The saga of the findings of research misconduct against Gideon Koren, University of Toronto 2000 to …
In 2002, Dr. Gideon Koren of The Hospital for Sick Children (where he supervised its now disgraced, shuttered Motherisk program) was found guilty of research misconduct in the matter of a paper in the journal Ther Drug Monitoring. Koren’s paper provided favourable information about deferiprone, the drug at the heart of the Barry Sherman/Hospital for Sick Children/University of Toronto conflict (from 1995 to present).
Concerns about the safety and long-term effectiveness of deferiprone had been raised by Dr. Nancy Olivieri, after which she was harassed, disparaged, fired and threatened and eventually sued. [Documents will be provided on this website].
Koren was found guilty read by a University of Toronto committee on three charges of research misconduct:
(i) Koren used data that Dr. Olivieri, and two of her American colleagues had generated, without offering any of them the opportunity to review the data or his publication in Ther Drug Monitor.
(ii) Koren failed to disclose that the work in question was supported by Apotex, a for-profit corporation with a proprietary interest in deferiprone, the drug under investigation in the article.
(iii) In failing to discuss hepatotoxicity of deferiprone, Koren deliberately obscured information about deferiprone funded by a drug company with a proprietary interest in the drug.
The then Dean of Medicine (later President) of the Univeresity Dr C. David Naylor was compelled to acknowledge and record the finding of Koren’s research misconduct to the University. Here the minutes of Faculty of Medicine Council record that Naylor announced only one aspect of Koren’s misconduct: that Koren had used data without obtaining consent, review or participation by Dr Olivieri and her US collaborators. Naylor did not disclose the other two aspects of Koren’s misconduct to Faculty Council.
Naylor also did not disclose that Koren (and his close colleague Dr. Sergio Grinstein) had sent eight months of anonymous hate mail to Dr. Olivieri’s colleagues defaming them, about which Koren had lied in an Hospital investigation before being trapped by DNA. (Documents will be provided on this website here)
But in these Faculty Council minutes, we also read Naylor’s discussion of Koren’s “exemplary record,” his praise of Koren’s ongoing supervision of post-doctoral fellows and graduate students (two of whom had been co-authors on the publication in which Koren had committed research misconduct) and Naylor’s admiration of Koren’s “publication output” which, as Naylor enthused, was “unmatched in the Faculty of Medicine.” (It certainly was).
Naylor declared he had “insisted” that Koren request that his paper be “withdrawn from the literature” [sic]. Later discussion revealed Naylor meant “retraction”. Naylor also declared “I consider the matter closed.”
Although Dean Naylor “consider[ed] the matter [of Koren’s misconduct] closed” he did not undertake to confirm its retraction.
About 18 months later Dr. Olivieri returned from sabbatical and informed found that Koren’s paper remained in the literature. Correspondence between the parties will be provided here. As we will see, the discussion takes a somewhat surprising turn.
Note that the record of discussion takes a surprising turn….Dean David Naylor never confirmed the retraction though announcing the matter was “closed”. When pressed to pursue the matter, Naylor determined that Koren was the new Editor of Ther Drug Monitoring; Naylor then claimed that to effect a retraction of Koren’s own paper (published in the journal of which Koren was now Editor) Koren would “need” to write a letter requesting retraction to the journal’s publisher.
This is as difficult to understand now as it was then. Why could the new Editor (ie now Koren) not be in a position to retract this paper himself? How could Naylor insist that “Dr Koren cannot do anything more in the circumstances”? Why did Naylor suggest it was up to the “journal’s leadership team” (which usually includes the Editor?) to “now do the right thing”?
As a result: Gideon Koren’s paper (again favourable to deferiprone, which was subsequently licensed — as last resort therapy — in several jurisdictions – more on this later!) was not retracted (Until…).
Years later, The Toronto Star investigative reporters begin to sniff around on this matter…
Later in 2018 the Toronto Star began to explore this matter. At the time the Star began investigating Koren and his research, David Naylor’s had just acquired his newest job: “interim CEO at Sick Kids”. Inquiries by the Star were therefore directed at Naylor. Suddenly Gideon Koren’s paper was retracted, 17 years after it was deemed guilty of research misconduct.
(It appears, after all one did not have to wait for “journal’s leadership team” to “now, do the right thing”).
This time Naylor’s message was different: “misappropriation of data should be taken seriously as a form of publication misconduct. It’s just unfortunate that this didn’t occur fifteen or sixteen years ago.”
Well, yes. Unfortunate is one word for that. https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2019/02/26/study-co-authored-by-gideon-koren-retracted-as-journals-continue-review-of-disgraced-doctors-published-works.html
Was Koren’s research misconduct taken seriously?
This revealing article authored by the determined investigative team at the Toronto Star quotes C. David Naylor(reminder: Former Dean of Medicine, former President of U of T at the time, interim CEO of Sick Kids) as claiming that the editor of Ther Drug Monitor, Steven Soldin was made aware (in 2002) of the “inappropriate use of shared data” and the “non-disclosure issue” in Koren’s work, but that Soldin simply declined to retract the article.
But Soldin, now a senior scientist at the National Institutes of Health Research in Maryland, “told the Star he doesn’t recall a conversation with Koren about the paper after it was published. More, according to Soldin: “[I] was never contacted by any official from U of T. “If the Toronto academic faculty felt strongly about something, they should definitely have spoken with me,” he said. “It’s got to be a serious conversation, or it’s not going to be taken seriously.”
All true. Naylor: “misappropriation of data [was not] taken seriously as a form of publication misconduct, fifteen or sixteen years ago.”
But whose responsibility was it to take this “seriously” at the time, if not that of the then-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine? Why was research misconduct addressed after many years and only after a tide of public opinion (and legal challenges, and Toronto Star questions, had ousted Koren?
https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2018/12/21/inside-the-flawed-world-of-medical-publishing-that-allowed-a-lie-in-a-paper-coauthored-by-dr-gideon-koren-to-pollute-the-scientific-record.html
The next question why are we waiting for Koren’s other papers to be examined in an “internal review”?
We’ll leave it to you to determine if the story (and there’s lots more of it, coming in a book expanding by the minute) suggests that complaints about Koren were taken “seriously”. But [new June 2020]: “Dr. David Naylor, former dean of medicine at U of T, is among a group of academics now ‘calling’ (yes again!!) for a [different paper by Koren to be retracted]”.
The most important sentence in this Star article is the final paragraph which refers to an “internal review”: “Sick Kids’s internal review of Koren’s papers is ongoing (of not 400 but now “nearly 1,000 articles”) but a hospital spokeperson “declined to provide further details”.
Wait a minute. How when and why did this review of Koren’s published works transform from an open investigation by the Star to an “internal review”?
We all know what internal reviews achieve. The public deserves better.
https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2020/06/08/should-breastfeeding-mothers-take-codeine-for-post-partum-pain-doctors-re-examined-a-2005-tragedy-and-found-new-information-that-raises-questions-about-what-regulators-have-been-telling-us.html
Here is what happens when research misconduct and professional misconduct, and lying are not taken seriously:
First the Motherisk scandal (about which we will comment later):
https://www.thestar.com/news/motherisk.html
And now:
“Motherisk crook Gideon Koren now at Ariel University. The Israeli Ariel University recruited a doctor from hell to their newly established medical school: Gideon Koren, infamous for Motherisk and deferiprone scandals”
https://forbetterscience.com/2020/06/29/motherisk-crook-gideon-koren-now-at-ariel-university/
Gideon Koren, Sergio Grinstein, and Hate Mail
Gideon Koren, then a prominent Canadian pediatrician and researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children (HSC) and the University of Toronto, faced full dismissal from both positions after DNA evidence revealed him to be the author of hate mail sent to Dr Nancy Olivieri and her colleagues:
Another senior researcher became embroiled in the saga. Sergio Grinstein, a professor in the Division of Cell Biology at the HSC Research Institute and Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, admitted sending an anonymous note (see box) to Dr. Michele Brill- Edwards, an expert in drug development and Canadian drug regulatory law, expressing his views on deferiprone. Dr. Brill-Edwards found the note “intimidating” and reported Grinstein’s activities to David Naylor, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. When contacted, Dean Naylor’s office would say nothing more than the issue is an internal one.
“Being an accomplished medical researcher and teacher is sufficient to excuse behaviour that includes destroying institutional equipment, harassing colleagues and lying to them and to superiors—at least at the University of Toronto and at the Hospital for SickChildren in Toronto. Sergio Grinstein, who admitted to sending another anonymous letter is understood to have faired even better than Koren.HSC spokesperson Cyndi DeGuisti says the hospital has investigated Grinstein’sconduct and taken the appropriate action and that further details will not be released because this is an internal matter.
A number of interesting lawsuits arose in this saga. The most unexpected source of legal action against us was a 2002 lawsuit launched by the Deans of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine: Dr. Arnold Aberman (Dean from 1992-1999) and C. David Naylor (Dean from 1999-2005, and later president of the University of Toronto).
The Deans sued us after the posting, on the website of our organization Doctors for Research Integrity, of a Toronto Star article written by Professor Arthur Schafer which was critical of their understanding of academic freedom — over which they had also sued Arthur. As Dr. Olivieri wrote: “Justice might be seen to be somewhat imbalanced if one side (us) must seek their own funding to defend a lawsuit brought by bureaucrats of powerful public institutions”: https://scienceforpeace.ca/0509-from-the-president/
Or as David Healy has written with more clarity: “The University retained some of the most expensive lawyers in Canada, and in this case, the fees came out of taxpayers’ money:” https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/978715
Here is the Statement of Claim of that lawsuit taken by the Deans of Medicine against member of Doctors for Research Integrity.
It makes interesting reading: