… since scientists pointed out the fraudulence of Yoshitaka Fujii’s work? A decade during which scads of his bogus articles about anesthesia appeared in all the major journals in the field?
180 of his articles are currently under investigation for faked data. 180! And all the time people were trying to get someone – anyone – to pay attention.
[One of the whistle blowers] wrote to the FDA, its Japanese counterpart and the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists to warn them about Dr. Fujii’s results — but received either no reply or a cursory acknowledgment of his concerns.
Scott Reuben, Joachim Boldt, Fujii – what is it about anesthesiologists? Are they in a permanent state of twilight sleep?
March 10th, 2012 at 2:11AM
“Are they in a permanent state of twilight sleep?”
Yes, no foolies.
I saw a study once which claimed that anesthesiologists were more likely to become drug addicts than doctors in other specialties. The authors believed it was not a matter of selection bias (i.e. not that only dopers become anesthesiologists) but that the anesthesiologists actually get a significant amount of inhalation exposure to addictive drugs in the normal course of their duties administering those drugs to patients (lots of hovering around the patient, adjusting and monitoring things during surgery).
On a not that related note:
The feds are striking the deal they had with J&J, sounds like the gov’t is seeking larger fines.
http://www.pharmalot.com/2012/03/feds-reject-deal-with-jj-over-risperdal-marketing/
Of course none of this matters until FDA/DoJ are willing to put people in jail, or at the very least bar corporate officers from the industry upon conviction (they were about to with the CEO from Forrest but then backed off), or unless the cash penalties are large enough to put companies out of business.
March 10th, 2012 at 3:54AM
How come can somebody write 180 articles in one decade? That’s 1.5 per MONTH. Compare with my own bibliography… I understand that, in his field, it is commonplace to have multiple co-authors, but still! Just counting the time to write, proofread, submit, apply editors’ and referees’ suggestions, resubmit, it’s still an enormous number…
Margaret, ever heard of Paul Erdős?
March 12th, 2012 at 8:59PM
DM: Yes, I’ve heard of Erdos and I know he’s famous for something… Remind me.