American psychologist Russell Warne disclosed a scientific "discovery" that shocked him in his blog in January 2022. He wrote, "Although I am familiar with the history of this field, I have never heard of this case before."
Russell Vaughn Source: Retraction Observation
Last 1980s, the fraud incident of American psychologist Stephen E. Breuning caused a sensation. Because of his research on drug treatment for patients with ADHD and mental retardation, Bruning has become a well-known scientist in this field. Many states in the United States have even modified their treatment strategies for hyperactive and mentally retarded children based on his research.
However, a 1987 investigation by the National Institute of Mental Health found that Bruning “has serious scientific research misconduct.”
But Vaughn found that Bruning had 10 articles identified as fraud or serious defects, 7 of which were not withdrawn and were still being cited! So Vaughn decided to contact the relevant publication journal to correct these "mistakes".
What disappointed Vaughn was that despite the "iron evidence" of the official investigation, the handling of these papers was still difficult. It was not until eight months later that a journal withdrew one of its papers. After 35 years, this fake paper was finally withdrawn.
Investigation report of the National Institute of Mental Health Picture source: Retraction Observation
"Academic Star" fell
Bruning was born in Texas, USA in 1952. He obtained a doctorate in psychology from the Illinois Institute of Technology in the United States in 1977 and wrote a paper on the classic conditioned reflex of goldfish. After graduation, he worked in two state-owned inpatient institutions opened for people with mental retardation. In 1981, he joined the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
pic | The current location of the University of Pittsburgh Western Psychiatric Hospital. In the 1980s, it was once the place where Bruning worked. Source: University of Pittsburgh official website
After publishing several articles on goldfish (maybe related to his paper research) and educational psychology, Bruning began to study patients with mental retardation. Between 1980 and 1983, he published several studies on psychopharmacological treatment of people with mental retardation, and his work gradually received attention.
Some mentally retarded children often show wild and self-destructive behaviors, including losing their temper, hitting their heads with fists until they are bleeding, pulling out their nails, etc., which require medication to assist in treatment. Bruning's research shows that stimulants such as Ritalin and dextroamphetamine help control hyperactivity and intellectual disabilities, and their side effects are less than those of the antipsychotic "sedatives" used at the time.
In just a few years, Bruning's academic status has skyrocketed rapidly, becoming one of the often cited scientific researchers in this field. Correspondingly, Connecticut and other places in the United States have revised the treatment practice policies for children with hyperactivity and intellectual disabilities to strive to be consistent with Bruning's scientific discoveries.
Roger L. Sprague first discovered the problem of Bruning. He is the director of the Institute of Child Behavior and Human Development in Illinois, USA and is also the boss of Bruning. After careful inspection, it was found that Bruning's research results were too neat and executed too quickly. He asked the details of the Bruning study because he found it was difficult for him to get two nurses to agree more than 80% of the time on the severity of symptoms in psychiatric patients.
Brunin's assistant said, "We got 100% consensus." In Sprague's view, this boast of scientific accuracy is actually impossible.
So Sprague questioned the funding agency, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in December 1983. The agency then launched an investigation and released the investigation report four years later.
was sentenced to imprisonment for "fraudulent" research
This 328-page expert group report shows that in a textbook co-authored by Bruning, he claimed to have collected the names of 15,000 people with mental disabilities, and finally asked 3,496 of them to answer a questionnaire about their condition and treatment.
This textbook quickly became a standard reference material in this field. But in fact, the work was not completed.
According to the survey, Bruning has at least 11 important studies and reports based on this study involving thousands of subjects, however, only a few publications and reports have been truly studied. Later, Bruning told the expert group that the data was "not collected by the system, but random."
investigation report reads: "The expert group unanimously concluded that Stephen E. Bruning deliberately and repeatedly engaged in misleading and deceptive behaviors when reporting the grants of MH-32206 and MH-37449... There was serious scientific misconduct."
later, the case was submitted to the federal prosecutor.
1988, Bruning was charged with two counts, one was to make false statements (submit a report containing erroneous research information to the NIMH), and the other was to obstruct institutional procedures (lie during the NIMH investigation). In the plea agreement, Bruning confessed to two counts of false statements, and the charges were eventually dropped.
Brunin was sentenced to 60 days in prison and 5 years of probation. Research is prohibited within 10 years and compensation of US$11,352 is reimbursed.
At that time, the Bruning case attracted widespread attention from the society, and media such as Science, Nature, " New York Times ", " Times ", " Washington Post " and other media reported it. The case also directly led to the establishment of the Federal Integrity Research Institute, which was later the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
In Sprague's view, the harm of these fraudulent studies is that many mentally retarded children take stimulant drugs that are not helpful to their condition and may also cause harm. Bruning describes the proven effective sedatives that were originally used for treatment as useless, which will delay the treatment of these children.
Science report
35 years later, the paper is still being cited
is such a sensational case. In the following days, it seems to be "forgotten" by the scientific community.
In the 20 articles and book chapters that Bruning has published, the NIMH investigation team found that only 2 accurately reported completed studies, 4 parts were accurate, and 1 uncertain. The remaining 13 reported studies either did not occur or were not carried out in the manner described. Among them, three articles were withdrawn between 1986 and 1989.
According to the withdrawal observation database, no one has taken action on other publications since then. This means that those unreliable articles and chapters remain in the academic record.
Why are most of Bruning's discredited articles not withdrawn?
Perhaps it is because the NIMH investigation team did not explicitly make any requests in the recommendations. Their advice to the article is to notify the editors of the relevant journals of the group's findings so that appropriate measures can be taken to provide these findings to readers, researchers and others.
2010 study showed that in the 1990s, citations to Bruning’s articles were often negative. However, since 2000, a large number of positive citations have appeared.
According to Vaughn's statistics, 10 articles identified as fraud or serious defects by NIMH have been cited 277 times in total, only 3 have been revoked, and another 7 have not been revoked. These articles are published in well-known journals and books such as the American Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Developmental Disabilities Research, Clinical Psychology Review, Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior.
Vaughn decided to contact the corresponding publisher to withdraw these articles. He hopes that this NIMH final report will make it easier for editors to make decisions.While all of these articles are at least 39 years old, it is not too late to do the right thing and withdraw them.
is better than not being late.
On the other hand, according to the data from Google Scholar, Bruning published a total of 31 articles between 1975 and 1985.
NIMH's investigation is limited to research results related to its federal grants. And this is about half the article Bruning published. Therefore, Vaughn said that he would continue to investigate other articles of Bruning and would report his conclusions as soon as possible.
On the other hand, it took 8 months to get the first article to withdraw, which was beyond Vaughn's expectations. He believes that "this case is a strong argument that can modify the International Committee on Publication Ethics and Ethics (COPE) standards, that is, publish a timetable for follow-up within a few days after credible allegations are filed, and the deadline for completing investigation, issuing corrections, and withdrawal processing should be within 90 days."
Source of this article: China Science Daily Author: Liu Runan
