A surgeon who moved to Russia after being fired from a Swedish hospital has lost his Russian Science Foundation grant, following the retraction of a Nature Communications paper:
After Paolo Macchiarini's star fell in Sweden, the Italian surgeon still had a place to shine: Russia. The Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm fired him in March 2016 for multiple ethical violations, including "breach of KI's fundamental values" and "scientific negligence." But Russia had long showered Macchiarini with funding and opportunities to perform his experimental surgeries to implant artificial tracheas, and it allowed him to stay. Now, a year later, his Russian refuge has ended as well.
On 30 March, it became clear that the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) would not renew its funding for Macchiarini's work, which now focuses on the esophagus rather than the trachea. The decision came 9 days after Nature Communications retracted a paper by Macchiarini [open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15077] [DX] that documented successful esophagus transplantations in rats. Minutes of a meeting made public last week show that Kazan Federal University (KFU), Macchiarini's current employer, decided to end his research project there on 20 April, effectively firing him.
[...] Once considered a pioneer of regenerative surgery, Macchiarini aimed to give patients whose tracheas had been damaged a new windpipe. "Seeded" with stem cells, it was supposed to grow into a new, fully functional organ. (He initially used donor tracheas as a basis, but later switched to an artificial scaffold.) But he has been accused of painting a false picture of his patients in scientific papers, several of which have been retracted; operating without ethical approval; and lying on his CV. At least six of the eight artificial trachea recipients have died. In Sweden, where the case has plunged science into a crisis, investigations continue into allegations including involuntary manslaughter.
This isn't our first encounter with Dr. Macchiarini.
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Two judges on the panel that awards the Nobel prize for medicine have been asked to resign:
Two judges have been asked to leave a panel that picks the Nobel prize for medicine in a scandal surrounding a disgraced Italian transplant surgeon. The decision to drop Harriet Wallberg and Anders Hamsten came after the Swedish government sacked the entire board of the prestigious Karolinska Institute, where the scientist worked.
Paolo Macchiarini was seen as a leading specialist on windpipe transplants. But two of his patients died and he was accused of falsifying his work record. Dr Macchiarini denies all the charges against him.
The two judges who lost their positions on the Nobel panel have both served as heads of the Karolinska Institute, and were among several individuals suspected of ignoring warnings about the Italian windpipe scientist.
Also at Reuters.
Disgraced surgeon is still publishing on stem cell therapies
Paolo Macchiarini, an Italian surgeon, has been fired from two institutions and faces the retraction of many of his papers after findings of scientific misconduct and ethical lapses in his research—yet this hasn't prevented him from publishing again in a peer-reviewed journal. Despite his circumstances, Macchiarini appears as senior author on a paper published last month investigating the viability of artificial esophagi "seeded" with stem cells, work that appears strikingly similar to the plastic trachea transplants that ultimately left most of his patients dead. The journal's editor says he was unaware of Macchiarini's history before publishing the study.
"I'm really surprised," says cardiothoracic surgeon Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, one of the whistle-blowers who exposed Macchiarini's misconduct at the Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm. "I can't understand how a serious editorial board can accept manuscripts from this guy."
Macchiarini was once heralded as a pioneer of regenerative medicine because of his experimental transplants of artificial tracheas that supposedly developed into functional organs when seeded with a patient's stem cells. But his career came crashing down after the Swedish documentary Experimenten showed the poor outcomes of his patients, all but one of whom have now died. (The lone survivor was able to have his implant removed.) Macchiarini was subsequently fired from KI, both the university and a national ethics board found him guilty of scientific misconduct in several papers, and Swedish authorities are now considering whether to reopen a criminal case against him.
In vitro assessment of electrospun polyamide‐6 scaffolds for esophageal tissue engineering (DOI: 10.1002/jbm.b.34116) (DX)
Previously: Nobel Prize for Medicine Judges Asked to Resign for Involvement in Scandal
Thoracic Surgeon Loses Funding After Paper Retraction
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @03:38AM (3 children)
It is not at all difficult to p hack and otherwise misinterpret your way to medical papers, I don't understand the need for fraud here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @03:49AM (1 child)
Is it fraud, or is he overly confident and exceptionally unlucky?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @05:03AM
It does not matter, and we should not care.
He retracted the papers due to his proven lack of good working practice. That makes his complete work useless, because it can not be trusted. So why should he get funded?
Science is the *one* profession where not the actual results are important (well, that's how it *should* be ...), but good working practice trumps all. (sorry, really bad pun here)
(Score: 4, Funny) by marcello_dl on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:44AM
Fellow Italians won't resort to number massaging when they can outright cheat, instead. It's a matter of principle. Not cheating would be like... cheating.
Why do you think good ol' Berlusconi went bunga bunga with 17yo girls? because legal age is 18.
Q: how do you distribute a leaflet in Italian cities?
A: You leave the pile of leaflets on a bench together with a clearly written note: DO NOT TOUCH
(Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:27PM (1 child)
From what I know..
* He threatened patients to undergo his procedure or else their prognosis would not be good. But in reality they would most likely been better of without his intervention.
* His trachea implants gave complications that eventually led to the death of at least six patients. Yeşim Çetirin is known to suffered through torturous intensive care for five years and she died 26-years old in 2017.
* Cellular and animal experimental data were not produced which would have stopped the operations because it would then be known it doesn't work properly. Mucus membrane does not form on the plastic graft.
* People at KI right up to the principal let all checks that should have stopped this to slip away. CV were not checked either.
* Two persons in the judging panel for Nobel Prize in Medicine resigned. In addition the secretary resigned too.
* He's under investigation for manslaughter and bodily harm at KI.
Patient outcomes:
Claudia - need contnous inserts of biodegradable stents in the trachea.
Ciaran - no report of failure.
Keziah - death by pneumonia.
Zjadyra - poor state of health, unable to speak and bedridden, without insurance.
Andemariam - implanted became loose and patient died.
Christopher - died 4 months after the surgery.
Yulia - plagued with chronic inflammation and fungi, essentially rotting from the inside and died.
Alexander - died in a bicycle accident.
Yesim - airways had to be cleared every four hours to avoid asphyxiation and died.
Hannah - died of other causes?
Sadiq - possible dead.
Dmitri - lives with tracheotomy.
I'm impressed that the Russian university even touched this surgeon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @03:47PM
Sounds like this guy is The Best at surgery. Does Trump have a surgeon general yet? I think we have a candidate. Bonus: already speaks Russian.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday May 20 2017, @04:00PM (2 children)
So, this guy sounds bad. But I'm confused about the role of the paper retraction. He is listed as the last author within a set of 23 authors. Was his contribution the main reason for this retraction? If it was due to unethical stuff, how did this slip past the notice of the other 22 authors? (I know that a lot of "authors" on scientific papers may not all be engaging that actively, but surely some of these 22 other authors were paying some attention?)
Who are these 22 other folks? How many of them signed off on this work without noticing or caring about problems? Did any of the rest of them help to fabricate data? Have they suffered any professional consequences? Or were they all just a giant group of his grad assistants or something?
Seems there needs to be a little more explanation in this story about what happened with this paper and its retraction, and why that is considered the most significant element here (rather than "merely" serious failure of actual human procedures coupled with apparent fraudulent claims about them).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @05:42PM
I suspect that, if you think too hard about it, the conclusion will be that 99.99% of medical research papers published last year will need to be retracted. This is unacceptable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @07:13PM
The rule in the academic world is that if you were in the same room as someone doing some work, then they owe you co-authorship. Also, something else I've been noticing lately: if you are Chinese then you only cite other Chinese authors. There must have been a dictate from above about that.