[To be continued as time permits and circumstances require]

We had a rather interesting faculty meeting this last Wednesday with Dr. Roberta Sonnino, our new Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs who comes to us from Creighton University. I don't know much about the place except that it never seemed to be a research hot-bed. It is unranked both for research and for clinical training in the latest version of USNews rankings of best medical schools (2008).

So I wonder if her experience at Creighton has qualified her for doing the job at a much larger and research-intensive medical school with a good ranking (7th) for clinical pracice?

I subsequently asked Dr.Sonino to provide an electronic copy of this draft that she provided. It may be downloaded at this link.

The document contains the spaghetti-like flow chart above. It is guaranteed to pull the University of Minnesota medical school deeper into the swamp that is administrative paperwork and waste yet more valuable faculty time. It will also assure that the Associate Dean's position, previously half-time, can be expanded to occupy Dr. Sonnino's full-time attention.

This bomb was dropped on us with no prior warning. It was not provided to us in advance and was only distributed at the meeting as thirteen pages of hardcopy. Dr. Sonino then smilingly asked for input. As if we were supposed to speed-read this rather complex document and give here instant feedback. The meeting concluded with no indication that we would be meeting with her again to have an opportunity to go over it in detail.

Nice, huh!

From my short visit with her on Friday, I can only conclude that she is not really interested in faculty input and that business as usual continues in the office of the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. I have had experience with this office over the years and could not get its present or previous occupant to see that the rules that are CURRENTLY on the books in the medical school are followed. More on that later.

So I will give some input in this venue. Hopefully others can join in the discussion. My first questions are:

Who wrote this document and is responsible for it?

Exactly what faculty input did it have?

Dr. Sonino?

Judith Warner fleshes this argument out in the NYT: A post on UD's blog made me aware of the NYT article.


From the NYT

October 9, 2008, 9:00 pm
Diagnosis: Greed

For a break from the news of the financial meltdown, The Times on Saturday offered a page one story about Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, a prominent psychiatrist at Emory University, who violated federal research rules regarding conflicts of interest and made millions of dollars consulting for the pharmaceutical industry.

Yet the story of Nemeroff, who earned $2.8 million in fees from 2000 to 2007, and had at one point consulted for 21 drug and device companies simultaneously, wasn’t really a departure from the news of the week – or of this whole benighted era – at all.

It was, rather, yet another iteration of the ever-unfolding saga of greed and how the deregulation of absolutely everything has brought our country to this painful season of reckoning. Because Nemeroff’s story – which is hardly unique – belongs uniquely to this time in our nation’s history.

It is a product of legislative and cultural changes that have altered the practice of medicine, the work of research universities and the relationship between those universities and industry. And it is marked, like so much of what’s gone off the rails in our era, by the failure of our government to step in to protect citizens.

Nemeroff didn’t bring down any banks, didn’t freeze the American credit markets, hasn’t plunged the world economy into recession. But his extensive, excessive and untransparent ties to the pharmaceutical industry are all too common, unfortunately, among his cohort of “thought leaders” in psychiatry and other medical specialties. And these relationships have led to a dangerous crisis of confidence in the basic integrity and validity of America’s medical research.

Nemeroff’s case, which has many twists and turns involving allegations of conflicts of interest and nondisclosure of payments going back over the years, is only the latest to issue from the office of Senator Charles E. Grassley.

Grassley, Republican of Iowa, patron saint of whistleblowers, would-be regulator of hedge funds and now-seemingly prescient critic of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has, since this past spring, been investigating drug makers’ payments to prominent psychiatrists whose research bears the imprimatur of prestigious universities that frequently receive federal grant money. In June, his office reported that Dr. Joseph Biederman and Dr. Timothy Wilens, psychiatrists at Harvard Medical School, under-reported earnings of more than $1.6 million each from drug makers, possibly in violation of federal and university rules. More recently, Grassley raised conflict-of-interest allegations concerning Dr. Alan Schatzberg, the chairman of the psychiatry department at Stanford and the incoming president of the American Psychiatric Association, who is said to have controlled more than $6 million worth of stock in a company while serving as lead investigator on a study involving one of that company’s products.

And these cases are, of course, only the tip of the iceberg. Conflicts of interest between the pharmaceutical industry and prominent research physicians now “permeate the clinical research enterprise,” writes Dr. Marcia Angell, author of the 2004 book, “The Truth About the Drug Companies,” in the Sept. 3 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

In one review that Angell cites, about two-thirds of academic medical centers had financial stakes in companies that sponsored research within their facilities. In another study, two-thirds of medical school department chairs were found to receive departmental income, and three-fifths received personal income, from drug companies.

Scientists in government agencies aren’t above suspicion, either: Angell cites a study of 200 government panels that issued practice guidelines, which found that more than a third of the authors had some financial interest in drugs they recommended. And “perhaps most importantly,” she writes, many members of 16 standing committees that advise the Food and Drug Administration on drug approvals also have financial ties to drug companies. “Although these individuals are supposed to recuse themselves from participating in decisions about drugs made by specific companies with which they have a financial relationship, that requirement is frequently waived by F.D.A. authorities,” Angell writes.

Universities have all kinds of conflict-of-interest rules too, of course, as do the National Institutes of Health, which hand out grant money to researchers. But the federal government counts on universities and researchers to police themselves, and I think we know all too well from recent events on Wall Street where self-regulation leads.

The upshot: No one can be trusted. “Not only do the researchers have the complete conflicts of interests, but the medical schools and the universities do too,” Angell told me this week in a telephone interview. “The Biedermans, the Schatzbergs, they’re rainmakers for the institutions. It’s a broken system.”

How did all this happen?

It’s a familiar story: About three decades ago, it became possible to make serious money as a university researcher. Not that the money was so bad before, of course. It was respectable. But it wasn’t Wall Street-type money.

That changed in the early 1980s with the passage of legislation that allowed universities to patent their publicly funded research results and then grant exclusive licenses to pharmaceutical companies. The public-private wall came down. The universities received royalties on the drugs, and the royalties were split between the researchers and the departments. Start-up companies were spun off and sold. University researchers became, essentially, partners to industry.

The change wasn’t just structural, however. There was a cultural shift, a kind of boundary melt.

“Greed became respectable,” Angell, a professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and the former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, recalled. “There used to be a sort of tension between doing well and doing good for medical researchers. If they wanted to make a lot of money in a high-risk sort of job they could work for industry. If they wanted to do important, exciting research they stayed in academia and they had a comfortable life but not great wealth.

“Before 1980, they were aware of this tension,” she said. “Before 1980, those who went into industry were held in some disdain. With Reagan, all this changed. There was a strong feeling that the world divided into winners and losers. In medical research this just has had enormous implications.”

It’s had enormous implications for our world generally. On Wall Street, change had to come via catastrophe. Let’s hope it won’t take a disaster to bring sense back to medicine.

After being accused of intentionally falsifying data to produce evidence for a stem cell research project, former University of Minnesota employee Dr. Morayma Reyes is shouting innocence.

Reyes, who now works at the the University of Washington, says any misconduct during her work as a student in Dr. Catherine's Verfaillie's laboratory was entirely accidental. She blames the University's investigative committee's findings of impropriety on a lack of expertise--a strange statement for someone who themselves is being accused of using a "poor scientific method and inadequate training."

In a letter to the editor published in the Star Tribune Wednesday, Reyes wrote:

These were honest errors in part due to inexperience, poor training and lack of clear standards and guidelines about digital image handling and proper presentation. That said I completely disagree with the statement that “the manipulation misrepresented experimental data and sufficiently altered the original research record to constitute falsification”. This incorrect statement stemmed from a difference of opinion about the interpretation of the results which clearly reflects lack of expertise by the UMN panel in the research area in question, stem cell biology.

Something that University of Minnesota Vice President of Research Tim Mulcahy says is entirely untrue. The University is planning on releasing a rebuttal statement later in the week, but Mulcahy took the time to talk to City Pages Wednesday night.

"I can assure you we stand by the process. We believe it was a fair and impartial review," says Mulcahy. “[Reyes] was afforded every opportunity along the way to provide input and at the end of the day [the committee] believed that the balance of the evidence still left them with the conclusion that the data was knowingly falsified. ...We had an obligation to fulfill and I think we have fulfilled it as well."

The committee that evaluated the work of Reyes and Verfaillie, published in the academic journal Blood in 2001, was composed of three distinguished professors: one from the University of Minnesota, another from University of California Las Angeles, and a third from the University of Michigan. After more than a year's worth of effort, the panel concluded that four figures "were knowingly falsified prior to submission to the publication,” says Mulcahy.

"The panel weighed evidence against each individual independently and concluded that Catherine Verfaillie was exonerated, and it wasn’t due to a process or elimination. It wasn’t well because it wasn’t Catherine, it had to be someone else, what they concluded deliberately was someone else actually did this," Mulcahy says, adding that that someone else was Reyes.

"Presumably when cases like this happen…data is typically falsified to make your case better to make your position more strong.”

According to the Associated Press, Reyes and Verfaillie's research has received international attention "because of political and ethical controversies over research involving embryonic stem cells."

The study was one of a series that Verfaillie published, suggesting that adult stem cells could be used as an alternative to embryonic stem cells in medical research.

The University asked Blood to retract the article. Other decrepancies were found in data published by the pair in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by the committee to be in "honest error." There was not enough evidence for the committee to substantiate that data was intentionally modified, says Mulcahy. The University has notified the editorial board of JCI.

Mulcahy says questionable work at University of Minnesota is rare.

"This make no statement at all about the integrity of our research in general," he says.

Breaches in ethics in science reporting do occur occasionally and unfortunately that did occur here, he adds. But, the fact that the errors were caught and dealt with it appropriately shows the University's strong commitment to ethical scholarship.

"Ideally this would never happen. In reality, it does sometimes and I think we managed it appropriately in this case.’

By MAURA LERNER October 8, 2008

Stem-cell pioneer Dr. Catherine Verfaillie apologized Wednesday for a 2001 scientific paper that the University of Minnesota now says contained falsified data.

Verfaillie said she "did not notice the problems," which came to light in a university probe disclosed Tuesday.

"I am extremely sorry about this," said Verfaillie, who headed the university's stem-cell institute from 1999 to 2006.

She responded to questions by e-mail from Belgium, where she now lives.

The U said Tuesday that the 2001 paper, an early study on adult stem cells, contained altered images and "misrepresented experimental data." The investigation blamed a former graduate student for manipulating the images.

Verfaillie declined to describe them as falsified data, saying only that there were errors and problems.

She also rejected the university's criticism that she failed to properly oversee the research.

"I rely on the honesty and integrity of those working in the lab," wrote Verfaillie. "Nevertheless, I want to make it clear that I take the ultimate responsibility for the work performed in my lab."

The university began investigating Verfaillie's research after the magazine New Scientist raised questions about the accuracy of several published studies. The findings disclosed Tuesday were the result of an 18-month investigation by a panel of three experts, including two from outside the U.

Verfaillie said she stands by the conclusions of the 2001 study, which showed the potential of adult stem cells to grow into different types of cells. She said that "all of its key findings" have been replicated by other scientists. But in light of the investigation, she and the university have both asked for a retraction, which she called "the proper course in this situation." The paper originally appeared in the scientific journal Blood, which is published by the American Society of Hematology.

Dr. Morayma Reyes, a former graduate student who worked with Verfaillie, has acknowledged that some images were manipulated. But she denied falsifying data, and said the changes were minor, such as adjusting brightness and contrast. Now an assistant professor at the University of Washington, she blamed the actions on "ignorance [and] inadequate supervision and training."

Verfaillie said that she has added "additional oversight measures" to ensure the integrity of her research. "These include a requirement that any and all manuscripts to be submitted for publication are reexamined by me," as well as other senior investigators. "I am confident that these measures will avoid the recurrence of a similar problem in the future."

U researcher tells her side

By Dr. Morayma Reyes

October 8, 2008

I freely admit that errors were made that merit a correction in the Journal. These were honest errors in part due to inexperience, poor training and lack of clear standards and guidelines about digital image handling and proper presentation.

That said I completely disagree with the statement that “the manipulation misrepresented experimental data and sufficiently altered the original research record to constitute falsification”.

This incorrect statement stemmed from a difference of opinion about the interpretation of the results which clearly reflects lack of expertise by the UMN panel in the research area in question, stem cell biology.

Indeed I requested UMN to give proper consideration to difference of opinion and to be given a chance to be heard by a second panel with expertise in stem cell biology. The University denied both requests.

UMN was very unfair and failed to follow the appropriate procedures. The panel composition did not include a student, violating University’s policy http://www.policy.umn.edu/groups/ppd/documents/procedure/AcademicMisconduct_proc2.cfm.

Immediately after I received the decision from UMN I requested a meeting with Dr. Mulcahy, the deciding officer, to discuss disciplinary actions and to have the opportunity to request a hearing to challenge the decision of falsification, as per University’s policy http://www.policy.umn.edu/groups/ppd/documents/procedure/AcademicMisconduct_proc3.cfm.

The UMN denied my request for a hearing because I am not a University employee. I think it is very unfair for graduate students or former graduate students to be denied the rights for a hearing and subsequent appeals because of ambiguities of the University’s policy.

One accusation was about a duplicated western blot that appears twice in the paper. The use of a duplicated western blot in reverse orientation was an inadvertent error.

We found the original western blots that should have been used in place and the interpretation of the results would have been the same had we shown the correct western blot.

The other three allegations were related to image manipulation. I acknowledged that the figures in question were manipulated by global changes (e.g. adjustment of brightness and contrast). These practices were well accepted in the scientific community at the time (1999-2002).

Based on the current standards the alleged manipulations could be considered inappropriate (violate the guidelines but do not change the interpretation of the results) but not fraudulent manipulations in which the image is intentionally altered to cause others to believe as true that which is not true.

The UMN panel did not accept the distinction between inappropriate vs. fraudulent manipulation.

The report asserts that images were edited with a photoeditor. Dr. Mulcahy described the findings as "photoshopping things out or adding things in" (www.startribune.com).

If that is true, I not only had nothing to do with such manipulations I did not even have access to photoediting software.

The panel knows this and makes the accusation despite its own conclusion of no evidence that any computer I used at the time could have had photoediting software. I could not have possibly “altered orientation of bands, introduced lanes and covered objects or image density in certain lanes” and then merge the figure in Power Point 97 as the UMN panel claimed I did.

They also ignored the findings of two outside consultants, one, Mr. Reis, a major national figure in forensic image analysis, showed that the assertion can not be proven from the available data.

The UMN panel did not have preponderance evidence to prove their allegations and did not give proper consideration to the evidence I brought in my defense that these errors were unintentional and were common and accepted practices at the time.

I am left with concern that the University's findings may have been intended to narrow the issue rather than addressing the standards used at that time by UMN and by other investigators in the field of stem cell biology.

I want to emphasize that this problem continues today and is not just specific to me or to the Verfaillie lab.

I have learned a hard lesson. Image manipulation is a big problem nowadays with the availability of photo editing software such as photoshop and even tools built into many instruments, e.g. confocal microscopes, that offer ample opportunities for improper adjustment of an image without warning.

I personally believe that, just like in my case, in the majority of cases image manipulation results from lack of education, ignorance, inadequate supervision and training of students by mentors who may themselves be unaware of the problems such manipulation can cause. I regret very much these errors and never had the intention to deceive. These errors did not alter the conclusions of the paper and these experiments and research have been reproduced by other independent groups.

As for my future plans I hope that the scientific community will come to the conclusion that these were honest unintentional errors that did not affect the conclusions of the research. I have learned a great deal about proper ways to handle digital images and I have adopted and implemented these new guidelines.

University Misconduct Panel Concludes That Certain Data in Stem Cell Paper Were Falsified

University of Minnesota Vice President for Research Tim Mulcahy has accepted the conclusions of an academic misconduct committee impaneled by the University which found that certain data published in the journal Blood in 2001 in connection with federally sponsored stem cell research at the University were falsified. The University has asked the journal to retract the article. Vice President Mulcahy also accepted the findings of discrepancies, but not falsification, in certain data published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Two current or former University employees were the subject of a complaint. Dr. Catherine Verfaillie was previously a full-time tenured faculty member at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Verfaillie is currently the Director of the Stem Cell Institute at the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, and retains a 10 percent faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Morayma Reyes was a University of Minnesota student in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program who worked in Dr. Verfaillie’s laboratory. Dr. Reyes is currently an Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Washington. None of the co-authors of the papers or other laboratory personnel were subjects of any complaints or findings.

The complaint was investigated by an investigation committee, chaired by Dr. David Bernlohr, Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota, and included Dr. Karen Reue, Professor of Human Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine – UCLA, and Dr. William Smith, Professor of Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan. The panel was charged with investigating complaints against the respondents pursuant to federal regulation 42 C.F.R. § 93.310 and the University’s Academic Misconduct Policy after an earlier inquiry conducted by Senior Administrator Charles Muscoplat concluded that there had been sufficient questions raised about the research to warrant a full investigation.

The investigation panel submitted its final report to the Senior Administrator on September 5, 2008. The panel concluded that parts of four figures in the Blood paper were falsified. Allegations against Dr. Verfaillie were unsubstantiated. The findings with respect to Dr. Reyes are private student data and cannot be released under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The Senior Administrator accepted the panel’s report on September 12, 2008, and forwarded it to the Vice President for Research, Tim Mulcahy, who is the senior University official responsible for oversight of academic misconduct proceedings. Vice President Mulcahy reviewed the report, accepted the panel’s conclusions and issued the University’s final decision on September 24, 2008. On September 25, 2008, Vice President Mulcahy transmitted the investigation panel’s report and other required materials to the federal Office for Research Integrity for its review and action as required under federal rules governing research supported by the Public Health Service (PHS).

In four of seven figures in the Blood paper, the panel concluded that aspects of the figures were altered in such a way that the manipulation misrepresented experimental data and sufficiently altered the original research record to constitute falsification under federal regulations and University policy. Manipulations identified by the panel included: elimination of bands on blots, altered orientation of bands, introduction of lanes not included in the original figure, and covering objects or image density in certain lanes.

In one case all exposures of the source data for the published image were missing. While the panel could not conclude misconduct in this case, it concluded that the figure should be withdrawn as it cannot be substantiated by the existing experimental record. The panel found no academic misconduct in the remaining two figures in the Blood paper.

The panel also considered three duplications of Fluorescent Activated Cells Sorting (FACS) data and incorrect labeling included in the article published in Blood, as well as two duplications of FACS data and incorrect labeling in a 2002 article published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI). These latter discrepancies were self-reported to the University and JCI by Dr. Verfaillie prior to the initiation of the University’s investigation. In all cases, the panel concluded that no academic misconduct was associated with these FACS discrepancies. With respect to the FACS discrepancies in the Blood paper, the panel noted poor scientific method and inadequate training and oversight for this research. The panel made frequent reference to insufficient oversight throughout the report.

Based on the panel’s findings, the University has requested that the article entitled “Purification and Ex Vivo Expansion of Postnatal Human Marrow and Mesodermal Progenitor Cells” published in the November 2001 edition of Blood be retracted. Similarly, the University has notified the editorial office of the Journal of Clinical Investigation of the panel’s findings in relation to the FACS discrepancies identified in the article entitled “Origin of Endothelial Progenitors in Human Post-Natal Bone Marrow” published in 2002. As the panel did not find evidence of academic misconduct related to these figures, the University has not requested that the JCI paper be retracted.

The investigation panel also considered six discrepancies in two figures (Figures 6 and 10) included in an international patent application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in August 2000 and again in a corresponding national stage filing dated August 2002. While concluding that the figures were seriously flawed and not accurate data, there was insufficient evidence to conclude that misconduct occurred in connection with the patent applications. Nevertheless, the panel recommended that the University notify the company holding the patent interests of these findings and cooperate with the company in making any appropriate disclosures to the USPTO.

The published version of Dr. Reyes’ thesis contained all seven western blot discrepancies and three sets of FACS duplications included in the Blood paper. The University’s Student Conduct Code prohibits scholastic dishonesty and falsification in academic work. Student disciplinary proceedings are private, and information about student discipline can be released only in accordance with the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and FERPA

Guilty: stem cell researcher

Posted by Andrea Gawrylewski
[Entry posted at 7th October 2008 05:17 PM GMT]

A former member of a high profile stem cell biology research team at the University of Minnesota has been found guilty of falsifying data, a university investigatory panel has ruled.

Morayma Reyes, a former PhD student in the lab of prominent stem cell biologist Catherine Verfaillie, was under investigation by the university for fabricating data in a 2002 Nature paper which identified a certain type of bone marrow stem cell capable of giving rise to every type of cell in the body. It was the first time that adult stem cells had been shown to be pluripotent -- only embryonic stem cells had displayed that capability before.

After the results were published, other researchers had trouble replicating the findings. Early in 2007, a New Scientist reporter noticed that some data resembled data in a patent claim, data in another paper in the journal Experimental Hematology from 2001, and data in an article in the journal Blood. The magazine raised the issue with Nature and the university. An investigation last year conducted by the university found that the duplication in Experimental Hematology was not a result of misconduct.

In June of last year, Nature retracted the figures in question from the paper, stating that they did not affect the overall findings of the paper.

The current report issued by the University of Minnesota panel states that Reyes is guilty of falsifying the data in Blood, and calls for the article's retraction. It also found the same data in a fourth article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, although did not rule that a case of misconduct.

The panel cleared Verfaillie and the other authors on the papers of fraud. "I have initiated a number of additional oversight measures designed to further enhance the integrity of research and scientific publications coming from my lab," Verfaillie, now at Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium told New Scientist. "I am confident that these measures will avoid the recurrence of a similar problem in the future."

No action has been set against Reyes, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Washington, Seattle.

From the Daily:

A state-wide campaign to raise funds for TCF Bank Stadium is currently underway.

Admirable though this may be, in the face of never-ending tuition increases, the University should put a similar effort forth to raise funds for tuition.

If everyone in Minnesota gives a buck for the stadium and a buck toward tuition, the University would still be $2.9 million short for the stadium, but could pay 510 students’ in-state tuition this year. If everyone in the state coughed up a shiny green Abe Lincoln, that number goes up to 2,550, or half the freshman class, or the equivalent of putting $730 back into the pocket of every undergrad on campus.

University President Bob Bruininks told The Minnesota Daily in a summer issue that he’s “somewhat disappointed that we didn’t have the ability to drive down tuition more for students.”

The audacity of the above comment has previously been the subject of a post on the Periodic Table:

There He Goes Again...
Rappin' Robert

Wherein it is noted that OurLeader had no intention of a lower tuition figure, even BEFORE his requested budget was cut...

Bruininks should advocate that private fundraisers like the University of Minnesota Alumni Association undertake similar public efforts to lower tuition as they are for stadium fundraising.

The Alumni Association lists “High quality public education is essential,” as its first belief. If that’s really the case it should be peppering the state with tuition, instead of stadium, billboards.

The University was created as a land grant institution, a place for the students of Minnesota to receive a college education. We urge the University to appeal to the people of Minnesota in similarly creative and energetic attempts to keep tuition increases to a minimum next year.

From Seth's Blog (via UD)

Academic Horror Story (Emory University)

From Claudia Adkinson, Emory University dean, to Charles Nemeroff, Emory University professor of psychiatry, in a 2006 memo:

I have been grateful that the reporter was not sophisticated enough to ask all the right questions.

Grateful. She was grateful. Ugh. Double ugh. Professor Nemeroff, you’ll recall, took vast sums of money to advocate the prescription of dangerous drugs to millions of people and hid this fact, even after several warnings. Dean Adkinson was grateful, let me repeat, that a reporter didn’t ask “all the right questions” to expose this.

This is why New York Times reporter John Schwartz’s lack of understanding matters.

Fairview Health Services is cutting 150 to 200 filled positions, not including positions it will leave open, spokesman Ryan Davenport said. The health system also will delay some capital projects — though not the ongoing construction of a pediatric hospital — and improve the efficiency of its staffing, supply chain and billing.

An Oct. 2 memo from Fairview executives noted that their flagship hospital — the University of Minnesota Medical Center — isn't running as efficiently as other teaching hospitals.

"We have benchmarked both clinical and non-clinical areas against the nation's academic health care organizations (600+ beds, 200 transplants) and found we use more resources to do our work than other organizations," the memo said.

Her latest post concerns the continuing firestorm over doctors on the dole. Perhaps our administration could learn something about the need to stop doing business as usual? Perhaps we could speed up action here at the U about conflict of interest?

From MPR: "The recommendations have been emailed to members of the university's medical school community along with a request for input. University of Minnesota medical school leaders say they don't have a timeline to act on the recommendations, but would like to see some action taken in the next year."

From UD:

Emory University, his employer, has known for years he’s a greedy son of a bitch who doesn’t think rules apply to him, and it’s done nothing. It shares Nemeroff’s cynicism, enjoying as much as he does the corrupting pharma money the psychiatric researcher brings the school.

No conflict of interest here, in other words: It’s in Nemeroff’s interest to get rich, and it’s in Emory’s interest to get rich.

The field of academic psychiatry is filthy all the way through right now, with Nemeroff and his crony, Alan Schatzberg, heading it, setting an example, showing everyone the way.

Supine universities, a nation of pill poppers… the world is their oyster.

The journalists should certainly interview as many professors as they can in the department Nemeroff chaired, psychiatry and behavioral sciences. They need to ask these people why none of them ever expressed any reservations about a chair whose behavior was a well-established scandal. Perhaps their silence means that they, taking their cue from their leader, also make conflict of interest the basis of their professional lives. If the behavior’s endemic in the department, the journalists need to ask the administration why the university’s conflict of interest procedures are total shit.

By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: October 3, 200

One of the nation’s most influential psychiatrists earned more than $2.8 million in consulting arrangements with drug makers from 2000 to 2007, failed to report at least $1.2 million of that income to his university and violated federal research rules, according to documents provided to Congressional investigators.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff of Emory University, is the most prominent figure to date in a series of disclosures that is shaking the world of academic medicine and seems likely to force broad changes in the relationships between doctors and drug makers.

The findings suggest that universities are all but incapable of policing their faculty’s conflicts of interest. Almost every major medical school and medical society is now reassessing its relationships with drug and device makers.

As revelations from Mr. Grassley’s investigation have dribbled out, trade organizations for the pharmaceutical industry and medical colleges have agreed to support the bill. Eli Lilly and Merck have announced that they would list doctor payments next year even without legislation.

Universities once looked askance at professors who consulted for more than one or two drug companies, but that changed after a 1980 law gave the universities ownership of patents discovered with federal money.

The law helped give birth to the biotechnology industry and led to the discovery of dozens of life-saving medicines. Consulting arrangements soon proliferated at medical schools, and Dr. Nemeroff — who at one point consulted for 21 drug and device companies simultaneously — became a national model.

He may now become a model for a broad reassessment of industry relationships. Many medical schools, societies and groups are considering barring doctors from giving lectures on drug or device marketing.

Comes another fine product...

EFS!

Minutes*

Senate Committee on Finance and Planning

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The University is not being paid money owed to it, reports are not generated, and so on; unless there is a clear message that these problems will be resolved in the next two-three months, the situation will reflect badly on the entire central administration. Another major concern is from the human-resources perspective: people are not being treated well in their jobs, have been put in diminished or downgraded roles, and morale has sunk.

Professor Konstan said he understood the importance of understanding the process, but this reminds him of hearing the captain of the Titanic talk about how crews are looking for holes and patching them up--the boat is sinking! What is his assessment, he asked Mr. Volna. Did they know they would be in this predicament at this point? Or were the problems unanticipated? He is in a department that has lost one staff member because of EFS and he knows of other departments where staff have resigned. He said he does not care how good the punch-card list is, this system is a disaster.

Professor Luepker, noting that he might be piling on, commented that if Northwest Airlines or 3M changed software and were still installing fixes three months later, they would be out of business. The University is a $3-billion operation and people are quitting because of EFS. He said he could not understand how private companies could make a transition to a new system but the University cannot.

Professor Martin raised Professor Konstan's question again: which door is it? Mr. Pfutzenreuter said it was not a door. Professor Konstan again asked if they knew, three month ago, that this is the situation they would be in. They did not, Mr. Pfutzenreuter said.

Mr. Pfutzenreuter said the University put in the "plain vanilla" system that represents best practices. It did change duties and workflow and the way the University does business—with an eye to making the place more efficient.

When they are losing people around the University before they get to that step three, that is a big cost, Professor Martin said. They don't have the resources to jump to that step right now, Mr. Pfutzenreuter said. Or is the plan to have new employees, more familiar with how things are done in PeopleSoft, so the University is more like business, Professor Konstan asked. That is not the plan, Mr. Pfutzenreuter responded.

Ms. Kersteter said Mr. Volna has provided a lot of good information on what they are doing to fix problems; how are they communicating with users? There seems to be a void, which in turn leads to rumors that are uncomplimentary to the administration.

Professor Martin emphasized Ms. Kersteter's point about the vacuum of information: people need to know what is being done—and deans and department heads do not know. The deans will not be happy paying the EFS tax for something that does not work.

Professor Konstan said he is hoping the University can look back at this situation and learn. He also said that a lot of people have not heard an apology, acknowledging the system was launched with severe bugs, that they blew it on the testing (and obviously did not know these problems would arise), that they know they made people's lives miserable, and that they are working hard because they care about the staff.

Mr. Moseley said that from what he can understand, this is not an uncommon problem when institutions of this size install new systems. He said he has seen a lot of case studies in his classes similar to what is happening here. The University is only three months into the system; what he has learned is that it typically takes 18-20 months before the bugs and kinks are worked out. Any communication should let people know the situation will be difficult for the foreseeable future and that things will not be fixed by October 15. It simply takes that long.

Top
Three
Public
Research
Universities
In The World....

Where does the buck stop? Bob? Tom?

Or, in the words of OurLeader:

"I think we need to put ourselves in the position of acting according to the highest ethical principles. I believe our people do that now and I believe our people will be doing that in the future as well." President Bruininks (Daily: 6-18-08)

I wonder where - and have asked - the new proposal places us on the Student American Medical Association scorecard where we received a D for the current situation at the medical school?

Yesterday I put up a post that was taken pretty much from an MPR report.

Regulating Doctors on the Dole at the University of Minnesota?

Eventually....

To my great surprise, this post received a large amount of traffic - about 400 hits. My blogs are generally pretty low traffic, 100 hits is a good day, so this was quite a surprise.

Turned out that the traffic was due to the site of cursor.org, wherein a link was embedded in the following paragraph:

"If we went out on the street and told people some of what went on, they would be shocked," says a journalism professor who describes himself as "the most outside outsider" on a University of Minnesota medical school conflict of interest task force.

-------------------

More on all of this later. Bill Gleason

Fighting rising tuition and student debt

If University President Bob Bruininks and the Board of Regents are serious about reaching any top three goals, they need to put the interest of students first. But by increasing tuition of both undergraduate and graduate students, University officials are effectively increasing the debt of each. The high tuition rates and average debt could potentially scare away talented students to schools more accommodating to their financial needs.

The average student debt of a University graduate is $24,995, the worst in the Big Ten among public universities. Illinois has the lowest debt at $15,413.

How about it Bob and Tom? Don't you think it's time to discuss this very important matter?