Scott Reuben

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Scott S. Reuben (* 1959 ) is an American professor of anesthesia and pain therapy .

Reuben was considered one of the founders of the concept of multimodal analgesia (also known as preemptive analgesia ). This states that the early administration of a combination of painkillers before a pain event, such as an operation , should prevent activation and sensitization of the pain conduction system. Reuben particularly favored active ingredients from the group of COX-2 inhibitors .

In the spring of 2009 it was accidentally discovered (there was no ethics committee approval for a study) that Reuben, who worked and researched at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, had fabricated or falsified large-scale data for his study . As a result, 21 of the researcher's 72 publications since 1996 have been identified as fakes and taken back from the publishing journals. Funding from pharmaceutical companies that manufacture COX-2 inhibitors ( Pfizer , Merck ) may play a role in Reuben's behavior. This so far largest known forgery scandal in the field of anesthesia shook the trust in research and publication channels, especially in medicine, but also in science in general.

Reuben was sentenced to six months in prison, $ 50,000 fine, and over $ 360,000 in reimbursement to the pharmaceutical companies that funded his research for fraud.

Reuben's work was also included in the evidence-based medical guideline treatment of acute perioperative and posttraumatic pain of the German interdisciplinary association for pain therapy (four falsified of seven cited publications). However, according to the authors, these had no influence on the core statements of the relevant sections; the cited works were removed.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b R. Gerste: Wissenschaftsbetrug: Pure Imagination. Dtsch Arztebl 2009; 106 (15): A-702 / B-598 / C-582
  2. ↑ SL Shafer: Retraction Notice , Anesthesia and Analgesia, February 20, 2009. ( PDF; 42 kB )
  3. ↑ S. Stockrahm: Falsification of studies - pain researcher in the pharmaceutical swamp. Time online, March 24, 2009
  4. ↑ T. Agres, A. Marcus: Anesthesiologist Reuben Charged With Fraud Research. Anesthesiology News, January 15, 2010 (accessed July 2010)
  5. ↑ German Interdisciplinary Association for Pain Therapy (DIVS) (overall responsibility: Laubenthal H, Becker M, Sauerland S, Neugebauer E): S3 guidelines for the treatment of acute perioperative and post-traumatic pain. 2008 Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag Cologne and (AWMF-Reg.-Nr. 041/001). http://www.awmf.org . Full text as PDF on the website of the German Society for Neurionitis and Emergency Medicine
  6. ↑ E. Neugebauer, M. Becker, S. Sauerland, H. Laubenthal: Wissenschaftsbetrug / Falsified Studies: Effects on the S3 Guideline? Dtsch Arztebl 2009; 106 (15): A-703 / B-599 / C-583
  7. ↑ E. Pogatzki tooth: Opinion German pain researcher on the case "Scott Reuben" (30 March 2009. www.dgss.org , accessed 12/2009)

literature

  • HL Rittner et al .: What do we learn from the Scott Reuben case? Der Anaesthesist , Volume 58, Number 12 / December 2009, pp. 1199–1209. PMID 19902152


personal data
SURNAME Reuben, Scott
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reuben, Scott S.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anesthesiologist who was proven to have large-scale scientific falsifications in 2009
DATE OF BIRTH 1959