttenberg!” However, on Friday, an ongoing online poll on the newspaper’s website found that 57 percent of the more than 680,000 surveyed wanted Guttenberg to step down.
Jürgen Trittin, floor leader of the Green Party, on Thursday spoke of a “dirty deal” between Guttenberg and Axel Springer AG, which owns Bild. It was announced this week that the newspaper will be a major recipient of new advertising that the government is planning to help with recruitment for the German military, the Bundeswehr, which is soon to become a volunteer army. A spokesman for the media company told SPIEGEL ONLINE this week that the editorial offices only learned of the advertising campaign from the media on Thursday, after the telephone poll.
Critics also pointed out that the tabloid in the past also defended Guttenberg’s controversial trip to Afghanistan in December with his wife Stephanie, which was decried as a publicity stunt by his opponents.
Ther are other writings by Guttenberg that are being criticised. Even Angela Merkel may have to back away from the support she has been giving to her Defence Minister to exploit his popularity before the impending local elections.
Guttenberg’s star with Merkel could more likely be tarnished by what a report said she regarded as an “only very rudimentary and poorly-considered basis for decisions about reform of the Bundeswehr.”
Der Spiegel reported at the weekend that criticism of his work at the Defence Ministry from the Chancellery was much harsher than previously thought.
Tags:Angela Merkel, corruption, ethics, Guttenberg, Plagiarism, Scientific misconduct, zu Googleberg
Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Germany, Politics, scientific misconduct | 2 Comments »
The k2p blog 