Harvard's Simon resigns over plagiarism

Bloomberg noted on March 13: Dr. Lee Simon stepped down after the school completed a review of the charges of plagiarism, which began last year, Cameron said. Simon, a clinical professor of medicine at Harvard, also gave up his job at Beth Israel Deaconess, where he has not seen patients in at least a year, said Jerry Berger, a spokesman for the hospital.

There is a connection to UTexas Southwestern: “Multiple consecutive pages of text in Simon’s 32-page article were nearly identical to passages” in an earlier study by Roy Fleischmann, a University of Texas Southwestern researcher, Scientific American said in a Jan. 30, 2008, report. Fleischmann’s paper originally appeared in the journal Expert Opinion on Drug Safety, the magazine said.

There is a connection to New Jersey: Simon was an associate professor of medicine at Harvard in 1995 to 2003, according to a 2008 statement from Savient Pharmaceuticals Inc., of East Brunswick, New Jersey, where he has been a director since 2006. As an FDA staffer, Simon directed the agency’s division that oversees pain and arthritis drugs from 2001 to 2003, the statement said.

There is a connection to Glenn Poshard who copied multiple pages. Poshard copied in his Ph.D. thesis, while Simon copied for a review article on "Best Practices". Poshard remains President of SIU.

See previous IPBiz post
More plagiarism at Harvard. Laurence Tribe and Doris Kearns-Goodwin remain at Harvard.