Welcome to Fraud Rounds, a regular look at what happens when clinical research goes wrong. For background, see this post.
It was the summer of 2015 when Steve Williams, MD, first had doubts about a study of paralysis and baclofen into which he was helping to recruit subjects. A patient emailed him to thank him for the care he had received at Frazier Rehab in Louisville, Kentucky, where Williams was working at the time.
It turned out that the patient had been asked to pay $15,000 for 40 training sessions that were supposed to be . And that wasn't the only problem: Another patient with paraplegia had been cleared to participate in the study, despite an obvious broken leg.
Williams blew the whistle on the study, and in March of this year, following an investigation, the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) discontinued more than $900,000 in funding, as .
Despite being vindicated, Williams faced consequences. He left the University of Louisville in October of last year in order to protect his professional reputation, , and took a job as chief of rehabilitation at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"I was fortunate that I was offered the job prior to my reporting my findings to the [University Institutional Review Board] and NIDRR," Williams said. "I did not suffer any professional troubles as a result of my reporting my concerns. However, I did take a significant pay cut to move to Seattle ($150,000 per year and lost over $500,000 in the sale of my home in Louisville)."