Lee Howard
The Day
1/15/2010
Dr. Scott S. Reuben, a former member of Pfizer Inc.’s speakers’ bureau accused last year of perpetrating one of the biggest research frauds in medical history, was charged today in a federal court in Boston with falsifying medical research studies.
Reuben, formerly chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz accused Reuben of accepting a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to research the effectiveness of pain medication Celebrex for a 2005 study in which no patients were actually enrolled. Prosecutors allege that Reuben made up the data, which he subsequently published in the medical journal “Anesthesia & Analgesia.”…
…Reuben’s studies had been considered pioneering at the time they were published. His data had supported the use of two of Pfizer’s major products — Celebrex and Lyrica — in combination to treat certain types of post-operative pain…
The complete article is at The Day.
Also from the Wall Street Journal, March 2009, “A New Low in Drug Research: 21 Fabricated Studies”
