Paul Alper writes:
Have you written about this Columbia University scandal?
From the linked news article:
The quiet withdrawal of a 2021 cancer study by Dr. Sam Yoon highlights scientific publishers’ lack of transparency around data problems. . . .
As it turned out, the flawed study was part of a pattern. Since 2008, two of its authors — Dr. Sam S. Yoon, chief of a cancer surgery division at Columbia University’s medical center, and a more junior cancer biologist — have collaborated with a rotating cast of researchers on a combined 26 articles that a British scientific sleuth has publicly flagged for containing suspect data. . . .
It is difficult to know who is responsible for errors in articles. Eleven of the scientists’ co-authors, including researchers at Harvard, Duke and Georgetown, did not answer emailed inquiries.
A “quiet withdrawal,” indeed. Here I am at Columbia and I’d never heard about this story. Good thing it got reported in the newspaper.
I googled *Sam Yoon Columbia* and came across this undated news item from the Department of Surgery:
Columbia Creates New Surgical Oncology Division Under Dr. Sam Yoon
Columbia University Irving Medical Center is proud to announce that Sam S. Yoon, MD, has joined the Department of Surgery, where he will serve as chief of the newly-created Division of Surgical Oncology and Vice-Chair of Surgical Oncology Research and Education for the department. . . .
Dr. Yoon graduated from Harvard University and received his M.D. from the University of California at San Diego. He completed his residency in general surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and his fellowship in surgical oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. . . .
His laboratory has been funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute for 18 years and strives to translate new research discoveries into the clinic. . . .
“We are thrilled to have a leader like Dr. Yoon to develop our new Surgical Oncology program. Under Sam’s guidance, Columbia’s surgical oncology care will be second to none,” said Craig Smith, MD, Chair of the Department of Surgery at CUIMC. . . .
Graduated from Harvard, 18 continuous years of NIH funding . . . what could possibly go wrong??
I guess he could set up some sort of joint practice with Dr. Oz, specializing in magic beans. Or maybe UNR has an opening for Dean of Medicine?
In all seriousness, if Columbia is going to issue an “Irving Medical Center is proud to announce” press release when they hired this guy, they should issue an “Irving Medical Center is embarrassed to announce” press release when he gets fired.
P.S. See discussion in comments. It seems that Yoon was not fired; indeed Columbia appears to remain “thrilled to have a leader like Dr. Yoon to develop our new Surgical Oncology program. Under Sunghyun’s guidance, Columbia’s surgical oncology care will be second to none.” This sounds really horrible! (I say this based on reading the news reports, not having looked at the articles in question.)
It appears that Columbia’s announcement was last modified . . . today:
How could that be? He (allegedly) published 26 papers with suspect data, and he’s still around? Based on the information available wouldn’t want him operating on me, that’s for sure—and I really wouldn’t want him supervising others! This seems like a big problem. Couldn’t this guy go and run for the Senate from Pennsylvania or something?
In all seriousness . . . when this sort of thing happens at UNR, I’m outraged. When it happens at Columbia, I’m really annoyed. This dude’s on the faculty with me! Or maybe Columbia’s doing a formal investigation and we just have to wait, I dunno.
In that context, this blog post may be of interest:
https://forbetterscience.com/2024/06/28/schneider-shorts-28-06-2024-a-series-of-improper-erroneous-and-potentially-fraudulent-manipulations/#yoon
‘Spot the difference!
What does an elite US university do with a professor who was exposed as a massive fraudster in national and international news (see New York Times or Daily Mail from February 2024, and again NYT from March 2024) and had to retract several papers? As it happened to the oncologist Sam Yoon at Columbia University. How does a university and its hospital restore credibility and patient trust after such a scandal?… The naughty old fraudster Sam Yoon you knew from the NYT is gone forever, and please meet Columbia University’s new “chief of the newly-created Division of Surgical Oncology and Vice-Chair of Surgical Oncology Research and Education for the department”, S. Sunghyun Yoon.’
-Leonid Schneider, June 28th 2024
The link shows before-and-after screenshots of the 2021 Columbia Surgery announcement, which was changed within the last month to reflect the division chief’s new naming convention. There are also before-and-after screenshots of his profile on columbiasurgery.org, which now also reflects the new style.
The moral of the story: Please give your newborn children a double name. Just in case they ever need to run away from a scandal.
Raphael:
What the hell??? I did some searching and, yeah, here he is. I’m kinda stunned.
I actually would like to know if there’s data available on his surgical outcomes. The bogus “engineering” papers coming out of the University of Nevada may be completely worthless, but we can also assume nobody is actually reading them and thus no harm is done (except to taxpayers). Whether this guy is a competent surgeon seems like a more important issue than such papers, but I expect any journalist casting aspersions on that would be more likely to face legal trouble (I know Francesca Gino sued Data Colada for blogging about papers, so it’s not like there’s zero risk for that either).
”The bogus “engineering” papers coming out of the University of Nevada may be completely worthless, but we can also assume nobody is actually reading them and thus no harm is done (except to taxpayers). Whether this guy is a competent surgeon seems like a more important issue than such papers”
I don’t know much about the specifics of this case, but there is a widespread misconception about the impact of some of the retracted or non reproducible basic science papers. Many, including those who engage in questionable practices driven by greed or by fear of getting into a conflict with their PIs (let’s remember that thousands of junior researchers are on J visas and they know that disagreeing with an unreliable PI can mean losing their job, not being able to find a new one within the one month period they are given, and returning with their families back to their home country that may be under a dictatorship or war, transferring their kids to a new school…etc) think that in general the only harm of such research is to the taxpayers but in reality many flawed basic science papers directly or indirectly pave the way for clinical trials, giving patients false hope (and sometimes harm ?). If that single article doesn’t directly justify the clinical trial, the cascade of papers built on it may do. To add to this, some of those clinical trials ‘magically’ succeed, just like the hypothesis tested in the retracted or non reproducible basic science paper did, leading to FDA approvals and entering treatment protocols that may one day affect any of us. Retracted papers are rarely traced to their downstream clinical trials they helped justify. There are many reasons for this; retraction notices are often vague, confined to pointed out concern in a specific Figure only, tracing is not always a straight forward process, more often than not it requires domain specific knowledge and it is often time consuming. Moreover, there is not enough patient awareness about their downstream influence, patient support groups are also not well aware of their direct consequences, and institutions have little incentive to do that tracing unless someone understands and insists on it. The research that many physician scientists do is translational, meaning it is far more common to see their (good or not so good) findings moving into clinical trials (and sometimes clinic).
The end point of such ‘engineering’ papers can easily be a surgical device used the operation room or a diagnostic device. Again I don’t know the specifics of this case but in general bad actors in the lab upstairs don’t magically turn into saints when they go to outpatient clinic downstairs.
Here is an example of the clinical impact of a non reproducible basic science research – and how it was handled.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-hearts-stem-cells/
This was my doctor. Last year I saw him for a big, benign tumor in my leg, which he biopsied and later removed. My type of tumor was not related to those discussed in the fraudulent papers, and as far as I know, the pathologist who diagnosed my tumor from the biopsy did not publish any fraudulent papers, so I continue to be confident in the diagnosis. I liked Dr. then-Sam Yoon a lot and had no complaints about my care. He answered my questions patiently and thoroughly. He had a student shadowing him, and he seemed like a good teacher. The surgery went well; I have a nice straight scar, I had an uneventful recovery, and my leg works. However, I find Columbia’s complete lack of transparency and clumsy cover-up shocking–especially the name change.
Yes there is an investigation ongoing at the university, I discovered the errors in his papers and wrote a blog about it in November of 2023 on For Better Science, this was eventually covered by the New York Times. The name change is quite ridiculous. I believe they have fired the junior staff member who was probably the person actually assembling the figures (also called Yoon but no relation). Sam and his wife (Sandra Ryeom) who is an author on many of these papers and also moved to Colombia at the same time remain in place.
I should have added he now has 14 retracted papers, there are 6 more seriously flawed papers that should eventually go as well.
Wow! We have some sleazoids here in Arts & Sciences at Columbia but maybe nobody as bad as that.