Doctors Urge Elite Academy to Expel a Member Over Charges of Plagiarism

WASHINGTON — Election to the elite National Academy of Medicine is one of the highest honors a doctor can achieve.

Many of its members have been giants in public health: Dr. Herbert Needleman, who discovered the dangers of lead on children’s brains; Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, known for his groundbreaking work on AIDS; and Dr. Margaret Hamburg, former head of the Food and Drug Administration.

And then there’s Dr. Eric K. Noji, a disaster medicine specialist admitted in 2005.

Here is how Noji’s work is described on one of his LinkedIn pages: “So much has been said and written about the life and work of Eric Noji, a story so mythic in its epic sweep and inspirational in its chronology of service and unrelenting self-sacrifice on behalf of those who suffer that it is difficult to summarize.”

Noji also, until recently, listed impressive honors: the Ordre des Palmes Academiques, presented by President François Hollande of France; nomination to the Royal College of Physicians of London; the Antarctica Medal of Honor for Scientific Exploration; and an MBA from Stanford University.

But the French never bestowed that award on Noji. The Royal College didn’t nominate him. There is no such prize as the Antarctica Medal of Honor for Scientific Exploration. Stanford Business School says it has no record of his existence.

And some of his papers and a book chapter were copied from former colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for International Development, according to a complaint filed with the academy by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, dean of the military medical school.

This is a strange tale of a staid institution whose rules for members are lax enough that even an official investigation that found blatant plagiarism did not qualify as cause for expulsion of an elusive doctor.

The core of the complaint, filed by Kellerman of the F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, concerns a research paper in which Noji described some daring emergency medicine work he performed during the 2003 Iraq invasion.

But an investigation in 2016 by the Uniformed Services University (a military medical school), where Noji was an adjunct professor, found that the mission was actually handled by Dr. Frederick Burkle Jr., records show. The investigation also concluded that Noji plagiarized other research papers and misrepresented his credentials, according to the university’s complaint.

Noji did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, but in a letter in 2016 to the university, he denied wrongdoing.

“I must say that engineering the appearance of blatant plagiarism on my part was absolutely brilliant,” Noji wrote.

Correcting the record has become something of a personal mission for Kellerman and a group of high-profile colleagues that includes a former surgeon general, an astronaut and a former White House doctor. They argue that the reputation of their mentor, Burkle, has been severely damaged and that the good name of both the university and the academy is at stake.

The case has pitted the military medical school, which prides itself on honor and service, against the academy, which considers its members above reproach.

“If you want to try and have an independent effort to investigate, it can be a very significant undertaking, with due process, so that you are confident in the outcome,” said R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who is also a member of the academy. “A lot of it will be confidential because they are personnel actions.”

In this case, it wasn’t until Burkle heard about the plagiarism, years after it occurred, that he notified the military medical school. An investigation by the medical school found that before Noji was named to the academy, he had plagiarized five research papers, fabricated an account of his personal exploits in Iraq, and claimed unearned degrees and awards, according to the school’s documents. The school dismissed him in May 2016.

But when Kellerman asked the academy to dismiss Noji as well, he hit a roadblock. Nothing in the academy bylaws allowed for ousting a member who had committed scientific misconduct. So Kellerman, who was on the academy’s governing board, and colleagues, lobbied for the change. Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the academy, supported it.

Formerly known as the Institute of Medicine, the organization is a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and has more than 2,000 members in the United States.

In a compromise reached in December 2016, in the wake of the Noji complaint, the academy decided that membership could be rescinded if an individual provided false information before becoming a member.

Falsification, plagiarism or fabrication after a doctor becomes a member of the elite organization isn’t grounds for removal, said a spokesman for the organization. They are still considering Noji’s case.

Attempts to reach Noji at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he is a professor, according to the school’s website, were unsuccessful. A native of Hawaii, Noji spent roughly 20 years as a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leaving in 2008.

Burkle said he was pleased by the university’s investigation.

“I’m honored because one feels quite alone when this kind of plagiarism or fabrication happens, and not aware that it is happening to others,” he said. “Everybody wants to avoid the subject. This is the first major step forward.”