Posts Tagged ‘Scientific misconduct’

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Are Universities cracking down on academic and scientific misconduct?

September 3, 2011

It may just be a passing gust of a cleansing wind but I do have a perception that universities are becoming much more responsive to allegations of academic dishonesty and scientific misconduct.

Investigations of misconduct at academic institutions have long been notorious for the amount of time they take (usually many years) and for always protecting “the establishment”. But I think I detect a change.

Investigations are speeding up and sanctions against those found guilty are beginning to be more than symbolic slaps on the wrist. The frequency of enforced resignations and dismissals seem to be increasing. I perceive a trend and I hypothesise that it is partly in response to the on-line scrutiny and negative publicity which comes from the blogosphere. 

Close on the heels of the recent Ahluwalia resignation /dismissal come these two cases:

1. Academic impropriety with Professor Julius Nyang’oro considered to have improperly helped athletes to cheat at the University of North Carolina. He is tied to two athletes who were kicked off the football team. In one case he did not detect or ignored blatant plagiarism and in the other he allowed a freshman to take a senior graduate level course and awarded him a suspiciously high grade. Nyang’oro apparently rarely gave low grades in his classes:

College athletes and accommodating professors

UNC professor resigns amid football investigation

UNC’s Afro-American studies head resigns amid questions of football …

2. A well known cardiac researcher Zhiguo Wang has been dismissed from the Montreal Heart Institute for scientific misconduct following retraction of two papers in the Journal of the Biological Chemistry just a month ago.  Wang also has an appointment at the University of Montreal, and is senior research scholar of the Fonds de Recherche en Sante de Quebec, a ChangJiang scholar professor, and a LongJiang scholar professor of China. The dismissal comes less than a month after the publication of the retraction notices.

Authors retract two JBC papers on how heart rhythms go awry; Montreal Heart Institute looking into why

Montreal heart studies ‘withdrawn’ – Zhiguo Wang’s arrhythmia research being investigated after retractions 

Montreal hospital dismisses cardiac researcher over misconduct allegations

There have been a number of other cases recently in Germany as well where the speed of the investigations by the academic institutions have been unprecedented (zu Guttenberg and Bulfone-Paus as examples).

Perhaps it’s all just in my mind – or even wishful thinking – but I have the distinct impression that a cleansing wind is beginning to blow. The world wide web may already be having an impact on combating academic dishonesty and scientific misconduct by forcing institutions to be more responsive. There is much on-line which is still malicious or untrue or just plain rubbish. But the amount of “solid” comment has achieved a  “critical mass”. The blogosphere can no longer be merely ignored it seems.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Education, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Are Universities cracking down on academic and scientific misconduct?

Harvard criticised for being too lenient with Hauser

September 1, 2011

I don’t know to what extent the Harvard Crimson represents student opinion at Harvard but it is likely that they represent at least a substantial body of opinion among the student body.  In an editorial today, they come down very hard against what they perceive as being the rather lenient treatment of Marc Hauser by the University. He was found guilty of scientific misconduct, sent on a years “gardening” leave but kept his tenure and his lab. He was then allowed to return and continue his research but was not allowed to teach. He then resigned or was allowed to or invited to resign. The University investigation seems to be over though the Office of Research Integrity investigation into the misuse of Federal grants may still be ongoing.

The Crimson thinks that allowing him to save face was a little too lenient:

In April, we argued that Harvard should have taken a more aggressive stance in response to the findings of the investigative committee and fired Hauser. Hauser’s prohibition from further research and teaching would have been a logical consequence of his actions. It would have forcefully upheld the imperative for honesty and accuracy in the sciences. Tenure, a privilege given to distinguished professors, is no shield for academic misconduct.

.. despite (a) measure of closure that Hauser’s resignation brings to this situation, it remains that the University should have taken stronger and earlier disciplinary action against him. 

.. By firing Hauser, Harvard would have sent a firm message that academic dishonesty is not tolerated. In contrast, Hauser’s resignation is an evasion of full culpability and deemphasizes the gravity of his actions. Allowing Hauser to save face and graciously depart his position offers little recourse for the multitude of scientific malfeasances that were committed.

.. Harvard undergraduates are held to high standards regarding academic discipline—professors with positions of influence should be equally, if not more, accountable for their deeds. By refusing to take bold action and instead allowing for a willing resignation, the University has downplayed the severity of his academic dishonesty.

Strong words.

Of course the University has also been criticised by Hauser’s friends and supporters  for being too hard on him!

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Harvard criticised for being too lenient with Hauser

Jatinder Ahluwalia – End-game in progress

August 27, 2011

Jatinder Ahluwalia’s career of scientific misconduct has cut a swathe through academia over the last 15 years but is now approaching its end-game as Imperial College reviews the award of his PhD.

At Cambridge University he lost his studentship funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council at the end of 1997, and was dismissed from the graduate studies program in 1998. He then went on to “earn” his PhD at Imperial College after which he was employed at University College London. An investigation at UCL  found that not only had he faked experimental results but also that he had sabotaged the experiments of some of his colleagues. He resigned or was dismissed by UCL in 2009 but then turned up as a senior lecturer at the University of East London. As retractions of his papers and allegations by co-workers mounted, UEL also investigated and Imperial College started checking the experiments which had led to the award of his PhD. Earlier this year he “left” UEL. Retraction Watch has documented the entire, sorry story.

This week another paper of his was retracted and Imperial College announced that the results on which his PhD were based could not be replicated. Imperial will now set up a committee to review the award of his doctorate.

The academics asked to independently re-run the experiments were unable to replicate the findings published in the paper Activation of capsaicin-sensitive primary sensory neurones induces anandamide production and release and so the authors decided to withdraw this from the Journal of Neurochemistry. The findings also formed the basis of Dr Ahluwalia’s PhD. The College has therefore written to Dr Ahluwalia to notify him that it believes it has grounds to investigate the validity of the data in his PhD. It will be convening a panel to review the award in accordance with its policy for investigating allegations of research misconduct.

I find it an incredible waste that in so many cases of scientific misconduct there is such a great deal of misplaced creativity and ingenuity – and even hard work – which goes into the misconduct and in then covering it up.

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Posted in Science, scientific misconduct | 2 Comments »

Medtronic pays 5 surgeons $7m kickbacks in just 9 months: The rape of Medicare

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”  

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Posted in Business, Ethics, Medicine, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Medtronic pays 5 surgeons $7m kickbacks in just 9 months: The rape of Medicare

Columbia University maintains a wall of silence around the Sezen – Sames case

August 15, 2011

The Bengü Sezen – Dalibor Sames scandal rumbles on while Columbia maintains a wall of silence around the case. But the silence raises suspicions. Sezen has been painted as and has appeared clearly as the villain in the piece but Dalibor Sames  – her supervisor – seems to be getting away with very little censure. What is especially disturbing is that three of his subordinates lost their positions for raising doubts about her work while he was rewarded with tenure during the same period. To that extent it does seem that some of the extreme rhetoric now being used against Sezen and the scathing “official” criticism of Sezen is “designed” – at least partially – to deflect questions and blame away from Sames. It seems inexplicable to me that Dalibor Sames can escape any responsibility or censure and is not to be held accountable for his part in the affaire. To take away his tenure would of course be an unacceptable precedent for Columbia and would be quite unthinkable! But even assuming – in the best case – that he had no part in the deception he does come across as being not only incompetent to supervise research by others but also as eminently gullible. In the worst case he could have been her Svengali.

Chemical & Engineering News carries a new comprehensive article by William Schulz about the case and Rudy Baum posts about Sezen, Sames and Columbia  in the Editors blog.

This week’s lead Science & Technology Department story by C&EN News Editor William G. Schulz is a devastating account of systematic scientific fraud committed by former Columbia University chemistry graduate student Bengü Sezen. Schulz has been following the Sezen case since her work was called into question and Columbia began an investigation of it in 2006.

Sezen worked under the direction of Dalibor Sames from 2000 to 2005. Sames was an assistant chemistry professor when Sezen joined his group; he received tenure at Columbia in 2003. During her time in Sames’ lab, Sezen was the lead author on three papers published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, all of which Sames retracted in 2006 after the results reported in the papers were called into question because no one could reproduce them (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 8364). Sezen received her Ph.D. in 2005; Columbia revoked it earlier this year. …

But what of Sames? Questions about Sezen’s research were raised by other members of Sames’ group as early as 2002, Schulz reports. Those questions weren’t just ignored by Sames; those who raised them were punished. “At least three unnamed subordinates left or were dismissed from the Sames lab, for example, for stepping forward and raising concerns about Sezen’s irreproducible research results,” Schulz writes. As the report makes clear, these whistle-blowers were sacrificed in order to maintain her favored status in the research group. Sames acted, in fact, only after a member of his group specifically set Sezen up and presented irrefutable evidence of her misconduct.

Columbia’s investigation focused exclusively on Sezen’s misconduct.  From the ORI report obtained by C&EN, it appears that Columbia has not made any attempt to probe whether Sames was guilty of scientific misconduct himself during Sezen’s time in his lab. 

Schulz writes in his excellent article:

Questions about the massive Bengü Sezen scientific fraud case at Columbia University linger in the August heat. But many of them will likely never be answered—especially the question, Why? Columbia in 2005 awarded her a Ph.D. degree in chemistry with distinction; however, it was based in large part on her fraudulent work. Details of the case make clear that Sezen, at the very least, has a sophisticated understanding of chemical principles. The effort she put into faking it and covering her tracks, say many people who have reviewed the case, easily match that required for legitimate doctoral work in science……. Sezen left Columbia shortly after receiving her chemistry degree and enrolled at Germany’s Heidelberg University, where she picked up another doctoral degree in molecular biology. But, with mounting questions about her chemistry thesis and published work—eventually to include retraction of research papers she coauthored with her professor, Dalibor Sames, on C–H bond functionalization—Columbia assembled an investigative committee to probe deeper. ….

As the evidence of her misconduct began to pile up, however, her attempts to explain away her actions became increasingly implausible. …. And then she was gone. Sezen’s whereabouts today are unknown. ……..

Columbia has erected a wall of silence around Sezen, her brazen fakery, and the consequences for those who had the misfortune of working with her. Aside from the few spare and prepared statements about her doctoral degree and the status of its misconduct investigation, the university has blotted out any mention of what happened inside the Sames laboratory between 2000 and 2005, when Sezen was a Ph.D. candidate. During this period, however, Sames was granted tenure.

Columbia has expressly forbidden Sames or any of its other employees from speaking publicly about the Sezen case. ……..

But it’s unclear what, if any, consequences Sames has suffered because of his failure to find out what might be going on with Sezen, especially when red flags about her work were raised so early on. A visit to the Sames group website today includes a photo of Sames and a slideshow of many young, enthusiastic, and smiling lab group members.

From the comments on the blog ChemBark it would seem that one of the commenters is Sezen herself and that she is still in Germany (or operating through an IP address from Germany). 

Related: The Sezen Files: Part1, Part2 and Part3

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Posted in Chemistry, Fraud, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Columbia University maintains a wall of silence around the Sezen – Sames case

Polargate: When peer review is degraded to spouse-review and friend-review

August 13, 2011

An earlier post carried the story of Charles Monnett who apparently when flying over the Arctic to survey whales thought he saw 3 or 4 dead polar bears in the water. He did not get any pictures and did not retrieve any carcases but instead wrote a paper  published in Polar Biology and which was supposedly peer-reviewed. He baldly presented his observations and then speculated that the bears had probably drowned in a storm and that many more of them would drown if global warming led to the melting of Arctic ice in the summers and forced  the poor polar bears to spend more time in open water.

It was all speculation even if one supposes that he actually saw some dead polar bears. His speculations were taken as established fact and blown up by the Global Warming orthodoxy. Al Gore, the almost -President of the US and the self-proclaimed inventor of the internet, picked up the story with gusto which then  played a major part in his science fantasy movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, which helped to win him a Nobel prize.

Panic over the dead bears and Monnett’s wild hypotheses about them helped fuel calls for declaring the bears endangered, despite all evidence that their populations have actually been increasing over the last few years.  Monnett did quite well from the work, parlaying his fame into management of a $50 million study budget, the dream of all academics. – Coyote Blog

Monnet is now being investigated by the Interior Department’s Inspector General’s office for some kind of wrong-doing associated with his award of research contracts which has also led to interrogations about his sightings and his paper and subsequent research grants. Investigators are apparently  examining Monnet’s procurement of one of those research studies on polar bears conducted by Canada’s University of Alberta, as well as the “disclosure of personal relationships and preparation of the scope of work,” according to a July 29 memo from the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office.

In particular, investigators are asking questions about the peer review on Monnett’s drowned polar bear paper, which was done by his wife, Lisa Rotterman, as well as by Andrew Derocher, the lead researcher on the  million dollar Canadian study funded by Monnet’s generosity.

Monnets co-author Jeffrey Gleason is back-pedalling and is in damage-control mode.

Although the four dead bears cited in the paper were observed from 1,500 feet during flights over the Beaufort Sea, and the carcasses were never recovered or examined, Gleason told investigators it is likely the creatures drowned in a sudden windstorm that produced 30-knot winds, not for lack of an ice pack.  
“We never mentioned global warming in the paper,” Gleason told the investigators.
 Gleason told investigators that reaction to his and Monnett’s paper was overblown and spun out of context.

Monnett is being legally defended by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility who have also demanded an investigation of the investigation. They should perhaps pick their causes a little more carefully. Even the New York Times  weighs in but tries to trivialise the impact of the wrong-doing. Though just how they take computer model results to be a  “broad array of evidence” that “polar bear populations — and the health of the planet — will be threatened by climate change in future decades” is just a bit mysterious if not plain gullible.

A modest scientific observation about a few drowning polar bears has enmeshed a government wildlife biologist in an investigation into whether he is guilty of scientific misconduct. The investigation has taken on symbolic importance in the debate over global warming. …… Whatever the ultimate verdict on Dr. Monnett, the controversy over his observations is a minor sideshow in the global warming debate. A broad array of evidence suggests that polar bear populations — and the health of the planet — will be threatened by climate change in future decades even if not a single additional polar bear drowns while swimming far from shore.

That peer-review is often corrupted is not new but Monnet must be congratulated on getting his wife and a “friend” to be the reviewers.

But the Journal Polar Biology has been silent. How were the reviewers chosen?

Monnets original paper is here : Observations of mortality associated with extended open-water swimming  by polar bears in the Arctic Beaufort Sea 


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Posted in Climate, Ethics, scientific misconduct | 5 Comments »

The Spine Journal takes on Medtronic and publication of questionable research

August 12, 2011

When medical researchers have financial ties – running into millions of dollars – with pharmaceutical or medical equipment companies, and then publish scientific, peer-reviewed papers which are to the financial benefit of these companies,  questions of scientific misconduct escalate to become questions of scientific fraud.

Medtronic is the world’s largest medical device company and Minnesota’s seventh-largest public company based on revenue, which totaled $15.93 billion for the fiscal year that ended April 29. Medtronic’s Infuse product is a bioengineered bone-growth protein that has been used in spinal fusion procedures for the past nine years and is used in about half of the 80,000 anterior lumbar fusion procedures performed every year in the United States.

According to Twin Cities Business, The Spine Journal recently published two articles about the product, one that claims the product may increase the risk of sterility in men, and another that claims that the product’s adverse effects were not reported in clinical research. Those effects reportedly include inflammation, back pain, infections, and potentially life-threatening complications. The Journal pointed out that researchers for 12 of the product’s 13 industry-sponsored studies had multimillion-dollar “financial associations” with Medtronic.

The Spine Journal seems to be on a crusade:

From the Nature News Blog:

The Spine Journal devoted its entire June issue – two clinical studies, two reviews, two commentaries and a scathing editorial – to picking apart Medtronic’s controversial bone growth treatment, Infuse. The drug, which is a recombinant form of the protein BMP-2, is used in some kinds of spinal fusion surgeries and racked up $900 million in sales last fiscal year, according to the New York Times.

Company-sponsored clinical trials for Infuse found no side effects directly linked to the drug. But a review and reanalysis of these studies published in Spine Journal found that the incidence of adverse events ranged from 10 to 50 percent, depending on the use. What’s more, the same review study, led by Eugene Carragee, of Stanford University School of Medicine in California, reports that the authors of the supporting studies had financial ties to Medtronic ranging from $560,000 to $23,500,000, with a median of $12 million to $16 million. In some cases, the authors of these studies did not disclose the full extent of their financial relationships with Medtronic.

“A consistent number of people involved with these studies got extraordinary sums,” Carragee told the Times.

Side effects of the drug include cancer, fertility problems, infections, dissolving bone, and leg and back pain. According to the Times, Medtronic reported the side effects to the US Food and Drug Administration, as required.

In response to the Spine Journal articles, Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak issued a  statement  that said: “While the Spine Journal articles raise questions about researchers’ conclusions in their published peer-reviewed literature, the articles do not raise questions about the data Medtronic submitted to the FDA in the approval process or the information available to physicians today through the instructions for use brochure attached to each product sold.”

The US Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into whether Medtronic illegally promoted Infuse for “off-label” applications not approved by the FDA, the Times reports.

 

The American Society of Business Publication Editors have acknowledged the efforts of the Spine Journal and awarded them the 2011 “Journalism That Matters” award. From the New York Times Media Decoder blog:

In June, the publication, The Spine Journal, devoted an entire issue to editorials and reports that challenged previous medical studies supporting the safety and effectiveness of Infuse, a bone-growth product sold by Medtronic. The product, a bioengineered material, is used mainly in spinal fusions.

The Spine Journal charged that academic experts paid by Medtronic to conduct earlier research about Infuse had issued biased and misleading results that overstated the product’s benefits and claimed that it did not pose risks.

On Friday, the American Society of Business Publication Editors celebrated the journal’s effort by presenting it with its 2011 “Journalism That Matters” award, an honor given in recognition of coverage that causes change by government or industry.

It is highly unusual for one group of researchers to publicly repudiate the work of professional colleagues. And by throwing down its challenge, the special issue of The Spine Journal, which is the official journal of the North American Spine Society, was something of a turning point in the debate over conflicts of interest in research paid for by makers of medical products.

Medtronic is on the defensive and is conducting a damage limitation exercise:

But there is little doubt that The Spine Journal’s coverage has had an effect. Last week, Medtronic took the unusual step of announcing that it was giving a $2.5 million grant to Yale so that independent researchers could conduct a broad review of all Infuse studies in order to determine the facts. 

Related:

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110731/BUSINESS/307310070/Norton-pair-accused-hiding-risks-spine-drug?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Local%20News

http://beckersorthopedicandspine.com/spine/item/8901-two-more-spine-surgeons-cited-for-underreporting-infuse-complications

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/paul-taylor/medtronic-pledges-independent-review-of-bone-graft-product/article2119735/

 

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Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Media, Medicine, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »

An analysis of retractions of scientific papers in India

August 12, 2011

From Professor T.A. Abinandanan on his blog Nanopolitan:

Scientific Misconduct in India: An Analysis of Retractions in PubMed

I presented this work at the Workshop on Academic Ethics organized by Rahul Siddharthan, Gautam Menon and N.S. Siddharthan about a month ago.

Quick summary: PubMed database lists ~103,000 papers published by Indian authors during the previous decade (2001-2010); 70 of these papers have been retracted, and 45 of the retractions are due to some form of misconduct. Plagiarism is overwhelmingly the primary mode of misconduct: all but one of the 45 misconduct-related retractions were due to plagiarism.

If that doesn’t sound bad enough, consider this: At 44 per 100,000 papers, India’smisconduct rate is far higher than that of countries such as the UK, the USA, Germany and Japan.

There’s some silver lining, though: Retraction of papers from Indian authors show a steep fall since 2007 — either because Indian researchers know better now, or because plagiarized papers are ever less likely to make it to print in the first place due to increasingly widespread use of plagiarism detecting software by journals.

Here’s the html version; if you prefer a pdf, get it from here.

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Posted in Ethics, India | Comments Off on An analysis of retractions of scientific papers in India

McGill University reprimands Professor for medical ghostwriting

August 11, 2011

Something stinks when academics are “helped” to write their papers by professional ghostwriters who are paid for by pharmaceutical companies. It is even worse when the papers are written by the pharmaceutical companies  and academics in the field are flattered or otherwise persuaded by their agents to put their names to the papers. McGill University has “reprimanded” a senior professor, Barbara Sherwin, for the practice but are at pains to point out that she has not been “sanctioned”.

What exactly does a reprimand – which is no sanction – accomplish?

The ghostwriting for what was ostensibly a peer-reviewed scientific article was essentially just promotional literature for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals’ and hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Wyeth paid a New Jersey professional-writing firm, DesignWrite, to help Sherwin produce a paper on treatment options for age associated memory loss that was eventually published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The paper was published in 2000. Sherwin was listed as the sole author of that paper, even though Karen Mittleman, an employee of DesignWrite, was involved in the process. The paper was published just when critics started raising doubts about hormone-replacement therapy.

Wyeth – through DesignWrite – had commissioned at least 40 scientific papers endorsing the therapy. During 2001, Wyeth sold hormones for HRT worth $2.1 billion.

Apparently Dr. Sherwin is no longer a member of the Quebec Order of Psychologists, which means she can no longer practice under the title of psychologist.

The Montreal Gazette has the full story.

Even more worrying is the Macleans story that Karen Mittleman of DesignWrite – on behalf of Wyeth – actually solicited this paper. There is also a hint of a rather cozy relationship between the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and DesignWrite.

The stink is more of a stench!

Her alleged transgression came to light in a class-action suit involving 8,400 women against the drug company Wyeth (now part of Pfizer). Lawyers representing the women, who claim they were harmed by their hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs, discovered that scientific research papers extolling the virtues of the treatment while downplaying potential harm appeared to have been written, not by the academics who signed their name to the papers, but by writers hired by the pharmaceutical company.
According to court documents filed by the plaintiffs, Wyeth paid the Princeton, New Jersey-based medical communications company DesignWrite to produce articles on HRT for publication in academic journals between 1997 and 2003. DesignWrite would write the papers, then approach leading academics to claim authorship for them.

Sherwin’s relationship with the pharmaceutical company started innocently enough. In the early 1990s, she was invited to give a presentation about her work on androgens and psychological functioning in women. There, she met a woman named Karen Mittleman during the lunch break. Mittleman introduced herself as a PhD and a former academic who worked in medical communications. The pair hit it off, and kept in touch. “I liked her, and considered her a casual friend,” Sherwin told Maclean’s over the phone from her office at McGill.
Several years later, in 1998, Mittleman called Sherwin to ask if she wanted to write a paper for the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society at the invitation of the journal’s editor. The subject was pharmacological treatment options for age-associated memory loss. Sherwin, an expert on hormones and how they influence memory and mood in people, had just completed a grant proposal on the subject, and said she’d be happy to write the article. 
“[Mittleman] told me she would provide support by typing the manuscript and formatting it in the style of that particular journal,” explains Sherwin. The work itself would be based on Sherwin’s notes. In return, Mittleman, a senior writer at DesignWrite, promised to send Sherwin typed drafts for editing, and hard copies of references the professor requested. “I was completely under the impression that [Mittleman] was working for the journal, that it was the journal who hired her.” 

What Mittleman never revealed was that her employer, DesignWrite, had a business relationship with Wyeth and other pharmaceutical companies.

Karen Mittleman, as Antidote has noted, has the perfect Dickensian name for her job as the go-between finding researchers willing to sign their names to papers written by drug companies.

The reprimand by McGill seems little more than a very mild slap on the wrist.

Related: McGill sets bad example on integrity

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Marc Hauser’s lobbyists get to work but only end up excusing scientific misconduct

August 9, 2011

Marc Hauser’s friends have started on the process of repairing some of the damage to his reputation brought about by his own misconduct. He has “resigned” from Harvard but – with a little help from his friends – he will no doubt pop-up with a fancy title at some other institution soon.

 The Harvard Crimson reports that a group of academics have written a “letter” criticising the investigation of Hauser’s misconducts by Harvard. The letter was written by Pierre Pica, a scientist at the National Center for Scientific Research, Bert Vaux, director of studies in linguistics at King’s College in the University of Cambridge, and Jeffrey Watumull, a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge. Watumull previously worked in Hauser’s lab. Eight other academics including Naom Chomsky have added their signatures.

But they protest too much about one of their own. I felt on reading their letter that while they accuse Harvard of a witch-hunt and express concern about the undermining of scientific inquiry they actually end up trivialising ethical behaviour and excusing scientific misconduct. Their concern does not ring true. The letter talks about a media frenzy against Hauser but ignores the fact that nothing came up in the media until after the 3 year investigation had shown the misconduct and Hauser had taken a year’s gardening leave.

Harvard Crimson: Monday, August 08, 2011

The letter—which was signed by MIT Linguistics Professor Noam Chomsky, one of Hauser’s mentors—criticizes the scope of the inquiry into Hauser’s research, the media frenzy that followed the release of Harvard’s findings, and insinuations that Hauser’s body of work has been thrown into question by the investigation. ….

Eight academics from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Brazil signed the letter, including Harvard Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Florian Engert. It has been circulated among top academics.

The Crimson obtained a copy of the letter—titled “Could the Process of Investigating Scientific Misconduct Undermine Scientific Inquiry?”—from the authors.

Following allegations that Hauser falsified research data, a three-year investigation into Hauser’s research found him “solely responsible for eight counts of scientific misconduct,” Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith wrote in a letter last August. Reports attributed the source of those allegations to his graduate students.

In the fallout from the investigation, Hauser took a year-long leave of absence, was then barred from teaching for another year, and ultimately resigned from his tenured position this summer.

Related: Hausergate posts

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Posted in Ethics, Science, scientific misconduct, Social Science | 1 Comment »

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