New allegations about scientific misconduct have been raised about a cardiology group in a hospital in Italy. Some of the allegations come from a surprising source: Maria Grazia Modena, the former and highly prominent chief of cardiology at the hospital where the research was said to have been performed.
The new allegations are the latest episode in an ongoing saga that began last year involving many of the same researchers, including Maria Grazia Modena herself. As I first reported last November, nine Italian cardiologists were arrested as part of a broad investigation into serious medical misconduct at Modena Hospital (Policlinico di Modena). The charges included conspiracy, fraud, embezzlement, bribery, forgery and performing unauthorized clinical trials. The most prominent person arrested was Maria Grazia Modena, who is also a former president of the Italian Society of Cardiology. (The fact that she shares her last name with the city and the hospital where she works appears to be a coincidence.)
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The suspicion that there might be problems with the paper first emerged when Maria Grazia Modena, who was originally listed as a co-author, publicly distanced herself from the paper and said that she was not an author of the paper and had had nothing to do with the study. To date the only public acknowledgement that there might be problems with the paper is an erratum published in AJC stating that Modena “was not associated with this manuscript” and that “the authors apologize for this error.”
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I personally asked the physicians and fellows who were working in the department (except the authors of the manuscript) if anyone have ever heard about the study. Nobody had ever seen informed consents or appointments for study-related peripheral echo in 8 years.
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In the methods section of their manuscript, the authors stated that echo examinations were made with [a GE Healthcare transducer]… That echocardiography machine was bought around 2005-2006 (the authors report they started the study in 2002).
Click here to read the full post on Forbes.
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