The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says the credibility of medical research needs to be repaired.
In the wake of an ever-widening scandal surrounding surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, the vice-chancellor of the Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm has resigned. Anders Hamsten was in charge of an investigation last year into Macchiarini's work at KI. Although an independent investigator commissioned by the university
found evidence of misconduct, Hamsten
decided in August that Macchiarini had made mistakes but was not guilty of misconduct. KI
announced yesterday that it will reopen the investigation.
Macchiarini, a visiting professor at KI from 2010 until October 2015, led surgeries to implant artificial tracheae into several patients between 2011 and 2014. At the time, the operations were hailed as breakthroughs in regenerative medicine,
but six of the eight recipients have since died. In 2014, several of Macchiarini's colleagues at KI raised questions about the published descriptions of the technique's success. That eventually led to the misconduct investigation, which concluded in August with Hamsten clearing Macchiarini of the charges. In November, the university gave Macchiarini a new 1-year contract as a senior researcher.
A television documentary,
The Experiments, aired on the Swedish public television channel SVT, has brought renewed attention to the case, however. In
an opinion piece published early this morning in Swedish newspaper
Dagens Nyheter, Hamsten admits that he and others at KI made serious mistakes in their dealings with Macchiarini and that he "completely misjudged" the surgeon. "[I]t seems very likely that my decision in this case was wrong," he writes. "I realise it will be difficult for me to continue working as Vice Chancellor of Sweden's most successful university with credibility and effectiveness."
Comment:
Medical insider: "science has taken a turn towards darkness"
According to Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and former longtime Editor-in-Chief of the
New England Medical Journal (NEMJ):
"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the
New England Journal of Medicine."
Dr. Richard Horton, Editor-in-chief of the Lancet recently published a statement declaring that a shocking amount of
published research is unreliable at best, if not completely false, as in, fraudulent. Horton declared, "Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards
darkness."
Comment: This is getting serious, folks! The rodents in Brussels are out of control (and so are the mice).