Big Pharma firms usually peddle wonder drugs and vaccines citing “evidence-based medicine” and “real science” to back up their claims – so tell me, how did a medical researcher receiving grants from these firms get away with fabricating research data for 13 years?
A US doctor, a former member of Pfizer Inc’s speakers’ bureau, has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to accusations of having launched “one of the biggest research frauds in medical history”.
Dr Scott Reuben has been charged with accepting a US$75,000 Pfizer grant to study Celebrex in 2005: problem is no patients were ever enrolled in the study! His research, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, “proved” that the painkiller helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery.
Turns out he had been fabricating data for 13 years. How did a ‘peer-reviewed’ medical journal fall for this and previous submissions by the same researcher? Just how many other rogue researchers, bank-rolled with grants from Big Pharma, are out there?
Check out Natural News’ scathing indictment of this scam.
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I agree with many of the comments here…I work as a nurse in the US and the lack of ‘healing’ is appalling …. symptom repression is the only goal. NOW as to “Scientist” claim (as if that name gives him/her any legitimacy) that there’s millions of good research out “there”…..I see it differently. JUST because you can prove, through well designed research, that you can statistically repress symptoms of some disease does NOT add up to healing ,,,fraud or not… WHEN $ is the main object of ‘research’ you will have HUGELY funded corporate fraud…doesn’t take a “scientist” to figure… Read more »
Modern medicine make the doctor the most stupid practitioner in the world. The doctors have no knowledge about the content of the medicine they prescribe. They have no ideas about how the medicine is formulated. They only listen to salesmen telling them how good is the drug. What a crying shame! Ever wonder why I keep getting worst case scenario patients.
The places of the local public universities will sink further. The reasons:everyone knows why.
Hi Anil & Progressive Friends
Check out this website:
http://www.worstpills.org
(Run by Dr Sidney Wolfe. This website is part of Ralph Naider’s Public Citizen).
I have always written that Big Pharma’s only goal to to make fantastic profits. Curing patients and sick people is just an “aside” thing or part of the money trail. Their main goals are to produce drugs that suppress the symtons, not to cure the problems. Why haven’t they discovered drugs to cure hypertension? How about diabetes? How about high cholesterol? Aren’t there any cure for these and dozens of other ailments? Cancer? They are not interested in a cure for cancer, but rather find some drugs that can suppress the growth of these cells. Yes, some drugs which you… Read more »
This isn’t a fair comment. There is A LOT (and I really mean a ridiculous amount) of research from all angles being conducted to cure cancer. Pharma or no pharma, the person who cures cancer will be a scientific hero!! So finding better treatment for cancer is most definitely not neglected. Anyway, I think you should check your facts because cancer treatment actually kills cancer cells, not suppress their growth. Why there aren’t “cures” for diabetes & high cholesterol is related to the nature of the diseases, and it is unlikely for there to be cures as you intend them.… Read more »
Cholesterol had never been a problem until someone came along with incomplete and badly done study said that it was a problem. People with low cholesterol tended to suffer immune related problems and mental sickness(thank God I have high cholesterol ;-)). Those the lived the longest and healthiest also have high cholesterol – strange hah ?
Check out :
http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/cholesterol_myth_1.html
The real culprit is trans-fat and this is found in great abundance in margarine.
Scientific American has a bit more flesh for the bones from the articles you’ve linked: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-medical-madoff-anesthestesiologist-faked-data This isn’t a failure of science but of commerce (again). The ‘revolution in orthopaedic patient care’ sparked by Reuben’s work should never have happened – or not to the extent it did, at least. No scientist should take a single person’s clinical trial (or work of imagination in this case) as Gospel. The whole point of experimentation is that anyone should be able to repeat the experiment and get the same results. Reuben’s ‘work’ was unverified. Duplicating clinical trials is not simple. Not every… Read more »
Hello Anil I wonder if you are aware of another big scandal involving one of Indian top environmental scientist? He is under tremendous pressure in India to resign his position for making false claim on the Himalayan glacier data based on dubious data too. This is just off hand and I am accessing your blog from another computer, so I don’t have his name with here. But it is also a followed up to the climategate exposure in a University in UK and a leading American climate scientist in the US. Whatever the case, the bottomline seems to point to… Read more »
I too was prescribed with celebrex 200mg for a prolapsed disc condition and like wira it did nothing to reduce the pain. Instead it caused hallucination. I have stopped taking celebrex since but my physician proudly says that pharmas have come up with 400mg. This pain killer should be banned.
Several years back, my physician in a private hospital prescribed me Celebrex for a frozen shoulder condition.
I can swear that it did nothing to alleviate the pain nor to heal my shoulder.
Following this revelation by Dr Scott Reuben, Celebrex should be banned from all hospitals and clinics in our country.
I had the opportunity to do one and observed two frozen shoulder cases in sri lanka. The 3 patients all had suffered greatly and had used allopathic medicine before coming to the acupuncture clinic where I was learning and practising. All it took was less than 30 seconds of deep needling of a particular point on the leg – no that was not a mistake. Needling an acupuncture point of the leg released the flow of energy that was causing the frozen shoulder. In tcm constipation can sometime be relieved by sedating the heart – strange hah ? Look at… Read more »
Well… it’s one of the *biggest* research frauds in medical *history* because really such blatant fraud of this magnitude is NOT commonplace. I know everyone will want to believe the worst of medical science and probably all major pharmaceutical companies deserve their bad reputation, but to be fair, most scientists are just regular human beings like most of the readers here and they are just going about life with a job in the lab. They aren’t mad scientists like you watch in movies and don’t commonly have sinister evil intentions to fraud data. Most publications in peer-reviewed journals will be… Read more »
Point taken. No doubt many are honest and all that. But something must be wrong with the system, if this guy could do it for 13 years and get away with it.
Actually, accountants and auditors are supposed to observe and get involved in year-end stock-takes and even carry out systematic random checks, just to make sure the stock is physically there and hasn’t been shipped out to, I don’t know, Uruguay, perhaps..
most scientists are just regular human beings like most of the readers here and they are just going about life with a job in the lab. Yes that’s true. The very nature of rationale thoughts and scientific method ensured that each and everyone only gets to observe or to study only one tiny aspect of the whole. The incompleteness theorem-which had been proven repeatedly- pointed to complete blindness in what investigators are investigating. It is like the 6 blindmen trying to figure out what an elephant is. Medical research fraud is actually quite commonplace. lab-based research (The type that tells… Read more »
This is the problem with educated but dubious “researchers”. This happens everywhere, including Malaysia. Billions have been spent on dubious “research” in Malaysian universities. These are recycled work which carry no added value to the economy but a dubious vehicle to meet their KPIs and promotions. They go and exhibit their “products’ in dubious platforms all over the world just for name sake. Nothing tangible is seen. It’s waste of taxpayers’ money. There are worse dubious “reseachers” in the social sciences. They do research on “stupid” issues just to finish taxpayers’ money. They recycle papers, cheat on data, fabricate the… Read more »