14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most common problems in the scientific community nowadays is the fabrication of evidence, a dishonest method that some researchers employ in order to further someone's agenda. Usually, they do so for medical or oil and coal companies, and give the world false pieces of information, which they publish in respected journals. Afterwards, individuals start arguments, face-to-face or over the Internet, armed with the items of evidence they have presented. And everyone is actually misinformed.
For example, Scott S. Reuben, a prominent anesthesiologist at the Baystate Medical Center, in Springfield, Massachusetts, fabricated evidences for approximately 21 medical studies, that he published between 1996 and 2008, in various scientific journals. The issue with that, apart from the ethical implications, is that other anesthesiologists from around the world have been adapting their techniques based on the findings that Reuben allegedly made.
This means that the life of all those that were operated on with the use of the “new” methods the phony anesthesiologist explained may have been at risk during their procedures. The crook's goal was to further certain products belonging to large pharmaceutical companies.
The brands included Pfizer Inc.'s Bextra and Merck & Co.'s Vioxx (drugs that have been already withdrawn from the market due to their risks), Pfizer's Celebrex and Lyrica, as well as Wyeth's Effexor XR antidepressant, which was advertised as a potent painkiller in one of the studies.
In addition to these pathetic financial interests, he already appealed to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to stop regulating these products, based entirely on the data he brought forth in his studies. “Dr. Reuben deeply regrets that this happened. Dr. Reuben cooperated fully with the peer review committee. There were extenuating circumstances that the committee fairly and justly considered,” his lawyer, Ingrid Martin, says. Well, if he's sorry that he could have killed countless people, then everything is OK. Or maybe not.
“We analyzed it and made figures and graphs, and sent it back, and wrote papers, and everything seemed fine. If someone has a good reputation, has 10 years of papers and has a very high position within their medical school, generally you assume they have a lot of integrity,” Rush University Medical Center Dr. Jeffrey Kroin, who has co-authored four of the fake studies, adds.
“These retractions clearly raise the possibility that we might be heading in wrong directions or toward blind ends in attempts to improve pain therapy,” editor James C. Eisenach writes in the journal Anesthesiology, where the retractions to all the studies have been recently published.