Dr Con Man: the rise and fall of a celebrity scientist who fooled almost everyone

[hinterland]

Dr Con Man: the rise and fall of a celebrity scientist who fooled almost everyone

"Support for Macchiarini remained strong, even as his patients began to die. In part, this is because the field of windpipe repair is a niche area. Few people at Karolinska, especially among those in power, knew enough about it to appreciate Delaere’s claims. Also, in such a highly competitive environment, people are keen to show allegiance to their superiors and wary of criticising them. The official report into the matter dubbed this the “bandwagon effect”."

"For their efforts, the whistleblowers were punished. When Macchiarini accused one of them, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, of stealing his work in a grant application, Hamsten found him guilty. As Grinnemo recalls, it nearly destroyed his career: “I didn’t receive any new grants. No one wanted to collaborate with me. We were doing good research, but it didn’t matter … I thought I was going to lose my lab, my staff – everything.”"

"If the sins of Karolinska have been committed elsewhere, it is partly because medical research facilities share a common milieu, which harbours common dangers."

"Scientists can also suffer from false hope. To some extent, they believed Macchiarini because he told them what they wanted to hear. You can see this in the speed with which his “breakthroughs” were accepted. Only four months after Macchiarini operated on Claudia Castillo, his results – provisional but very positive – were published online by the Lancet. Thereafter it was all over the news."

"The popular press also has a lot to answer for. Its love of human interest stories makes it sympathetic to unproven therapies."

"It is fitting that Macchiarini’s career unravelled at the Karolinska Institute. As the home of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, one of its ambitions is to create scientific celebrities. Every year, it gives science a show-business makeover, picking out from the mass of medical researchers those individuals deserving of superstardom. The idea is that scientific progress is driven by the genius of a few.

It’s a problematic idea with unfortunate side effects. A genius is a revolutionary by definition, a risk-taker and a law-breaker. Wasn’t something of this idea behind the special treatment Karolinska gave Macchiarini? Surely, he got away with so much because he was considered an exception to the rules with more than a whiff of the Nobel about him. At any rate, some of his most powerful friends were themselves Nobel judges until, with his fall from grace, they fell too.

If there is a moral to this tale, it’s that we need to be wary of medical messiahs with their promises of salvation."

 

[AndyPR]

Disappointed, saw the title and assumed that they'd finally figured Wessely out...

 

[wdb]

There was another thread on this
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/lancets-role-in-macchiarini-scandal.42898/

 

[Barry53]

Disappointed, saw the title and assumed that they'd finally figured Wessely out...

Me too. We wish. The time will come.

 

[wdb]

Six papers by disgraced surgeon should be retracted, report concludes
By Gretchen VogelOct. 30, 2017 , 4:00 PM

Sweden’s national scientific ethics board, the Expert Group on Misconduct in Research, has concluded that six papers authored by disgraced surgeon Paolo Macchiarini should be retracted. The papers describe the purported clinical success of artificial tracheae “seeded” with a patient’s own stem cells. All three patients described in the papers died of complications related to the implant.

The new report reaffirms the conclusions of a 2015 review of the papers, commissioned by Macchiarini’s employer at the time, the Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm. That investigation concluded that Macchiarini and his co-authors were guilty of scientific misconduct, but KI dismissed the report after Macchiarini supplied additional information. It then extended the surgeon’s contract...