{"id":36082,"date":"2013-04-10T15:59:07","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T19:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=news&#038;p=36082"},"modified":"2013-04-10T15:59:07","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T19:59:07","slug":"scientific-misconduct-from-darwin-and-mendel-to-poldermans-and-matsubara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2013\/04\/10\/scientific-misconduct-from-darwin-and-mendel-to-poldermans-and-matsubara\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientific Misconduct: From Darwin and Mendel to Poldermans and Matsubara"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Responding to recent episodes of scientific misconduct in cardiovascular research involving once prominent cardiovascular researchers, the editor of the <em>European Heart Journal<\/em>, Thomas L\u00fcscher<em>,\u00a0<\/em>has written\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org\/content\/34\/14\/1018.full.pdf+html\">an editorial<\/a>\u00a0discussing the significance of the new cases and placing them in a historical context that includes allegations of scientific misconduct by Mendel and Darwin, among many others.<\/p>\n<p>L\u00fcscher\u00a0writes that scientific misdoncuct &#8220;is morally inappropriate, damages the reputation of research and journals in which its products are published, may endanger patients, and misuses grant money of federal and private institutions.&#8221; Nevertheless, he concludes, &#8220;we must avoid an atmosphere of distrust, as trust is the essence of scientific exchange and progress.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In his editorial, L\u00fcscher announces a further response by the\u00a0<em>EHJ<\/em>\u00a0to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cardiobrief.org\/?s=Poldermans\">Don Poldermans<\/a>\u00a0case and links it to the more recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cardiobrief.org\/?s=matsubara\">Hiroaki Matsubara<\/a>\u00a0case. (Poldermans\u00a0was a prolific Dutch cardiovascular researcher who was fired by the Erasmus Medical Center; \u00a0Matsubara is the Japanese researcher who was the principal investigator of the Kyoto Heart Study of valsartan in heart failure.)<\/p>\n<p>Poldermans was the first or senior author in seven papers published in\u00a0<em>EHJ<\/em>.\u00a0L\u00fcscher writes that the chairman of the Poldermans investigative committee &#8220;made it clear that the vast amount of publications led by Poldermans over the last decades made it impossible to assess their scientific validity in all cases.&#8221; As a result,\u00a0L\u00fcscher announces that &#8220;the editors of the\u00a0<em>European Heart Journal<\/em>\u00a0therefore would like to make an expression of concern related to the papers where Poldermans was the responsible author.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<em>EHJ\u00a0<\/em>had already\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/larryhusten\/2013\/02\/02\/european-heart-journal-retracts-main-paper-of-the-kyoto-heart-study\/\">announced <\/a>&#8212; without any substantial details &#8212; the retraction of the main paper of Matsubara&#8217;s Kyoto Heart Study. Although L\u00fcscher provides no new substantial information about the case, he links the\u00a0<em>EHJ\u00a0<\/em>retraction to five other retracted papers from the Kyoto Heart study group published in\u00a0<em>Circulation Journal<\/em>, the\u00a0<em>American Journal of Cardiology,<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0<em>International Journal of Cardiology.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Responding to recent episodes of scientific misconduct in cardiovascular research involving once prominent cardiovascular researchers, the editor of the European Heart Journal, Thomas L\u00fcscher,\u00a0has written\u00a0an editorial\u00a0discussing the significance of the new cases and placing them in a historical context that includes allegations of scientific misconduct by Mendel and Darwin, among many others. L\u00fcscher\u00a0writes that scientific [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1625,970,969],"class_list":["post-36082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-ethics","tag-retractions","tag-scientific-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}