Dr. Mell:

Just now during down time on my night shift, I took the opportunity to read your article “Run, Hide, Fight” in ACEP Now [July 2016]. After a few minutes of internal dialogue, my guttural annoyance prevailed, and here I am sending you a note about one of your references.

I will do my best to make an extremely long story short. The final point is that I encourage you to strongly consider refraining from ever again referencing Dr. Gary Ordog in your articles, specifically reference #2: Weapon carriage among major trauma victims in the emergency department (Acad Emerg Med. 1995;2:109-113).

In 1994 and 1995 I had the unfortunate opportunity to interact with Dr. Ordog at Martin Luther King/Charles R. Drew Medical Center. I was a co-attending at that facility. It was not long that I quickly developed a personal opinion of this individual who dared call himself a “doctor.” I found him corrupt, to say the least, and completely deceitful and unethical in nature. The referenced article is only one example. In 1994/5, myself and a few colleagues revealed extreme examples of misinformation published by Dr. Ordog and Wasserberger. This included the specific article you are referencing. Despite serious threats from the authors, we reported our findings to Academic Emergency Medicine. An investigation of the article you referenced ensued, and Dr. Hedges (chief editor) personally investigated our accusations and eventually published a comment about the article indicating that Dr. Ordog’s citation inflated data by twentyfold (Acad Emerg Med. 1996;3:735).

It is my opinion, based on objective data review and personal interactions, that any and all research or publications by this author should be scrutinized to the greatest extent. I will go further to encourage anyone and everyone to never cite this author’s publications because of corrupt practices (both clinically and academically).

This is just my opinion, but to carry my point, I note that in 1995 Dr. Gary Ordog was cited with 15 counts of professional misconduct including “deceptive publications” by the Medical Board. His license was suspended, but it was eventually reinstated. In 2016 he was again involved in an investigation and eventually pleaded guilty to health care fraud. You will find this information if you take a few moments of time to research his activities.

—Anonymous

Dr. Mell Responds

I really appreciate your taking the time to read my article, and thank you for taking the time to correct this information! Unfortunately, there is no question that guns are entering our workplace (along with myriad other weapons). Other data, referenced in the article, support this, as does common sense. So that point is no less true or valid despite the shortcomings of Dr. Ordog’s work. Even if Dr. Ordog’s work were excluded from my article, the point that we should be vigilant and aware would remain. Thank you for taking the time to correct this information!

—Howard K. Mell, MD, MPH, CPE, FACEP
Winston-Salem, North Carolina