"It Was Too Good to Be True"

By David Brand

He was an academic star who by the age of 30 had produced an influential body of work on the treatment of the mentally retarded. But in the minds of some of his colleagues, there was something odd about the work of Stephen Breuning, an assistant professor of child psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. The results of his studies were almost too orderly, too pat, and the work was completed with remarkable speed. The doubts came to a head in 1983 when Breuning's supervisor, Robert Sprague, then director of the Institute for Child Behavior and Development at the University of Illinois, reported his suspicions of his young colleague's methods to the National Institute of Mental Health.

This month, after a painstaking 2 1/2-year investigation, a five-member senior NIMH panel charged that Breuning "knowingly, willfully, and repeatedly engaged in misleading and deceptive practices in reporting results of research." Concluded the panel: "On the basis of all the facts, Dr. Stephen E. Breuning has engaged in serious scientific misconduct." Among other penalties, the NIMH recommended that Breuning be barred for ten years from receiving any contracts or funds from the Department of Health and Human Services. It also referred its findings to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution.

The case is particularly disturbing, say agency officials, because the research probably had a direct impact on health policies. Between 1979 and 1984, says Sprague, Breuning "produced one-third of the literature in the psychopharmacology of the mentally retarded." The young psychologist began his research in the late 1970s, when treatment of the mentally retarded with powerful antipsychotic drugs, such as haloperidol and chlorpromazine, was being questioned. Breuning's opposition to the overuse of such drugs was shared by other researchers in the field. Even so, some scientists believe Breuning went overboard in discounting the benefits for many severely disturbed patients. Says acting NIMH Director Frank Sullivan: "The retarded are vulnerable. They might have been damaged by false research."

Sprague first sensed something was amiss when he told Breuning about his difficulty in getting two nurses to agree more than 80% of the time on the severity of mentally ill patients' symptoms. "What's wrong with you?" Sprague recalls one of Bruening's co-workers saying. "We get 100% agreement." That idle boast of scientific exactitude -- a virtual impossibility -- persuaded Sprague to look back through his colleague's research and then to contact the NIMH, which had funded both Breuning's and Sprague's work.

"If one thing characterized Breuning's research, it was perfection," says the NIMH's Sullivan. "Now we know that it was too good to be true." The reports, says Agency Official Lorraine Torres, often included meticulous details for experiments that never took place and descriptions of the training . of individuals working on imaginary projects. One publication Breuning co- authored was an analysis of data on ten mentally retarded young adults, apparently gathered while he was working at the Oakdale Regional Center for Developmental Disabilities, in Lapeer, Mich. Oakdale officials told the NIMH that as far as they knew, the research never took place; the only subjects Breuning was officially authorized to study at the time were goldfish and rats. How was the psychologist able to persuade others to lend their names to his work? Says Thomas Gualtieri, who helped blow the whistle on Breuning: "He would come up with marvelous data that would corroborate everything you had ever written. It was an excellent way of co-opting co-authors."

Breuning, 34, concedes that he was distracted by personal problems while some of his work was in progress but insists that the NIMH panel "did a shoddy, sloppy investigation." Now the director of psychological services at the Polk Center, in Polk, Pa., Breuning left the University of Pittsburgh in April 1984 during a university investigation into his work. He admits that "I've paid for some mistakes I made, probably paid more than I should have. But I'm not planning to wilt or go away."

Some researchers suggest that the ambitious young psychologist might have succumbed to the pressures facing anyone who depends on scarce Government funds. "Publish or perish, commitment to a larger ideal and simple career advancement -- take your pick, one or all," notes one prominent scientist. "It's troubling," says Western Michigan University Psychology Professor Alan Poling, who co-authored some of Breuning's papers. "As scientists we work largely on faith. To have trusted a person who seems guilty of substantial wrongdoing is disheartening."

With reporting by J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago