Scott S. Reuben (born 1958) is an American anesthesiologist who falsified data heralding the benefits of the Pfizer pain medication Celebrex while downplaying its negative side effects.
"[3] Scientific American has called Reuben the medical equivalent of Bernie Madoff, the former NASDAQ chairman who was convicted of orchestrating a $65-billion Ponzi scheme.
[1][4] The hospital asked the journals to retract the studies, which reported favorable results from painkillers including Pfizer Inc.'s Bextra, Celebrex and Lyrica and Merck & Co. Inc.'s Vioxx.
[7] "Doctors have been using (his) findings very widely," said Steven Shafer, editor of Anesthesia and Analgesia, a scientific journal that published ten articles identified as containing fraudulent data.
[5] Fellow editor Paul White believed that Reuben's fraudulent studies may have actually harmed patients due to the sale of "billions of dollars' worth of drugs" that caused slower recovery times.
[4] Greg Koski, former director of the Office for Human Research Protections, said the fraud was unusual because Reuben was able to carry it on for almost 13 years without being caught by the peer review process.
[13] The review found that the key Reuben claims that needed to be re-examined were "the absence of detrimental effects of coxibs on bone healing after spine surgery, the beneficial long-term outcome after preemptive administration of coxibs including an allegedly decreased incidence of chronic pain after surgery, and the analgesic efficacy of ketorolac or clonidine when added to local anesthetics for intravenous regional anesthesia.