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Over the past month, a petition asking the governor of Minnesota to investigate a research scandal at the University of Minnesota has been steadily gathering momentum.  The scandal in question originated in 2004 with the suicide of Dan Markingson in an AstraZeneca-funded study of antipsychotics. The petition to investigate the scandal is backed by a number of high-profile supporters, among them Lancet editor Richard Horton, former BMJ editor Richard Smith, three former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine (Marcia Angell, Arnold Relman, and Jerome Kassirer), Wellesley College historian Susan Reverby, who uncovered the Guatemala syphilis studies, Hastings Center co-founder Daniel Callahan, and over 200 scholars in bioethics, clinical research, medical humanities, and related disciplines.

The petition also has a noticeable gap. Very few signers come from the University of Minnesota. In fact, only two people from the Center for Bioethics have signed: Leigh Turner and me. This is not because any faculty member outside the Department of Psychiatry actually defends the ethics of the study, at least as far as I can tell. What seems to bother people...