Blots on a Field? (A modern story of unethical research related to Alzheimer's)

Charles Pillar

Science Magazine

Originally posted 21 JUL 22

Here is an excerpt:

A 6-month investigation by Science provided strong support for Schrag’s suspicions and raised questions about Lesné’s research. A leading independent image analyst and several top Alzheimer’s researchers—including George Perry of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and John Forsayeth of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—reviewed most of Schrag’s findings at Science’s request. They concurred with his overall conclusions, which cast doubt on hundreds of images, including more than 70 in Lesné’s papers. Some look like “shockingly blatant” examples of image tampering, says Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer’s expert at the University of Kentucky.

The authors “appeared to have composed figures by piecing together parts of photos from different experiments,” says Elisabeth Bik, a molecular biologist and well-known forensic image consultant. “The obtained experimental results might not have been the desired results, and that data might have been changed to … better fit a hypothesis.”

Early this year, Schrag raised his doubts with NIH and journals including Nature; two, including Nature last week, have published expressions of concern about papers by Lesné. Schrag’s work, done independently of Vanderbilt and its medical center, implies millions of federal dollars may have been misspent on the research—and much more on related efforts. Some Alzheimer’s experts now suspect Lesné’s studies have misdirected Alzheimer’s research for 16 years.

“The immediate, obvious damage is wasted NIH funding and wasted thinking in the field because people are using these results as a starting point for their own experiments,” says Stanford University neuroscientist Thomas Südhof, a Nobel laureate and expert on Alzheimer’s and related conditions.

Lesné did not respond to requests for comment. A UMN spokesperson says the university is reviewing complaints about his work.

To Schrag, the two disputed threads of Aβ research raise far-reaching questions about scientific integrity in the struggle to understand and cure Alzheimer’s. Some adherents of the amyloid hypothesis are too uncritical of work that seems to support it, he says. “Even if misconduct is rare, false ideas inserted into key nodes in our body of scientific knowledge can warp our understanding.”

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The paper provided an “important boost” to the amyloid and toxic oligomer hypotheses when they faced rising doubts, Südhof says. “Proponents loved it, because it seemed to be an independent validation of what they have been proposing for a long time.”

“That was a really big finding that kind of turned the field on its head,” partly because of Ashe’s impeccable imprimatur, Wilcock says. “It drove a lot of other investigators to … go looking for these [heavier] oligomer species.”

As Ashe’s star burned more brightly, Lesné’s rose. He joined UMN with his own NIH-funded lab in 2009. Aβ*56 remained a primary research focus. Megan Larson, who worked as a junior scientist for Lesné and is now a product manager at Bio-Techne, a biosciences supply company, calls him passionate, hardworking, and charismatic. She and others in the lab often ran experiments and produced Western blots, Larson says, but in their papers together, Lesné prepared all the images for publication.

The info is here.

Trump's separation of families constitutes torture, doctors find

Amanda Holpuch
theguardian.com
Originally posted 25 Feb 20

Here is an excerpt:

Legal experts have argued family separation constituted torture, but this is the first time a medical group has reached the determination.

PHR volunteer psychiatrists evaluated 17 adults and nine children who had been separated between 30 to 90 days. Most met the criteria for at least one mental health condition, including post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder “consistent with, and likely linked to, the trauma of family separation”, according to the report.

Not only did the brutal family separation policy create trauma, it was intensified by the families’ previous exposure to violence on their journey to the US and in their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

All but two of the adults evaluated by PHR said they had received death threats in their home countries and 14 out of the 17 adults said they were targeted by drug cartels. All were fearful their child would be harmed or killed if they remained at home.

Almost all the children had been drugged, kidnapped, poisoned or threatened by gangs before they left. One mother told investigators she moved her daughter to different schools in El Salvador several times so gang members couldn’t find her and kill her.

The info is here.

Wells Fargo's ethics hotline calls are on the rise

Matt Egan
CNN.com
Originally posted June 19, 2018

A top Wells Fargo (WFC) executive said on Tuesday that employees are increasingly using the bank's confidential hotline to report bad behavior.

"Our volumes increased on our ethics line. We're glad they did. People raised their hand," said Theresa LaPlaca, who leads a conduct office that Wells Fargo created last year.

"That is success for me," LaPlaca said at the ACFE Global Fraud Conference in Las Vegas.

Reassuring Wells Fargo workers to trust the bank's ethics hotline is no easy task. Nearly half a dozen workers told CNNMoney in 2016 that they were fired by Wells Fargo after calling the hotline to try to stop the bank's fake-account problem.

Last year, Wells Fargo was ordered to re-hire and pay $5.4 million to a whistleblower who was fired after calling the ethics hotline to report suspected fraud. Wells Fargo faces multiple lawsuits from employees who say they protested sales misconduct. The bank said in a filing that it also faces state law whistleblower actions filed with the Labor Department alleging retaliation.

The information is here.

Confidential deals can obscure sexual misconduct allegations against doctors

Jayne O'Donnell
USA TODAY
Originally published January 5, 2018

Here are two excerpts:

Hospitals will often take over doctors' liability in confidential settlements, which Washington plaintiffs' attorney Patrick Malone calls a "frequent dodge" to keep medical negligence claims out of the National Practitioners Data Bank. Before they hire doctors, hospitals check the data bank, which also includes disciplinary actions by hospitals, medical societies and boards, which also have access to it.

Duncan's case, however, was a "miscellaneous tort claim," filed after Ohio's one-year statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims had passed.

That's just one of the many laws working in the favor of the Cleveland Clinic and the health care industry in Ohio. Plaintiff lawyer Michael Shroge, a former Cleveland Clinic associate general counsel, says major health care systems are "very often more interested in protecting their brand than protecting the health of patients."

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Critics of settlement deals' gag clauses say they compromise patients' health and safety and are unethical.

Confidential settlements are particularly problematic when it comes to health care, as "we take off our clothes in front of doctors," said Malone, who specializes in medical malpractice cases. "For a doctor to violate that in a sexual way is the ultimate wrong," he said, adding that he only agrees to confidential settlements if his client insists and only of the settlement amount.

The information is here.

Beyond Blaming the Victim: Toward a More Progressive Understanding of Workplace Mistreatment

Lilia M. Cortina, Verónica Caridad Rabelo, & Kathryn J. Holland
Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Published online: 21 November 2017

Theories of human aggression can inform research, policy, and practice in organizations. One such theory, victim precipitation, originated in the field of criminology. According to this perspective, some victims invite abuse through their personalities, styles of speech or dress, actions, and even their inactions. That is, they are partly at fault for the wrongdoing of others. This notion is gaining purchase in industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology as an explanation for workplace mistreatment. The first half of our article provides an overview and critique of the victim precipitation hypothesis. After tracing its history, we review the flaws of victim precipitation as catalogued by scientists and practitioners over several decades. We also consider real-world implications of victim precipitation thinking, such as the exoneration of violent criminals. Confident that I-O can do better, the second half of this article highlights alternative frameworks for researching and redressing hostile work behavior. In addition, we discuss a broad analytic paradigm—perpetrator predation—as a way to understand workplace abuse without blaming the abused. We take the position that these alternative perspectives offer stronger, more practical, and more progressive explanations for workplace mistreatment. Victim precipitation, we conclude, is an archaic ideology. Criminologists have long since abandoned it, and so should we.

The article is here.

Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded

Barry Meier
The New York Times
Originally published October 17, 2017

Here are two excerpts:

Both Nxivm and Mr. Raniere, 57, have long attracted controversy. Former members have depicted him as a man who manipulated his adherents, had sex with them and urged women to follow near-starvation diets to achieve the type of physique he found appealing.

Now, as talk about the secret sisterhood and branding has circulated within Nxivm, scores of members are leaving. Interviews with a dozen of them portray a group spinning more deeply into disturbing practices. Many members said they feared that confessions about indiscretions would be used to blackmail them.

(cut)

In July, Ms. Edmondson filed a complaint with the New York State Department of Health against Danielle Roberts, a licensed osteopath and follower of Mr. Raniere, who performed the branding, according to Ms. Edmondson and another woman. In a letter, the agency said it would not look into Dr. Roberts because she was not acting as Ms. Edmondson’s doctor when the branding is said to have happened.

Separately, a state police investigator told Ms. Edmondson and two other women that officials would not pursue their criminal complaint against Nxivm because their actions had been consensual, a text message shows.

State medical regulators also declined to act on a complaint filed against another Nxivm-affilated physician, Brandon Porter. Dr. Porter, as part of an “experiment,” showed women graphically violent film clips while a brain-wave machine and video camera recorded their reactions, according to two women who took part.

The women said they were not warned that some of the clips were violent, including footage of four women being murdered and dismembered.

“Please look into this ASAP,” a former Nxivm member, Jennifer Kobelt, stated in her complaint. “This man needs to be stopped.”

In September, regulators told Ms. Kobelt they concluded that the allegations against Dr. Porter did not meet the agency’s definition of “medical misconduct,” their letter shows.

The article is here.

VA About To Scrap Ethics Law That Helps Safeguards Veterans From Predatory For-Profit Colleges

Adam Linehan
Task and Purpose
Originally posted October 2, 2017

An ethics law that prohibits Department of Veterans Affairs employees from receiving money or owning a stake in for-profit colleges that rake in millions in G.I. Bill tuition has “illogical and unintended consequences,” according to VA, which is pushing to suspend the 50-year-old statute.

But veteran advocacy groups say suspending the law would make it easier for the for-profit education industry to exploit its biggest cash cow: veterans. 

In a proposal published in the Federal Register on Sept. 14, VA claims that the statute — which, according to The New York Times, was enacted following a string of scandals involving the for-profit education industry — is redundant due to the other conflict-of-interest laws that apply to all federal employees and provide sufficient safeguards.

Critics of the proposal, however, say that the statute provides additional regulations that protect against abuse and provide more transparency. 

“The statute is one of many important bipartisan reforms Congress implemented to protect G.I. Bill benefits from waste, fraud, and abuse,” William Hubbard, Student Veterans of America’s vice president of government affairs, said in an email to Task & Purpose. “A thoughtful and robust public conservation should be had to ensure that the interests of student veterans is the top of the priority list.”

The article is here.

Editor's Note: The swamp continues to grow under the current administration.

Ethics office: Anonymous gifts to legal defense funds are not allowed

Megan Wilson
The Hill
Originally posted September 28, 2017

The Office of Government Ethics (OGE), the federal government’s ethics watchdog, clarified its policy on legal defense funds on Thursday, stating that anonymous contributions should not be accepted.

The announcement comes after a report that suggested the OGE was departing from internal policy regarding the donations, paving the way for federal officials to accept anonymous donations from otherwise prohibited groups — such as lobbyists — to offset their legal bills.

In 1993, the OGE issued an informal advisory opinion that allowed for such donations because the federal employee “does not know who the paymasters are.”

Immediately after, the office acknowledged the problems associated with allowing prohibited individuals to give to legal defense funds anonymously and instead advised lawyers not to accept those contributions.

Then-OGE Director Stephen Potts told a congressional panel in 1994 that the agency “recognized that donor anonymity may be difficult to enforce in practice because there is nothing to prevent a donor disclosing to the employee that he or she contributed to the employee’s legal defense fund,” the advisory published Thursday notes.

The article is here.

Ethics experts say Trump administration far from normal

Rachael Seeley Flores
The Center for Public Integrity
Originally published September 23, 2017

President Donald Trump’s young administration has already sharply diverged from the ethical norms that typically govern the executive branch, exposing vulnerabilities in the system, a small group of ethics experts and former government officials agreed Saturday.

The consensus emerged at a panel titled “Trump, Ethics and the Law” at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas. The panel was moderated by Dave Levinthal, a senior reporter at the Center for Public Integrity.

“There have been untidy administrations in the past, but usually it takes a while to see these things develop,” said Ken Starr, a lawyer and judge who served as solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush and is best known for heading the investigation that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Ethics laws are based on the idea that norms will be followed, said Walter Shaub, former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE).

“When they’re not followed, we suddenly discover how completely vulnerable our system is,” Shaub said.

The article is here.

Government Ethics Office Website Crashes Under Too Much Traffic — Again

Alina Selyukh

The Two-Way - Breaking News from NPR

Originally posted February 9, 2017

The Office of Government Ethics is back in the news as its website crashed, for the second time in less than a month, again under a flood of inquiries.

The advisory agency typically works to vet people who run the country and detangle them from financial ties that may influence their work in public office. And typically, this work happens quietly in the background when administrations transition from one president to another.

But the OGE has received an extraordinary amount of spotlight as Donald Trump has become president. OGE chief has been one of the loudest critics of Trump's decision to remain the owner of his worldwide business empire, with its vast web of financial interests.

On Thursday, the OGE's website was overwhelmed by a surge of clicks.

"OGE's website, phone system and email system are receiving an extraordinary volume of contacts from citizens about recent events," the agency said on Twitter.

The article is here.

Prep school abuse victims file complaints about psychologist

by Michelle R. Smith
Associated Press
Originally published September 8, 2016

Two victims of sexual abuse at the elite Rhode Island boarding school St. George's have filed complaints with state licensing officials about the school's former psychologist.

They tell The Associated Press that Peter Kosseff did not do enough to address and prevent abuse during his 35 years at the school, and they want his license revoked.

Kosseff, who still practices and has offices in South Kingstown and Newport, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The first complaint was filed in December and the other soon after, the two women told the AP.  Joseph Wendelken, a spokesman for the Department of Health, which oversees such licenses, said such complaints are confidential and he could not confirm them. The department said Kosseff's license was last renewed in May.

The Associated Press typically doesn't name sexual abuse victims unless they come forward publicly.

The article is here.

How to Hold Research 'Rock Stars' Accountable for Sexual Harassment

By Sarah Brown
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Originally posted July 21, 2016

How should professors found responsible for sexual harassment be punished? How can colleges encourage victims -- often graduate students who work closely with their harassers -- to come forward? On Tuesday a panel featuring two scholars, a member of Congress, a university official, and a journalist tackled those questions and others about harassment in the sciences and in academe more broadly.

The panel, which took place at the University of California at San Francisco and was broadcast on Facebook Live, was hosted by Rep. Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, who in January drew attention for taking a stand against sexual harassment in the sciences, in a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The article is here.

Ethics and the Eye of the Beholder

Thomas Pogge, one of the world’s most prominent ethicists, stands accused of manipulating students to gain sexual advantage. Did the fierce champion of the world's disempowered abuse his own power?

Katie J.M. Baker

BuzzFeed News 

Originally posted May 20, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

But a recent federal civil rights complaint describes a distinction unlikely to appear on any curriculum vitae: It claims Pogge uses his fame and influence to manipulate much younger women in his field into sexual relationships. One former student said she was punished professionally after resisting his advances.

Pogge did not respond to more than a dozen emails and phone calls from BuzzFeed News, nor to a detailed letter laying out all the claims that were likely to appear in this article. Yale’s spokesperson, Thomas Conroy, declined to comment.

The article is here.

Editor's note: Research shows that those who teach ethics do not act more ethically than the rest of the population.

The increasing lifestyle use of modafinil by healthy people: safety and ethical issues

By Sebastian Porsdam-Mann & Barbara J Sahakian
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences
Volume 4, August 2015, Pages 136–141

Pharmacological cognitive enhancers (PCEs) are used in the treatment of a variety of disorders, including targeting cognitive impairment and sleep abnormalities. Evidence suggests that PCEs also enhance cognition in healthy individuals. PCEs have attracted considerable interest recently, particularly from students, academics and the military. Proponents of PCE use in healthy people argue that these substances may be used to reduce fatigue-related and work-related accidents and improve learning outcomes.

In this article, safety concerns as well as ethical issues of fairness and coercion are considered. Discussion amongst experts in the field, government officials and members of society on the topic of the increasing lifestyle use of PCEs in healthy people is urgently needed.

The entire article is here.

Embattled head of American Academy of Arts and Sciences to resign

By Todd Wallack |  GLOBE STAFF     JULY 26, 2013

Dogged by charges that she inflated her resume and abused her position, the embattled president of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences agreed to resign at the end of the month, the institution announced Thursday, ending weeks of controversy that had engulfed the organization and threatened to tarnish its reputation.

Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, who has overseen the Cambridge honorary society for the past 17 years, had been on paid leave from the academy for more than a month while an outside law firm investigated allegations, first reported by the Globe, that she falsely claimed to have a doctorate from New York University and misstated her work history in federal grant applications.

Berlowitz, 69, also came under fire for berating staffers and receiving an oversized pay package — more than $598,000 in fiscal 2012 alone for an organization with only three dozen staffers. The attorney general’s office also asked whether the academy fully reported all her executive perks, such as first-class travel.

The entire story is here.

'Modern Slavery' in England Is a Prevalent Problem, Report Suggests

By Science Daily
Originally published on July 2, 2013

The first evidence of widespread 'modern slavery' in England for refugees and asylum seekers is revealed in a study published today.

The two-year study calls for an overhaul of government policy to restore asylum seekers' right to work and ensure all workers can access basic employment rights, such as National Minimum Wage, irrespective of immigration status.

Dr Stuart Hodkinson from the University of Leeds, who co-authored of the study, said: "We found that in the majority of cases, if the asylum seeker had been able to work legally then the employer or agent would not have been able to exploit and abuse them to such an appalling extent."

The entire story is here.

The original report can be found at the link below:
PRECARIOUS LIVES: Experiences of forced labour among refugees and asylum seekers in England

New whistleblower protections take effect for federal contractors

By Jared Serbu
Federal News Radio
Originally published July 1, 2013

Effective Monday, whistleblower protections for federal contractors are being expanded to fill gaps that whistleblower advocates say have, until now, left tens of thousands of potential witnesses to wrongdoing vulnerable to retaliation by their employers.

Under any federal contract that's signed on or after July 1, reprisal protections will be extended for the first time to subcontractors who report waste, fraud or abuse.

The revision to federal statutes also entitles contractor employees to whistleblower protection when they report wrongdoing on a federal contract to supervisors within their own companies. Previous laws required them to take their complaints to a government office such as an inspector general, a government contract manager or a member of Congress in order to receive protection.

The entire article is here.

Medicare fraud outrunning enforcement efforts

By Fred Shulte
The Center for Public Integrity
Originally published on July 1, 2013

Citing massive budget and staff cuts, federal officials are set to scale back or drop a host of investigations into Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse — even though cracking down on government waste and cutting health care costs have been top priorities for the Obama administration.

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General is set to lose a total of 400 staffers that are deployed nationwide as a primary defense against health care fraud and abuse. Though agency officials have yet to decide which investigations will be shelved as staff dwindles, the existing staff is already stretched so thin that the agency has failed to act on 1,200 complaints over the past year alleging wrongdoing — and expects that number to rise. The OIG began shedding staff at the beginning of the year.

The budget crunch surfaced during questioning at a June 24 hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The hearing was called to examine prescription drug abuse in Medicare.

Gary Cantrell, Deputy Inspector General for the OIG Office of Investigations, said at the hearing that his unit “is shrinking” even as the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs grow in size and complexity. “We’re set to lose roughly 400 bodies out of a total of 1,800 at our peak in 2012. That’s really limiting our ability to expand our oversight in some of these areas,” he said.

Stuart Wright, Deputy Inspector General for the OIG Office of Evaluations and Inspections, added that 200 of those staffers will have departed by the end of this year and 200 more are out the door by the end of 2015.

The entire story is here.