The Alirio Melendez research misconduct issue finds resolution.... well, at least some kind of resolution ...!

After one and a half years of dingdonging, the Melendez research misconduct investigations  finally get an NUS report. Twenty one papers were associated with plagiarism, fabrication and falsification. Strangely, the NUS refuses to say which papers. But the NUS apparently exonerated all the co-authors. Whoohoo......! Nobody else were responsible!

Incredible news, I must say. The lead authors of the papers not responsible? I am sure Melendez was not the lead author for all 21 papers. How can this be?

In the NUS, I am told, there is a scheme of apportioning glory and credit for scientific publications. This is for the purpose of chalking up points for promotions and other 'rewards'. The lead and the corresponding authors get 50% of the credit each. All the other co-authors stuck in between get 10% each. On this model, one published paper with a mass grave of 10 co-authors can chalk up a total of 180% credit.

Contrast this with research misconduct, where suddenly everyone in the mass grave is invisible and not involved, and only one person takes the blame for everything.

You go figure the logic!

Silence is golden, NUS? I am disappointed.

Sometimes I wonder if the National University of Singapore (NUS) values good press above doing the right thing. I understand that managing the corporate profile is important, and that for a school such as the NUS that relentlessly chases the rankings, avoiding bad press is important. But there are other ways of managing your reputation than just avoiding difficult issues.

Here the imposed silence on student blogger Alvin Tan's punishment says a lot about NUS character and maturity. I am not interested in the sordid details about what the blogger did, but the consequences of what he did especially while he was a scholarship holder. Whatever NUS's disciplinary decision was, there are important lessons for everyone. Transparency in dealing with such a difficult issue will show to the world the heart and soul of the university. We need to know what value systems, the NUS stands for. If the disciplinary action was fair and honest, why is there a reluctance to make it known? There are lessons for everyone.  As a world class university aspirant, the NUS should not fear engaging in public discussions and debate, even about its own corporate decisions.

But I am disappointed. Because it seems clear that the NUS has opted to hide behind zipped lips and walls of silence rather than bravely engaging the public. This has been how the NUS has chosen to manage previous incidents - from research malpractices to spectacular lab accidents. To date, the public remains in the dark about what mistakes were made and what actions taken. Valuable opportunities to learn from these incidences have been lost. This over-reliance on the strategy of retreating behind walls of silence is very damning, and I believe in the longer term, will stunt the intellectual growth of the university. Perhaps some timely advice from the managing editor of the SPH who sits on the NUS Board of Trustees is appropriate here.

It's time the NUS grew up.

Sex and corruption in medicine

 

The recent sex and corruption case at the Central Narcotics Bureau has certainly woken many people up. But there is really nothing new here other than the titillating stories of trysts  and late night sexting between two very gatal (itchy) people. Sex sells. And all through history women have used their wiles to charm their way into position, power and wealth. So was this corruption, or just two very gatal people acting out their fantasies? We won't know for some time, and Gigamole will not speculate.

Nonetheless, Gigamole is reminded that the medical and health industry is not immune to such sex and corruption issues. Just that many do not get flagged out.

The WHO has estimated that the about US$4.1 trillion is spent globally on health services and of this, US$750 billion was on pharmaceuticals. It is a massive industry. The pharma companies aggressively compete for this market, and many (if not all) resort to unsavoury methods to market their wares.

Recently GSK was fined US3 billion for illegal marketing of its products. Part of these charges relate to providing junkets for doctors and various other kickbacks. J&J also had to pay up US78 million to settle charges of bribery and kickbacks it had provided.

Does this happen in Singapore? For sure. But perhaps not so obvious, because of our CPIB. But bribery and kickbacks in some form definitely occurs. Our doctors (especially)  go on junkets all the time. Not to mention kickbacks of various sorts. These are supposed to be regulated and notified to senior management, but nobody really scrutinizes anything, and consultants regard these as the perks of their practices. Medicines Australia reported that the annual spending by Pharma companies in wining and dining doctors and healthcare workers amounted to about A$24 million. How much "hospitality" spending in Singapore? Gigamole doesn't know. In fact the authorities don't really want to know.The public should insist that this be reported and made known publicly.

Any sex involved? Gigamole cannot prove anything. But suffice to point out that the industry is much bigger than selling the odd IT systems. Anybody stopping to point out that the sales reps for pharma companies are invariably attractive young ladies in short skirts?

This is not a problem that affects just pharmaceuticals. Medical devices suffer the same corruptibility. The susceptibility also extends up all levels of the health care chain....all the way from the prescriber, procurer and possibly even the regulator. Can we trust that we have only the best medical information, drugs and devices? Possibly not.

We need to look at this more carefully. The trouble is that the medical industry is seems rather "protected" and few want to stir the pot to root out these problems within the industry.

Research misconduct: continuing concerns, and the great wall of silence

As perhaps a sign of the increasing global concern about what appears to be an epidemic of misconduct among the scientific community, the New York Times has published an article titled "A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform" by Carl Zimmer.

In it, Dr Ferric Fang, Editor in Chief of the journal Infection and Immunity is quoted as saying  "Nobody had noticed the whole thing was rotten."

The article further reports that "Dr. Fang became curious how far the rot extended. To find out, he teamed up with a fellow editor at the journal, Dr. Arturo Casadevall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. And before long they reached a troubling conclusion: not only that retractions were rising at an alarming rate, but that retractions were just a manifestation of a much more profound problem — “a symptom of a dysfunctional scientific climate,” as Dr. Fang put it."

Should Singapore be concerned? The answer is an obvious "Yes!"

Yet there is this great wall of silence, as if no one wants to talk about it or publicly deal with the problem, potential or real. Alirio Melendez's publications have been under investigation for too long with any resolution. But not only Melendez, a number of other big and not so big names have been flagged out by blogs such as Abnormal Science. In these there are allegations of self plagiarism, image manipulations, data mislabelling etc. Yet there has to date, been no public acknowledgement of these problems, exoneration or evidence of any actions taken. Sadly silence just serves to condone such practices.

I think we owe it to our students and future generations of scientists to deal promptly, impartially and publicly with these problems.

Research misconduct - the ball passes to the institutions....

A consortium of journal editors have ganged up on institutions that have previously employed disgraced Japanese anaesthetist Yoshitaka Fujii, asking them to authenticate up to 193 publications, or else these publications will be retracted. These allegations were based on a letter by John Carlisle, published in the journal Anaesthesia. (See letter by Editors).

Yoshitaka Fujii has been the subject of alleged scientific fraud since 2000 when a group of researchers led by Peter Kranke accused Fujii in a letter to the journal, Anesthesia & Analgesia. Despite these allegations, neither journals nor institutions that Fujii worked for, attempted to do anything about it. Anesthesia & Analgesia, in fact, continued to publish up to 10 papers by Fujii. The University of Toho eventually sacked Fujii in February this year, for ethical breaches in a number of studies.

What has been exceptional in this recent move by the journal editors, has been the bold, albeit overdue response to act on these allegations of fraud. The threat to retract 193 publications if carried out will represent the most drastic journal action for serial scientific fraud ever. The public communication between the consortium of journal editors and Japanese institutions may represent the first such concerted action to force the institutions to take research misconduct seriously. This passes the ball back to the institutions. Let's hope that institutions around the world will not continue to buat bodoh about allegations of research misconduct. There is no place for Lord Horatio Nelson in research.

Research misconduct - a problem in Singapore or not?

from http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/socialsideofscience_06

It's probably unrealistic to expect that scientists can be less unethical than salesmen or wall street bankers. Historians are by now pretty convinced that some of our most illustrious scientific minds, Gregor Mendel, Isaac Newton and even Albert Einstein misconducted themselves in their presentation of critical data. So it should come as no surprise that scientists of today do cheat. Except that because today's research stakes are so high and because biomedical research is nowadays such a big industry, we should expect that, notwithstanding all the goodie-goodie posturing, biomedical scientists do cheat a lot.

An electronic BMJ survey in the UK of 2782 respondents (out of 9036 invitations) revealed that 13% of the respondents had either witnessed or had first hand knowledge of research misconduct. Not only that, but the respondents also felt that about half of these cases had been inadequately investigated.

from http://www8.open.ac.uk/platform/blogs/society-matters/new-survey-questions-scientific-integrity

The recent unveiling of Dr Anil Potti's research dishonesty (see Wikipedia; Economist) show not only how extensive research misconduct can get, but also how large prestigious research establishments are not immune to such dishonesty. (Dr Potti was a reknown Duke University oncologist and researcher). Many felt though, that his case was a long time cooking, perhaps too long, and that this delay reflected
some reluctance in the establishment to press home early allegations.

Another kettle about to boil over involves Dr BA Aggarwal at another prestigious establishment, the  MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is apparently under investigation at the moment. In Singapore, we have the Alirio Melendez story, which has been under investigation for an extremely long time without any apparent outcome.

Is research misconduct a problem in Singapore? It is hard to tell. But there is nothing to indicate that we are any more or less ethical compared to researchers in UK or the US. The absence of any national ombudsman to investigate allegations of misconduct may limit the identification and surfacing of such cases. Blogs such as Abnormal Science and Retraction Watch do occasionally flag out some questionable practices from Singapore (see here), but there is currently no indication that our research establishments are taking any of these seriously. I guess Lord Horatio Nelson rules in Singapore with respect to investigating misconduct in biomedical research.

I should make it very clear that I make a very clear distinction between allegations and proven misconduct. Much of what has been highlighted in blogs such as Abnormal Science are little more than allegations, and even if there are malpractices, it is unclear what actually happened and who is responsible for the 'errors'. Nevertheless research establishments do need to recognize the presence of these allegations in the blogosphere and to deal with them. It is not in anybody's interested to pretend that such allegations do not exist, especially if they are accompanied by documentary evidences of questionable data integrity. We need to have these properly pinned down, and if there is any real misconduct, the research community and particularly the students need to be aware of these pitfalls and wrong doings.

For further reading, please see:
Singapore statement on research integrity
Columbia University portal for Responsible Conduct of Research

Given the amount of money we are pouring into biomedical research in Singapore, it is somewhat surprising that we do not take the policing of research misconduct more seriously. Perhaps it is time we had a national ombudsman for this purpose.