Howdy, neighbor!


Oh, look. Guess who just moved in to the north of me, in Fargo? Anil Potti. He is the cancer ‘researcher’ who is known to have fabricated data in 18 papers, made up credentials on his CV, and most entertainingly, hired an online reputation manager to bury his sordid record in a barrage of online pablum.

The Wikipedia article on Potti is fairly thorough. He published in a number of high profile journals, NEJM, Nature Medicine, PNAS, Lancet Oncology, for instance, and wrote about cancer diagnosis and therapeutics — poor work made up to generate buzz, and since retracted. And now he’s working in…a cancer center. Remind me if ever I come down with a cancer, not to go to the Cancer Center of North Dakota. I’d rather have a doctor who doesn’t make stuff up.

Comments

  1. neXus says

    Does his work require a licence to practice medicine? If it does, it might be possible to use his fraudulent works as evidence to get said licence revoked. Someone so willing to lie to further his career should not be anywhere near a hospital or research facility.

  2. unbound says

    He’s just a little bit further away according to the article…he’s out in Grand Forks, ND.

  3. didgen says

    Yes, people with cancer don’t have enough problems. They really need a fraud as a side to their giant serving of pain and misery.

  4. Draken says

    His new boss, William Noyes, told the paper that ‘Potti is a victim of unfair accusations and the negative news is a dead issue.’

    May someone should ask Mr Noyes how he came to that conclusion.

  5. says

    the negative news is a dead issue

    Isn’t it more likely that their patients will end up as the dead issue?

    I know. Too easy.

  6. mikeym says

    Aren’t the Cancer Centers a rebranded Oral Roberts “City of Faith” faith healing scam?

  7. andyo says

    Speaking of cancer quacks…

    Just the other one of my friends was telling me how some “doctor” (she didn’t know if he was even an MD) discovered that all cancer was caused by a fungus and, of course, had a cure (he even put out a book!). And what do you know, Big Pharma was suppressing this. When I told her that then millions of scientists and MDs in the whole world would have to be in on the conspiracy, she said, “but governments also are”.

    From googling, it’s probably Tullio Simoncini.

    And, ugh, now I’m reading about him.

  8. Jerry says

    Potti has an M.D.; he is not a scientist. The Cancer Center where he now works is a private for-profit facility not connected with cancer research organizations.

    IMNSHO, I think M.D.s are not trained to think critically, are not trained to perform research, and should not do scientific research.

  9. larrylyons says

    It makes perfect sense that there’d be one of these for profit Cancer Centers in Grand Forks. Grand Forks is well within driving distance of Winnipeg – no private clinics allowed there under Canadian medicare. So that’s about 600,000 to 700,000 people within 3 hours driving distance, not including the rest of North Dakota and parts of Minnesota. Unfortunately the way the Canadian medicare system is set up, it will pay for the cost up to the cost for an equivalent treatment in Canada. Then the person has to cover the rest.

    So it seems a ripe area for scamming.