Rheuminations: Fraud Casts a Pall on Medical Research

Research Hall of Shame

Here are a few of the more shameful examples of falsified medical research.

• In 1974, while working in the laboratory of the famed immunologist Robert Good at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City, researcher William Summerlin, MD, observed that the success of skin transplants between genetically unrelated rodents was enhanced by culturing the skin in special medium for several weeks. If confirmed, his findings had major implications as an antirejection therapy. However, attempts to reproduce his original results failed. Since the experiment involved a transfer of melanocytes between black and white mice, the outcome of each experiment could be readily observed. Fortuitously, one of the animal-care technicians discovered Dr. Summerlin’s ruse. He had been using a black-tipped felt pen to achieve the desired results. When the technician accidently removed one of the black patches with alcohol, he thought that he had committed a serious error and reported it to his superiors. That led to the end of Dr. Summerlin’s career in medical science.
• John Darsee, MD, was a rising star in the division of cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston. A prolific investigator, he had already published well over 70 abstracts and articles during his medical residency at Emory University in Atlanta and as a cardiology fellow at BWH.¹³ Wait a second. Seventy publications over seven years of training. This must have been a world record for trainee productivity! Was anybody paying attention to this glaring statistical anomaly? When I arrived at BWH, the word was already out. Dr. Darsee had been frequently seen after hours at the copying machine “working” with a stack of canine electrocardiograms. Many of his fellow trainees were aware that he was fabricating data, but somehow, his superiors were blind to the outrageous reality. Subsequently, it was discovered that most, if not all, of his previous work at Harvard and Emory, including studies of purported HLA gene associations with certain cardiac anomalies, had all been fabricated. Most of the patients did not even exist. Somehow, this did not prevent Dr. Darsee from finding many coauthors for most of his papers.
• With over 500 peer-reviewed publications, Don Poldermans, MD, a noted researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center in The Netherlands, heavily influenced the clinical practice of perioperative medicine.14 His work in the area of beta-blockers and statins in noncardiac surgery helped to shape guidelines and national policies on the use of these treatments. In just one day, all this data was called into question. An official press release from the hospital cited concerns including “carelessness in collecting the data for his research, using patient data without written permission, using fictitious data, and submitting two reports to conferences which included knowingly unreliable data.” Sadly, warning signs were missed before this avalanche of allegations. A 2005 systematic review of randomized trials that were stopped early for benefit isolated a prematurelyhalted Poldermans study, finding that “the very large treatment effect is likely too good to be true. It is inconsistent with the researchers’ expectations; with the magnitude of effect of beta-blockers in tens of thousands of patients with acute myocardial infarction or chronic management of congestive heart failure; with results in day-to-day clinical practice; and with results of other trials.”¹⁴