According to Science Times [1] , the Tuesday science section in the New York Times , scientific retractions are on the rise because of a "dysfunctional scientific climate" that has created a "winner-take-all game with perverse incentives that lead scientists to cut corners and, in some cases, commit acts of misconduct."
But elsewhere, audacious, falsified research stands unretracted--including the work of authors who actually went to prison for fraud!
Richard Borison, MD, former psychiatry chief at the Augusta Veterans Affairs medical center and Medical College of Georgia, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a $10 million clinical trial fraud [2] but his 1996 US Seroquel - Study Group research is unretracted. [3] In fact, it is cited in 173 works and medical textbooks, misleading future medical professionals. [4]
Scott Reuben, MD, the "Bernie Madoff" of medicine who published research on clinical trials that never existed, was sentenced to six months in prison in 2010. [5] But his "research" on popular pain killers like Celebrex and Lyrica is unretracted. [6] If going to prison for research fraud is not enough reason for retraction, what is?
Wayne MacFadden, MD, resigned as US medical director for
Seroquel in 2006, after sexual affairs with two coworker women researchers
surfaced [7] ,
but the related work is unretracted and was even part of Seroquel's FDA
approval package for bipolar disorder. [8]
More than 50 ghostwritten papers about hormone therapy (HT) written by Pfizer's marketing firm, Designwrite, ran in medical journals, according to unsealed court documents on the University of California--San Francisco's Drug Industry Document Archive. [9] Though the papers claimed no link between HT and breast cancer and false cardiac and cognitive benefits and were ghostwritten by marketing professionals not doctors, none has been retracted.
Pfizer/Parke-Davis placed 13 ghostwritten articles [10] in medical journals promoting Neurontin for offlabel uses, including a supplement to the Cleveland Clinic [11] but only Cochrane Database Systematic Reviews and Protocols has retracted the specious articles. [12]
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