WIKIMEDIA, WALKNBOSTONW. Scott Harkonen, the former CEO of InterMune, is spending his days confined to his home in San Francisco as part of a six-month penalty for exaggerating the benefits of the firm’s interferon gamma drug Actimmune in a press release. As any reporter can attest, press releases often overstate the importance of a molecule or a scientific finding, but to jail the source of a statement is exceptional. “If you applied this rule to scientists, a sizable proportion of them might be in jail today,” Steven Goodman, a pediatrician and biostatistician at Stanford University, told The Washington Post.
The Post this week took a deep dive into Harkonen's actions and their potential implications as his lawyers appeal his case to the Supreme Court. It all began more than a decade ago, when the company was testing its drug for the fatal lung disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The phase III clinical trial did not meet its primary endpoint—overall survival of participants with the disease. But after sorting through the results, InterMune researchers found that a subset of patients given the drug, those with mild to moderate IPF, were more likely to live than those who received a placebo.
The problem, the courts found, is that Harkonen focused on the latter, subgroup result without stating that it came from a post hoc analysis. “What’s ...
