In 1997 the German journal Der Nervenartz published an article with the title “Die Elektrokonvulsionstherapie in der klinischen Praxis” (Electroconvulsive therapy in clinical practice). According to the abstract of the article, about 3 per cent of inpatients at the Department of General Psychiatry at the University Hospital for Psychiatry in Vienna were treated with ECT in 1994-95. Treatment was usually unilateral and given three times a week. The abstract concluded that ECT was effective with “only minor and reversible side effects”. One of the five co-authors of the article was Alexander Neumeister, someone who has been in the news recently.
Neumeister appears not to have written anything further about ECT. But a search in pubmed comes up with well over a hundred multi-authored articles through which it is possible to trace his career. While in his native Vienna he developed an interest in seasonal affective disorder and co-authored papers with titles such as “Role of family history and 5-HTTLPR polymorphism in female seasonal affective disorder patients with and without premenstrual dysphoric disorder” in journals such as European Neuropsychopharmacology. In 2004 he has moved to the United States, where he is affiliated to the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program at the National Institute of Mental Health, and is pursuing research on serotonin. By 2006 he is writing about “Effects of a alpha 2C-adrenoreceptor gene polymorphism on neural responses to facial expression in depression” his affiliation is Yale University School of Medicine. In 2011 there is another switch of affiliation, to Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and in 2012 he is at New York University. In 2016 his affiliation becomes Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Development America (for an article with 62 authors including Carmine Pariante from the UK in Biological Psychiatry, calling for an increase of philanthropic funding for research into “neuropsychiatric disorders”, which, according to the authors, constitute “the single greatest source of the global burden of disease”). Finally, for an article in Translational Psychiatry in 2018, Neumeister is affiliated to the University of Ottawa in Canada.
I say finally, but, even though Neumeister’s pubmed career ground to a halt in 2018 he is still writing. Nowadays his articles are published by local Hamden, Connecticut, news service Patch. In December 2019 for example he was returning to one of his early research interests and offering tips on how to cope with seasonal affective disorder. But now there is nothing about 5-HTTLPR polymorphism; rather it is about getting a lightbox, cognitive behavioural therapy, and rescheduling stressful Christmas get-togethers for the summer.
Why the change of focus? A headline from the New Haven Register in November 2017 gives us a clue: “Former Yale professor charged with theft while working at New York City med school”. From 2012 to 2014 Neumeister had been fraudulently using money intended for research purposes for his own private purposes. In all he stole $87,000, in spite of the fact that his starting salary at New York University had been $230,000 a year. Some of the stolen money went on flights, hotel rooms and meals for a young dancer, discretely referred to in court documents as “the Friend” and “P—“. His name however is easy enough to find; there can’t be many dancers originally from Haiti who have worked with companies in North Carolina and Salt Lake City, and have a surname beginning with P.
The court dealt leniently with Neumeister, sentencing him to probation and to play the piano for an hour twice weekly for three years at homes for elderly people. Thanks to blogger Larry Noodles, we can see court documents including letters submitted to the court in support of Neumeister. A memorandum submitted by his attorney presents him as a brilliant scientist who made “mistakes”. But would any of those multi-authored articles have suffered by having one name the fewer in the list of authors? Certainly the article calling for more funding for research would probably look better without a fraudster amongst the 62 authors. A more philosophical question is the extent to which Neumeister’s type of research (brain images, serontonin, receptors, etc.) translates into anything useful in real life.
It emerged during the court case that Neumeister had previously stolen $76,000 when he was an associate professor at Yale University. He left Yale after the discovery was made, but the theft did not seem to harm his career or restrict his access to research funds.
There is a postscript to this story. While Neumeister was entertaining the old folk of Connecticut with his piano playing, the Office of Research Integrity of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, together with the New York University School of Medicine, had been investigating his research. Their conclusions: “ORI found that Respondent [Neumeister] engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, and/or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data in the clinical records of research supported by six (6) NIMH grants, resulting in the inclusion of falsified and/or fabricated research methods and results in four (4) published papers…”
ECT statistics 