SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a pharmaceutical executive’s groundbreaking conviction Monday for misstating clinical study results in a company press release.

Turning back W. Scott Harkonen’s claim that the conviction criminalizes genuine scientific debate, the court upheld his wire fraud conviction for misrepresenting the therapeutic value of Actimmune. "Harkonen’s scientific methods were not on trial; the issue was whether he misleadingly presented his analyses in the press release," the Ninth Circuit stated in an unpublished, per curiam opinion.

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