Reuben’s Research: A Pain In The Analgesia

Research on multimodal analgesia took a hit when one of its leading proponents, Scott S. Reuben, MD – aka the Medical Madoff - was caught fudging his data. Baystate Medical Center’s internal review board launched a full-fledged investigation into Reuben’s work last May when he appeared to be conducting studies on humans without approval. The investigation, completed in January, uncovered some 21 published articles—dating as far back as 1996—in which Reuben made up some or all of the data. Baystate's chief academic officer is quoted as saying that in many cases, "there was no clinical trial because there were no patients." Whew!

At least it looks like nobody got hurt. But the incident raises questions in our industry that beg for answers:

Where Were The Peer Reviewers? In my opinion, that’s an unfair question some people are asking. Peer reviewers, and editors for that matter, can only work with the data they’re given. We can’t be expected to show up on every study site to make sure a prospective author’s data is pure before we decide to accept it for publication.

Why did it take 13 years to catch him? We can only speculate on why it took so long to uncover Reuben’s fraud, but it may have been because, like the Piltdown Man, nobody was taking his research all that seriously—nobody else could replicate his findings. Replication, albeit slow, is the surest way to keep fraud in check.

What was Industry’s role? Outside of partially funding some of Reuben’s research—and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that--Pfizer is not suspected of any wrongdoing. However, Reuben’s relationship with Pfizer, at least in the papers I was able to fully access, was not properly disclosed in most cases.

Would full disclosure have mattered? I think so. Knowing the financial ties an author has to a study’s sponsor alerts readers to the potential for biased results.

What Can Be Done About It? Reuben’s case is every Editor’s worst nightmare. Patient care is ultimately affected by erroneous data. While CMRO has never published a Reuben paper, something like this could happen to us. But rest assured that we are doing everything within our power to prevent such a thing from happening.

All CMRO articles undergo such a stringent peer review process that caused one author recently to say, “I have never received 58 referee comments on a manuscript <3000 words long, but the referees' comments and the revision definitely improved the paper.” We will also be introducing new measures soon to stay at the forefront of ethical publishing - keep your eyes open for more news soon.

By Terri Metules, US Deputy Managing Editor, Current Medical Research and Opinion

Further Reading

Good publication practice guidelines for medical communications agencies: a MedComm perspective Bareket-Samish et al. CMRO 2009;25(2):453-61

Working with compliance - the role of healthcare communications agencies Cairns & Yarker CMRO 2008; 24(5): 1371-78

International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) Position Statement Norris et al. CMRO2007 23(8): 1837-40

Expert Opinion to use Manuscript Central

In an effort to facilitate the copy flow administration, the Expert Opinion series will start in the next few weeks to use the online Manuscript Central platform to manage its pipeline of articles from commission to pre-production.

This system will semi-automatically move manuscripts through the different editorial processes, while making the data and documents directly available online to authors, commissioning editors, editorial assistants and referees.

Authors will be expected to submit their paper online at the following addresses:

• Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eobt
• Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eodc
• Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eodd
• Expert Opinion on Medical Diagnostics http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eodg
• Expert Opinion on Drug Safety http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eods
• Expert Opinion on Emerging Drugs http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eoed
• Expert Opinion on Investigational Drugs http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eoid
• Expert Opinion on Drug Metabolism and Toxicology http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eomt
• Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eoop
• Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eotp
• Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/eott

As always, the editorial team remains contactable directly and will work closely with authors and referees.