An Unwelcome Discovery



First up.. This was written yesterday. For some irritating reason, blogger.com was going really, really, REALLY, realllyyyy slowwww.. So just pretend its still yesterday :P

BOO! Did I scare you even remotely? Yea, I doubted it. Well, Happy Halloween anyways! Does anyone actually go proper trick-or-treating, egging, or toilet papering here? What about goosey nights? DAMN! I miss old Halloweens! Well… anyways, that’s not even what this post is about. What I’m about to write about is quite breathtaking. Scary. Not in a Halloween way, but still terrifying.

While on the New York Times website, a few days ago, I read an article called ‘An Unwelcome Discovery’. It was about a man, a leading respected doctor, Eric Poehlman, a prized scientist in the field of human obesity and aging. And guess what? He was also the first doctor in the history of the United States of America to be jalied for fraud; falsifying stuff in a grant application.

He was a professor at the University of Vermont, College of Medicine. Eric Poehlman built his rep as a leading authority in the field of metabolic changes that occur with aging. He published more than like, 200 articles over twenty years. He researched the genetics of obesity and the impact of exercise, also using human subject to document change in their physiology. However, his ‘stellar’ career unravelled when Poehlman's misconduct was detected… And here’s another ‘guess what?’ for you guys. Guess who exposed him? Walter DeNino, who viewed Poehlman as his ultimate mentor. He was accused of scientific misconduct/fraud/whatever and in March ’05 he pleaded guilty to the charges. Yes. He acknowledged falsifying 17 (yes, seventeen), grant applications to the National Institutes of Health and fabricating data in 10 of his papers that were submitted between 1992 and 2000.

So there it is. Dr. Poehlman fraudulently diverted millions of dollars. He ruined his own life. In addition to jail time, Poehlman’s permanently forbidden from getting any more federal research grants, and was ordered by the court to write letters of retraction and correction to many scientific journals. Can you imagine anyone doing that? The seriousness of it.. Medicines were made based on this information!!! Not just a few, so many! People were treated based on his shit! Why'd he do it? Who the hell knows? According to me, he did it due to career pressure and money.. It might’ve just been ‘The ability to get away with it’. Results are hard to reproduce correct, since they’re obscured by noise and other extraneous data.So basically, even if a scientist does like, totally fabricate data, they can expect to get away with it - or at least claim innocence if their results conflict with other peoples. Appalling eh?

Well. That’s basically what I wanted to tell you guys about. The picture of the evil pumpkin serves both topics pretty well don't you think? This kind of stuff really gets you thinking… about what kind of people are actually living in todays world. There could be millions of people who’ve done this, but no ones found out. Think of the consequences of what he’s done .. So much of today could all just be a lie. You really never know!