Harvard To Be Tried for Alzheimer's Research Fraud

Hre's an ugly bit of news. Essentially, it is alleged that the school committed fraud so that it could get resarch funding. Harvard already has the highest endowment of any educational insititution on the planet, but if the allegations turn out to be true, apparently they may be willing to lie for more.

Any project that falsifies data puts both the particpants and patients in general by perverting medical science. The case could also smear Harvard's shining repution. There's more to life than a little bit of money, Harvard. Makes you wonder how much we can trust anything coming from such supposedly lofty institutions. Never mind the conclusions of profit-driven medicine in general.

The US Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit overturned a summary judgement by a lower court ordering a whistleblower lawsuit filed by Dr. Kenneth Jones against Harvard Medical School, its teaching hospitals, Brigham and Women's and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dr. Marilyn Albert (Principal Investigator) and Dr. Ronald Killiany to proceed to trial.

The case involves the largest Alzheimer's disease [AD] research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (from 1980 through 2007) for a large project aimed at identifying early physical signs of Alzheimer's by scanning certain regions of the brain with MRIs.

Dr. Jones was the chief statistician for the NIH grant. He blew the whistle after realizing that measurements used to demonstrate the reliability of the study had been secretly altered. Without these alterations, Dr. Jones explained, there was no statistical significance to the major findings of the study. When he insisted that the altered measurements be subjected to an independent reliability study, and that the manipulated results could not be presented as part of a $15 million federal grant extension application, he was terminated and his career came to an end.

The allegations in the suit concern multiple research fraud: data manipulation, significant deviations from the protocol, altered and re-traced MRI scans. To get positive results, Dr. Jones alleges, Dr. Killiany "fraudulently altered the MRI study data prior to 1998 to produce false results of a statistically significant correlation between conversion to AD and volume of the EC [entorhinal cortex]." US ex rel. Jones v. Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University.

More at Source: Alliance for Human Research Protection

This is EXTREMELY disheartening. My mother has suffered with Alzheimer's for over 10 years from an acute onset at an early age. We cannot afford any further bumps in the road when it comes to this research. It seems that for every good turn for this cause, there are three bad turns.

The allegations in the suit concern multiple research fraud: data manipulation, significant deviations from the protocol, altered and re-traced MRI scans. To get positive results, Dr. Jones alleges, Dr. Killiany "fraudulently altered the MRI study data prior to 1998 to produce false results of a statistically significant correlation between conversion to AD and volume of the EC [entorhinal cortex]."

Thank God for this whistleblower.
I hope that Harvard doesn't treat him like our government treats them.

S&F, OP. Profit-Driven Medicine

Milton Hershey School, which also has an extremely large endowment fund (something like $0.25 of every candy bar goes to the school), is experiencing similar cases of shinnanigans of it's fiscal depths. It really amazes me that the lust for money never ceases: Wall Street, the Government & Institutions of Education.

All I can say is, what goes around comes around. Let's hope this case works out in favor of the fired PhD.

This is disgusting & yet hopeful at the same time.
Truth is, I just assumed places like Harvard were in the pockets of TPTB anyway, & any results would be doctored to suit/justify funding.
This post has actually given me hope that they can actually be held accountable,& hopefully, prosecuted to the full scope of the law if found guilty.(Justice? Who would have thought! )

HUGE kudos to Dr. Kenneth Jones for having a moral conscience that couldn't be intimidated, silenced or stopped.

Ultimately, yet anther reason for me to explore ancient remedies & cures before relying on 'Modern Medicine'.

S&F

We know where Alzheimer's comes from, that's one part of the puzzle we do know; it comes from the old person's flu vaccine. This is intentional to drain people of their wealth before they die.

I think what the study is may be irrelevant to the meaning of this.

What really matters is that Universities and Science in general has sold out and can no longer be trusted. It's all about funding and not about real science any more.

We've be seeing plenty of the same in the Global Warming debate, even to the point the originators falsified information to support their theory (the email about using tree data from one area in data from another due to worry that the data did not support the theory). It's all the same thing.

Harvard's main attraction to justify it's insane costs are who you get to know, not that they are in fact a better school. Graduates from there are not any better than graduates from elsewhere, it's all a scam.

reply to post by Blaine91555


So true, Blaine. It's everywhere. Sickening.

reply to post by Blaine91555


I too agree, Blaine. I made it personal, as it affects me in that way, but you've raised the perfect point and questioned the implications to education/science.

Originally posted by freakjive
This is EXTREMELY disheartening. My mother has suffered with Alzheimer's for over 10 years from an acute onset at an early age. We cannot afford any further bumps in the road when it comes to this research. It seems that for every good turn for this cause, there are three bad turns.

The allegations in the suit concern multiple research fraud: data manipulation, significant deviations from the protocol, altered and re-traced MRI scans. To get positive results, Dr. Jones alleges, Dr. Killiany "fraudulently altered the MRI study data prior to 1998 to produce false results of a statistically significant correlation between conversion to AD and volume of the EC [entorhinal cortex]."

Thank God for this whistleblower.
I hope that Harvard doesn't treat him like our government treats them.

S&F, OP. Profit-Driven Medicine

edit on 5/21/2012 by freakjive because: (no reason given)

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