Doctor Faked Research on Drug That Killed Thousands: Gets Only Six Months

The real issue, though, is that he got away with it for so long. This case exposes the corruption at the core of modern medicine.

by Heidi Stevenson

2 July 2010

Scott Reuben, the doctor who faked research on Celebrex and Vioxx, which killed tens of thousands of people, has been sentenced to a mere six months in prison. The judge was easy on him because his attorney claimed that he'd suffered from an "undiagnosed bipolar disorder". The real criminal, though, is modern medicine.

Reuben had published 21 articles in major journals on his faked research. He did not enroll a single patient in his studies; instead he manufactured all of the data. He placed the names of other doctors as co-authors, though they had no knowledge of it. This happened over a span of 12 years, starting in 1996, and he wasn't caught until 2009.

Frankly, I'm still scratching my head about why it took so long for him to be caught. I find it very difficult to believe that the "co-authors" of articles published in major journals, such as Anesthesiology, Anesthesia and Analgesia, and the Journal of Clinical Anesthesia remained unaware of the misuse of their names for long. I must wonder who knew and said nothing.

In fact, a brief search turned up a response in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery by both Dr. Reuben and Dr. Evan F. Ekman, responding to a comment by another doctor. Is it possible that the journal did not inform Dr. Ekman? Why didn't he scream bloody murder at the misuse of his name?

This is just one instance. Frankly, it must require the silence of many doctors and others to allow such a fraud to take place.

The 21 papers related to the case have been withdrawn, of at least 72 that Reuben has seen published. Why haven't the others been retracted? Surely the reasonable assumption is that anything he produced is invalid. Yet, at least 51 other papers are still available for reference.

There are so many unanswered questions in this case! My own outrage is not focused on Reuben. Rather, it's on the medical system that allowed this to happen.

Peer Review?

What possible value is the vaunted peer-review process of medical journals, when Reuben's fabricated articles were published? One doctor commented (after the fact), "When you look at Scott's output over the last 15 years, he never had a negative study. In fact, they were all very robust results—where others had failed to show much difference. I just don't understand how anyone could pull this off for so long."

It seems rather obvious that the fame of an author carries more weight than the paper that he publishes. Peers reviewing papers apparently aren't interested in content. Rather, their interest seems to be on the fame of the author or the power of the pharmaceutical company that pays for the "research".

Employer Unaware?

Reuben was employed by the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massaschussetts, which is part of the Tufts University School of Medicine. Tufts is being treated with kid gloves because their Chief Academic Officer, Hal Jenson, has been forthright in his responses to questions about Reuben.

Whoa! How could Tufts have been completely unaware of what Reuben was doing? The suggestion that no coworkers knew what was happening...well, I cannot believe it. Surely someone had to question where the research was happening. Surely, there must have been someone who wanted to see reports on the research progress. Surely, the lack of a search for research subjects must have noted by someone.

Nonetheless, Jenson claims that the fraud was turned up during a routine annual review by the Institutional Review Board of Baystate research. Annual review? It took 12 years for an annual review to catch what Reuben was doing? Yeah...Right.

Jenson stated, "We have a very solid process. That process worked in finding the fabrication." Why is no one asking why it took so long for them to find the fabrication?

Research Unduplicated

One of the presumed tenets of scientific research is that it must be duplicated. Reuben's was not. In 12 years of his non-existent research, no one raised a warning that something must be wrong. What's going on in such a medical system?

At one point, Reuben's hubris led him to write to the FDA, telling them not to limit the use of pain medications he'd supposedly researched. He cited his own faked data to document their safety and efficacy. Presumably because there wasn't any other.

Damage to Legitimate Researchers

Reuben methodically set about to damage the reputations of lesser-known researchers when they published results contradictory to his faked ones. He would write to the journal, stating that his research contradicted that of the legitimate work. You can see an example of it here.

Still Licensed to Practice

Though he's been fired from his position at Baystate, there is still no sign that he's lost his license to practice. Exactly what is the medical profession waiting for?

Big Pharma Money

As ever, the bottom line is money. Big Pharma paid Reuben for studies. Pfizer and Merck paid Reuben for his research. They then used it to sell their poisons. (Pfizer is still selling celecoxib, brand name Celebrex.) Again, it beggars belief to suggest that they were unaware of how invalid his research was. They had paid for other research on Celebrex and Vioxx, and had to have known the truth of their products.

With regard to Reuben, Pfizer and Merck could have been interested in only one thing: that he gave them documentation that said what they wanted. Whether it was legitimate made no difference, as long as they could get away with it.

So, to add to what troubles me about this whole thing, Pfizer is being treated as the victim! Yes, Pfizer and other members of Big Pharma are considered Reuben's victims. The court has awarded them a few hundred thousand dollars.

The real victims? The tens of thousands who died because they were prescribed these poisons based on Reuben's faked research? Well, apparently they don't count.

That, my friends, is that state of modern medicine inside a system that lets it do as it will. There is corruption at the core of modern medicine. Personally, I've no doubt that there were people who blew the whistle, but were ignored—if they were lucky—or lost their jobs or careers if they weren't lucky.

Nonetheless, there are over 60 thousand bodies as a result of just one drug for which Reuben produced phony data. This is merely one instance of what's going on in modern medicine. Estimates of excess deaths from medical treatment run to well over a million people a year in the US alone.

Modern medicine can—and does—do incredible things. They do save lives. But who can rationally trust their lives and the lives of their loved ones to a system that allows, and closes its eyes to, the fraud perpetrated by Scott Reuben, Still-MD.

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