Cancer Doctor Resigns From Sloan Kettering Over Financial Disclosure Controversy

Dr. José Baselga's resignation comes as top officials at Memorial Sloan Kettering struggle to contain the fallout from an investigation into Baselga's financial ties to companies like the Swiss drugmaker Roche and several small biotech startups. Meanwhile, the controversy shines a light on the need for transparency when it comes to experts who contribute to medical journals.

The New York Times/ProPublica: Top Sloan Kettering Cancer Doctor Resigns After Failing To Disclose Industry Ties

Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, resigned on Thursday amid reports that he had failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from health care companies in dozens of research articles. The revelations about Dr. Baselga’s disclosure lapses, reported by The New York Times and ProPublica last weekend, have rocked Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the nation’s leading cancer centers, in recent days. Its top executives scrambled to contain the fallout, including urgent meetings of physician leaders and the executive committee of its board of directors. (Thomas and Ornstein, 9/13)

Stat: Why Do Medical Journals Keep Taking Authors At Their Word?

The recent revelation that a leading official at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center failed for years to disclose lucrative financial conflicts of interest might have been surprising in its scale. But it’s old news that many researchers aren’t fully transparent when it comes to their financial relationships with industry. So why should we keep up the charade? And why, given the clarity of the problem, do medical journals continue to take authors at their word — only to wind up looking like dupes? (Oransky and Marcus, 9/14)

And in other health care personnel news —

Stat: H. Gilbert Welch Resigns From Dartmouth Over 'Idea Plagiarism' Dispute

Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, one of the country’s top health care policy scholars, has resigned from his faculty position at Dartmouth College, after an investigation by the school concluded that he had committed research misconduct. ...STAT and Retraction Watch reported last month that an internal Dartmouth investigation found that Welch plagiarized material from a Dartmouth colleague and a researcher at another institution for a 2016 paper published by the New England Journal of Medicine. The paper concerned how breast cancer screening led to the overdiagnosis of tumors and unnecessary treatments. (Joseph and Marcus, 9/13)

This is part of the KHN Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription