Scott Reuben

Scott S. Reuben (born 1958) is an American anesthesiologist who falsified data heralding the benefits of the

Reuben's work had actually come under scrutiny as early as 2007, when several anesthesiologists noticed his studies never showed negative results.[4] Greg Koski, former director of the Office for Human Research Protections, said the fraud was unusual because Reuben was able to carry it on for almost 13 years without being caught by the peer review process.^[5]

All of Reuben's 21 fraudulent articles, as well as the article abstracts, are documented in the magazine Healthcare Ledger.

Tufts has since cut ties with Reuben,^[7] and his Massachusetts medical license was permanently revoked after a period in which he voluntarily agreed not to practice.

Sentencing

On January 7, 2010 Reuben agreed to plead guilty to one count of health care fraud. Prosecutors alleged that Reuben obtained thousands of dollars in grants for research that he never performed.^[9] He formally pleaded guilty on February 21, 2010 before Judge Michael Ponsor. On May 24, Ponsor sentenced him to six months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, forfeit $50,000 to the government and make $360,000 in restitution to pharmaceutical companies.^[10][11] The plea deal effectively ended his career as a doctor; most states will not grant medical licenses to convicted felons.

On November 16, 2011 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an order permanently debarring Reuben from assisting in drug applications.^[12]

Impact

A 2009 review of systematic review articles used in evidence-based medicine found that while some reviews were no longer valid when the Reuben studies were removed, the conclusions in the majority of them remained unchanged.^[13] The review found that the key Reuben claims that needed to be re-examined were "the absence of detrimental effects of coxibs on bone healing after spine surgery, the beneficial long-term outcome after preemptive administration of coxibs including an allegedly decreased incidence of chronic pain after surgery, and the analgesic efficacy of ketorolac or clonidine when added to local anesthetics for intravenous regional anesthesia."^[13]

In 2010 the editorial in Anaesthesia argued that,^[14]

Reuben's fabricated data may have had impact beyond systematic review conclusions because they addressed topical questions for which anaesthetists, surgeons, and patients seek answers, such as the utility of multimodal anaesthesia, or whether non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) influence bone healing ... Millions of people have had NSAIDs after fractures, trauma or orthopaedic surgery without problems of bone healing. The plausibility of a sizeable negative effect of NSAIDs on bone healing has to be questioned.

See also

• List of scientific misconduct incidents

References