It's worse than shameful. It calls into question the very essence of peer reviewed publications, suggesting that a good name alone will get you published. (One can only hope that it was the editors, ratherr than the reviewers who were taken in by this fraud. God help us if articles are commonly sent out for review in an "un-blinded" fashion.) This from a follow up article to the one above:

ANESTHOLOGY NEWS, ISSUE: 3/2009 | VOLUME: 35:3

Routine Audit Uncovered Reuben Fraud

Paul F. White, PhD, MD, the Margaret Milam McDermott distinguished chair in anesthesiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, called the Reuben case “unprecedented in our specialty.” Dr. White, an editor of Anesthesia and Analgesia, said that given the retracted (and likely-to-be withdrawn) papers and those that are unsullied by the affair, practitioners of multimodal analgesia are now confronted with several significant problems.

* * *

Because of the layered nature of scientific research and publishing, the scandal “compromises every meta-analysis, editorial, systematic review of analgesic trials”—as well as every lecture and continuing education course—that cited the fraudulent findings, added Dr. White, a member of the editorial board of Anesthesiology News. “Clearly, it’s time get back to the hard work of conducting clinical analgesic studies to address important issues in perioperative pain management and patient outcomes.”

http://www.anesthesiologynews.com/in...ticle_id=12641

Think of this guy as the Bernie Madoff of academic medical publishing.

And tragically for us, Dr. Reuben was the co-author of a number of articles on RSD & Surgery that may be withdrawn, even though the work on continuous regional anesthisia - from which a number of us have benefited - has been replicated in other studues and the contributions of his coauthors have not been called into question.

Mike