Collateral Damage: A Patient, a New Procedure and the Learning Curve

PERSONAL and CONFIDENTIAL

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Hugh Calkins was the lead author, but Dr. Ron Berger received author credit for  the journal article about Pam’s complication, as did Richard Wu and Jeffrey Brinker. Quite an impressive byline, it represents more than $1 million worth of the finest education that money can buy—and they are all excellent dancers. The authors refer to the patient as our patient and Ron Berger is listed in the medical report as having actually participated in the procedure. So I was quite surprised by the reply from Ron Berger in 2005 concerning my request for his records of Pam’s case: “I have never been involved in your wife’s care in any way.”

It was four years after the fact and by then I was tired of being taken for a fool. I was pretty sure that tampering with the medical record and academic fraud would be frowned upon at JHU, so I wrote to the provost. I was going to get Calkins and Berger into hot water because of what they did.

Stephen Knapp, (Yale, “Lux et Veritas”) who is now president at George Washington University, was then provost at Hopkins, the top enforcer of academic integrity. He responded: