Banned Scientist Now Works At Schering-Plough
9 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // November 30th, 2007 // 7:53 am
A scientist that the University of Washington found guilty of research misconduct now works for the big drugmaker, according to The Scientist blog. In an e-mail to the site, a Schering-Plough spokesman confirms that Scott Brodie, a former AIDS esearcher at the University of Washington, “is a current employee and that we recently became aware of the University of Washington investigation.”
The university’s investigation into Brodie’s work found 15 instances of scientific misconduct involving altered images and fabricated data, and the school banned him from working there. Brodie sued the school and The Seattle Times to prevent them from disclosing the investigation’s report, but lost the case, the blog notes. The faked data was contained in published and unpublished journal articles, and grant proposals concerning HIV research.
The investigators recommended that Brodie be banned from future employment at the university. All his research is now “viewed with suspicion” and subject to independent verification, according to a UW Investigation Committee Report that was cited by The Seattle Times. “Accepted scientific practices do not allow a scientist to falsely label an image as suits his or her fancy simply because such work is conducted in the scientist’s lab; to do so is instead a gross deviation of accepted scientific practices,” the investigators wrote.
While searching in the Thomson ISI database for publications Brodie produced while at UW, The Scientist noticed that a ‘Scott Brodie’ had published papers on interleukins in the last two years, the blog writes. It’s not clear, though, whether Schering-Plough was already aware of Brodie’s past at the time The Scientist questioned the drugmaker. The Schering-Plough spokesman wrote in his e-mail, “As this is a personnel matter, we cannot comment further.”
Brodie graduated from the University of Washington in 1982 and got a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Washington State University in 1989. He later got a doctorate in infectious diseases from Colorado State University and was briefly an instructor at Harvard University, the Times writes. He was reccruited to UW in 1996 to direct the retrovirus laboratory. The investigation began when a rival researcher, who was reviewing a paper Brodie submitted for publication, noticed some anomalies and notified the federal Office of Research Integrity, which, in turn, notified the UW in August 2002.
Lawrence Corey, head of the UW’s virology division in the Department of Laboratory Medicine, told the Times that even though Brodie used faulty methods, his conclusions were found to be correct by other scientists - at least in the paper that spurred the investigation. That paper found the HIV virus continues to replicate in certain cells, even in people taking potent antiretrovirals. “Did he set back crucial research? The answer is no,” Corey said.
Denny Liggitt, chairman of the UW’s Department of Comparative Medicine and one of the three investigators who reviewed Brodie’s work, told the Times that medical research and HIV research in particular is highly competitive, with the National Institutes of Health making cutbacks and many researchers competing for limited funding. Getting published can help bolster a researcher’s push to land the next grant, he added. “It’s ugly out there,” Liggitt said. “There are a lot more desperate people because of the cutbacks.”
Hat tip to The Scientist and The Chronicle of Higher Education
BP MD
If the accusations against Dr. Brodie are true, he will fit it beautifully at Schering-Plough. The company probably hired him because they knew he’d have no problem with their lack of ethics. Schering-Plough, the unethical pharmaceutical company, that appears to be the home of the anti-policy. Put on your website everything you want the public, the press, the government and others to hear, then do everything the opposite. It’s the home of lack of integrity, lack of honesty, and lack of truth. Many on the senior management team are absolutely great at misconduct - Fred Hassan, Carrie Cox and their cronies.
If you don’t believe me, just look at what they did with Human Growth Hormone at Pharmacia - promoting it off-label for anti-aging! Wonder how many patients had safety issues with that product. They’ve continued their ways at Schering-Plough with several franchises. Beneath all the glitz, hype and hypocrisy, there’s a huge pile of stinking garbage!
Disgusted
I agree with BP MD. The new hire will fit in very well with Schering-Plough’s anti-ethical culture!!!! He’ll be right at home. In fact, they’ll probably promote him to Special Advisor to Fred Hassan and Carrie Cox and Chief in charge of the Corporate Misconduct Office - responsible for lack of business integrity, dishonesty and graft throughout the SP organization without being caught.
Angry
Please allow me to cast my vote. All of the senior execs at Schering-Plough specialize in cheating without getting caught or being held responsible for their misdeeds.
If they had to take a lie detector test in order to remain there, the top two or three layers of mismanagement would have to go
MDB
I agree. He’ll simply be like all the rest of the peas in the Schering-Plough pod!!!!
ol cranky
Why is this surprising to anyone? Big pharma gets away with a lot of this crap!
Back in 1999, Ortho-McNeil hired Andrew Friedman, someone who was barred from conducting research for 3 years and temporarily lost his license for committing research fraud, as a Director of Clinical Research. He was promoted to senior director and was one of the guys who was trotted out to the media to assure of of the safety of ortho-evra and I don’t recall mainstream media pointing out his questionable history regarding data or the logic of Ortho-McNeil hiring someone with that background to lead clinical research.
George
This is a total railroad case by the Seattle Times. Seems they didn’t get much for spending legal money for this story.
Think about it the University of Washington spent 16 months this guys info. for 8yrs of work and not one paper was retracted and not one grant was given back? Read Research Misconduct at the ORI.hhs.gov site. Institutions are suppose to spend 60 days for inquiry and 120 to investigate NOT 16 MONTHS.
How many people worked in the lab? For years the UW never gave proper storage space or good computers for reasearch. I saw research slides stuffed under lab tech work benches and in the cleaning closets. 3 seperate labs work in a small space with no IT person to help. They all worked to fix stuff when computers crashed or not enough storage was available on computers.
Check out the “investigators” they were anybody they could get to tell the UW’s story. Find out there names. The Ligget investigator (guy check his background)…he always had a personal beef. He enjoyed participating in the railroad job and the Times gave him even more glory by printing his words.
If anybody is outright guilty of misconduct it is the University of Washington.
ORI Misconduct Cases Highest Since 1996;
Office Speeding Case Closures, Official Says
The Office of Research Integrity closed more cases and made more misconduct findings in 2006 than it has in a decade, the office reported in March.
ORI made 15 research misconduct findings and closed 35 cases in 2006, the highest number of misconduct findings and closed cases since 1996. Ten of the 15 research misconduct cases resulted in exclusions or debarments, ranging from three years to a lifetime. The data appear in the office’s March newsletter.
John E. Dahlberg, director of the division of investigative oversight at ORI, confirmed the statistics and told BNA March 13 that since taking over the division last May, he and his staff have tried to channel more of their focus on bringing cases to closure, while at the same time working more aggressively with ORI attorneys to get the misconduct cases handled.
“I think it’s taking a fresh look at things, and more of a commitment to case closures, rather than a more unfocused approach to the whole spectrum of what we do,” Dahlberg said.
He said a number of “low-level, procedural changes” in terms of how the division writes its oversight reviews of facilities that go to the attorneys have facilitated a more expedited process, allowing ORI to close cases more quickly. A misconduct case can take anywhere from two months to several years to close, Dahlberg said, depending on how complicated the case is and how much resistance ORI receives from the researcher identified in the case.
ORI also closed more cases than it opened in 2006, with five to 10 cases that Dahlberg said his staff is aggressively trying to close. He said his division is on track to keep up a similar pace in 2007.
“I’m not doing any projections, but it looks pretty promising,” he said.
ORI opened 230 cases last year, which Dahlberg said is consistent with the case load of previous years. However, he said ORI sees a “very small tip of the iceberg” in terms of the actual research misconduct that is happening, which he described as “reasonably widespread.” He cited estimates from scientific journals that indicate about 1 percent of all their accepted manuscripts apparently have fraudulent figures.
“If you do any kind of extrapolation, that could translate into lots and lots of cases,” Dahlberg said.
CAB
George,
I guess we’re all used to Big Pharma, especially companies like Schering-Plough, being so slimy that it was natural to assume they were at it again.
CAB
BP Watch
Here’s a glimpse of the ethics of one of the Big Shots at Schering-Plough. No wonder people wonder!
Memos Show New Jersey Drug Firm Hoped to Minimize Diet Drug’s Risks.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Aug. 19 — NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Internal memos distributed throughout Wyeth-Ayerst in the mid-1990s show the company was aware of the risks associated with the diet drug Redux and hoped to minimize warnings on the label to boost sales.
On the stand at state Superior Court was Carrie Smith Cox, the former vice president of women’s healthcare at Wyeth-Ayerst. Cox was responsible for marketing all drugs, including Redux and Pondimin, that were primarily used by women.
Cox authored several memos pertaining to Redux, noting sales of the drug could be severely affected if a “black box,” or severe warning label, were attached to the drug. The active drug in Redux, dexfenfluramine, had been associated with pulmonary hypertension, a sometimes fatal disease.
Madison-based American Home Products, and its subsidiary Wyeth-Ayerst, is facing a class-action suit from more than 94,000 women in New Jersey who used fen-phen for more than three weeks. Fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine are the active drugs in Pondimin and Redux, respectively.
Those two drugs were pulled off the market in September 1997, several months after a medical journal story linked the treatments to pulmonary hypertension and valvular disorders.
American Home manufactured fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine. Phentermine was never linked to heart disease and is still on the market.
Cox, now the global business management for Pharmacia & Upjohn, was reluctant to admit that Wyeth-Ayerst tried to put a positive spin on the safety issues related to Redux.
“I think we were very responsible in promoting Redux for obesity where it was a serious health risk,” Cox said. “We were not promoting it for cosmetic use.”
Sales of Pondimin, a quiet seller that the company hardly marketed, skyrocketed in 1994 when a medical journal report said combining the drug with phentermine would enhance weight loss.
In 1995, the company assembled a group of physicians to serve as a focus group and judge the quality of Wyeth’s marketing materials. Cox sent a memo to two top officials telling them the doctors were generally skeptical of diet drugs and their risks. By marketing those drugs as safe, the company would likely sell more, she wrote.
The physicians said they weren’t too concerned about the chance of patients developing pulmonary hypertension, since the statistics given by Wyeth showed only 4 or 5 people per million developed the disease. But other incidence reports estimated that as many as 1 in 45,000, or 22 people per million, could actually develop the disease.
If the Food and Drug Administration were to force the company to use those statistics, “this would likely be a strong negative,” Cox wrote. “As you know, this is probably the biggest single factor remaining to determine future sales performance of the product.”
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