HJLR Mar/Apr 2019

research breakdown 34 MAR / APR 2019 I  Healthcare Journal of Little Rock   Stinging Criticism Pavuluri, in an interview, said she expanded the criteria for who could be included in the study because it was diffi- cult to find enough subjects within the nar- row age range. She said it also was difficult to find children with bipolar disorder who weren’t already taking other medication. She said she also believed a wider pool of subjects would strengthen her findings. “I thought it would be a better scientific outcome if I have power in the study in the higher numbers,” she said. While her transgressions remained unknown to the general public, she appeared to address them in a chapter of the book, “Women inAcademic Psychiatry,”which fea- tures 16 leading women psychiatrists dis- cussing their careers. She described her large laboratory as a “three-ring circus”where she oversaw a flurry of grant submissions and a staff of faculty and students. Asked to name her obstacles, she wrote: “I could not attend to some IRB amend- ments that were due or problem-solve the nuances in the large laboratory. No matter how angelic I was with my research sub- jects, or how hard I worked day and night, things crashed. Here, I learnedmymain les- son, which is the need to have a tight grip on research supervision. No work is done till the paperwork is done.” A university panel tasked with investi- gating the integrity of Pavuluri’s research was less forgiving. UIC refused to provide the panel’s report to ProPublica Illinois or even say who took part in the review. University officials declined to answer questions about girls not being given preg- nancy tests and other shortcomings with laboratory tests, citing the pending federal investigation. Pavuluri said some of the younger children did not get pregnancy tests because she didn’t think they were sexually active. But after reviewing the panel’s report, UIC chancellor Michael Amiridis wrote in a July 2015 letter that the violations of proto- col “collectively represent serious deviations “Reports from parents and other evidence led the investigative panel to conclude that ‘claims by [Pavuluri] that no subjects were harmed in her studies were false,’ according to an email from OHRP to UIC.” “No matter how angelic I was with my research subjects, or how hard I worked day and night, things crashed.” Reflecting