Falsified Medical Research Cited in San Diego Report

A 15-month investigation by a University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine committee has revealed that a cardiac researcher falsified parts of 13 separate research publications during a 6 1/2-year career that ended with his resignation in April, 1985, as allegations of fraud began to surface.

In a report released Wednesday, the 10-member committee also classified 55 of Dr. Robert Slutsky’s papers as questionable because their authenticity could not be proven by the testimony of co-authors or documentary evidence. The team of doctors and a statistician concluded that 79 of the publications were “valid.”

In addition, the review revealed a breakdown in the procedures designed to prevent such research fraud and a sometimes startling lack of attention to clues that could have warned colleagues that something in Slutsky’s research was amiss.

The team’s chairman, Dr. Richard Peters, said he is confident that no medical patients were harmed by the fraudulent research, and that there was no evidence that Slutsky ever harmed anyone he treated as a physician.

“There isn’t a major discovery in these papers that would be fundamentally harmful to somebody,” Peters said. But he added that if Slutsky had continued his research into certain heart drugs he could have published “some wrong interpretations” of their value.

But serious damage was done to the reputations of 93 separate researchers listed as co-authors on Slutsky’s published articles and to the reputation of the UCSD medical school, he said.

“This is particularly tragic for young authors who were (research) fellows” with Slutsky, Peters said.

The committee last week sent notices detailing its findings to 30 medical journals that had published Slutsky’s work, asking them to print statements describing the research as “valid,” “questionable,” or “fraudulent” and exonerating Slutsky’s co-authors from responsibility.

Slutsky’s whereabouts could not be determined Wednesday. The 37-year-old physician, who resigned when the fraud allegations began to surface, had joined a Hicksville, N.Y., medical group in September, 1985, but was fired when he failed to supply appropriate references. His New York lawyer did not return a phone call from The Times Wednesday.

Dr. Paul Friedman, associate dean for academic affairs at the medical school and a committee member, and Peters said that Slutsky falsified his cardiac and radiology research by altering data, recycling data from earlier research into new publications, lying about the methods used and including authors on the papers who were not involved in the research.

To prevent detection, Slutsky avoided review of his data and manuscripts by colleagues, created the appearance of collaboration by forging other researchers’ signatures, and included appropriate methods sections in his publications “whether or not the work had been done,” the committee’s report concluded.

Colleagues missed such clear signs of fraud as Slutsky’s “unreasonably high productivity,” the report said. At one point, he was producing one article every 10 days, a surprising rate of productivity, even for a prolific researcher, Peters said. One article every three months would have been more appropriate in Slutsky’s field, Peters said.