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What’s new this week

Posted on by Lanie — 3 Comments ↓

It’s always good to get an email from Ed Yong — good, bad and interesting news on the science home front.  Try Edyong209@gmail.com to subscribe to his blog.

Retraction Watch (http://retractionwatch.com) has had some interesting posts this week: “A researcher at Tufts University has retracted a paper in Cell, a year after retracting a study on a similar subject from the Journal of Biological Chemistry” posted on 8/13 has elicited a flurry of comments.  The young investigator, Gizem Donmez, an Assistant Professor at Tufts (and quite gorgeous, does that help?) is the focus of this salvo.  And yesterday, their post ““Research misconduct accounts for a small percentage of total funding”: Study” has produced another flurry of comments including one from yours truly.  The consensus of the authors of the study seems to be that it ain’t so bad after all, although some of us may feel that any is too much and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) which was the focus of the report only deals with the tip of the iceberg.

The journal Science came out today: of interest is an article by Jeffrey Mervis “Firing of Los Alamos researcher draws criticism”.  Seems James Doyle, a political scientist at the lab, wrote an article in Survival: Global Politics and Strategy in March of 2013 that disagreed with that institution’s (and the government’s) stand on nuclear deterrence.

And Jeff Weiner and Rene Stutzman report in our own Newark Star Ledger that Dr Shiping Bao has published an e-book about his role in the Trayvon Martin autopsy and trial of George Zimmerman.  Bao was fired shortly after the trial.  Apparently he changed his testimony and is quoted as saying “because I did not have good communication skills … and could not remember anything”.  Must have been a great medical examiner.  Dr Bao appears to have moved to Urbana, IL where he received 2.5 out of 5 stars from his patients (pathologist? patients?).  Ironically, the title of his book is “Dead Men Can’t Lie”.

Posted in ethical concerns, news item, possible fraud, retractions

Back in Business

Posted on by Lanie — No Comments ↓

Sad to say, I set up this blog about a year ago and then promptly ignored it.  But now I am back with a new design and a determination to get myself up and running again.  And what more appropriate way to get back on the track than to comment on the recent op-ed piece in the NY Times by my heroes Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus.  I suppose anyone who has stumbled on to my blog is probably aware of who these fellows are, but, in case you haven’t, they established a blog called Retraction Watch (RW) in August of 2010.  Retractions have increased about 10 fold over the last decade and RW has been a dynamic force in waking up the scientific community and the public at large to the uncomfortable fact that scientists are not angels, but people with lumps and warts just like everybody else.  Scientists can make mistakes, but, worse than that, more than 2/3rds of retractions can be attributed to some form of scientific misconduct.

So last week Adam and Ivan came down hard on “scientific fraudsters” and on the institutions (universities, medical schools, government agencies like the US Public Health Service’s Office of Research Integrity (ORI)) that have let most of these miscreants get away with little more than a slap on the wrist and have done even less to recoup the taxpayers’ (my!) money.  In a straw poll taken some months back, they asked “should scientific fraud be prosecuted as a crime?’.  635 readers responded with 83% voting “yes”.  These may all have been members of the choir, but anyhow…

Adam and Ivan remind us that scientific integrity in the garb of the ORI (OSI at the time) fell flat on its face in the Baltimore/Imanishi-Kari case when it was over-ruled by higher up politicos with their own axes to grind.  Adam and Ivan plead for more money for the ORI along with the power to issue subpoenas, an omission which permits the universities and other institutions to collude with the accused in withholding potentially damning information.  Our heroes end their piece by calling for Congress to take action by widening the ORI’s powers and increasing it appropriations.

And then today, we have 3 letters on the Times’ Opinion Pages that reflect 3 different responses to Ivan and Adam.  The first, written by a lawyer who represents accused scientists, points out that the federal regulations are flawed first because the accused does not have immediate access to the evidence, second because universities and medical schools do not call in outside experts (hear! hear!), third, the accused may not be represented by counsel during hearings and last that findings may be based on weak anomalies that are not necessarily fraudulent.  This respondent calls for “fairer and more accurate fact-finding procedures”.  The second applauds the op-ed piece and goes even further by calling for stiffer penalties.  And the last calls attention to the temptations brought by the excessively competitive work environment that requires substantial outside grant support, an overabundance of publications and, I would add, the push for promotion and tenure.  The second writer is a department chairman and the third is a psychology professor.

I addressed some of these things in the Opinion piece I wrote for the Scientist some months ago: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/39139/title/Opinion–Reducing-Whistleblower-Risk/

Posted in Uncategorized

Stapel Gets Nailed (but not very hard)

Posted on by Lanie — 4 Comments ↓

Diederik Stapel is the Dutch social psychologist who admitted to fabricating data in as may as 30 published papers. His story is told in a fascinating article published in the NY Times magazine in April (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels-audacious-academic-fraud.html). He admitted to fabricating experiments while sitting at his kitchen table — he decided on the desired outcome and made up the data to support it. He was careful not to make the two conditions he was comparing too disparate which might lead to disbelief. (I couldn’t help drawing a parallel to the situation that I challenged and is described on my website www.helenezhill.com). Everyone loved and admired Stapel. He was, after all, a most charming and believable man. He is no longer facing jail time but he will have to spend 120 hours (only 3 40 hr weeks!) performing community service. He was, in fact, commended for not diverting the money for personal use. Good for him! He did have his PhD rescinded — no longer Dr, just Mr Stapel and of course he lost his job. But what of the graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, colleagues and other unsuspecting readers of his works who were swept along in his undertow — what price will they pay? Who is going to pull them out of the abyss? See also http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/06/dutch-psychology-fraudster-avoids-trial.html.

Posted in Uncategorized

WI-38 vs HeLa: Suspended Animation versus Immortality

Posted on by Lanie — 67 Comments ↓

Almost anyone who does tissue culture is familiar with the two cell lines that have produced enough cells to build a mountain. These are HeLa, recently the subject of a fascinating best-seller by Rebecca Skloot entitled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and no less well-known, WI38. While HeLa cells are immortal, WI38 cells are not. When they come to the end of the line, they experience crisis by replicating more and more slowly till eventually not at all. They don’t necessarily die but they are no longer going anywhere. The petering out of cell lines like WI38 has come to be known as the Hayflick phenomenon, named after the scientist, Leonard Hayflick, who first described it and who originally established the WI38 cell line. Both cell lines were established many years ago when Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) had yet to be conceived and no one looked over your shoulder to see whose tissues or cells you might be trying to cultivate. Millions of dollars have been spent and even more have accrued as a result of research and drug development using these two (and many other) cell lines. And none of it has gone to the women whose tissues provided the seeds. Henrietta Lacks has long since died, but her family lives on. The mother in Sweden whose legally aborted fetus provided lung cells to establish WI38 lives on but wishes to remain on the sidelines. Hayflick’s story is an interesting one and is told in an article by Meredith Wadman in Nature 498:422-6, 27 June 2013 (http://www.nature.com/news/medical-research-cell-division-1.13273). He had his troubles with the law, the NIH and the anti-abortionists. He was allowed possession of only a fraction of the ampoules of cells he had carefully tended “like his children” and kept them for a time in his garage in a liquid nitrogen freezer that had to be topped up frequently to replace the nitrogen gas that continuously escapes. The controversies and concerns rage on today regarding the use of human tissue and are featured in an editorial on page 407 in that same issue (http://www.nature.com/news/a-culture-of-consent-1.13262).

Posted in ethical concerns, news item

Welcome to my Blog

Posted on by Lanie — 2 Comments ↓

From time to time, I will post news items that I think will be of interest. I will try to add new material every week so come back often. If you wish to comment or to tell your own story, please register at the widget on the sidebar. After you are approved, log in at the same widget to make your own posts.

Posted in Uncategorized

Crooked Symmetry

Posted on by Lanie — 1 Comment ↓

In an article posted in Nature on May 9, 2013, Eugenie Samuel Reich reports on a study published in Nature and featured on the front cover in 2005 that purported to demonstrate that dancers with symmetrical bodies were rated more favorably by peers than those with less symmetry. Furthermore, symmetry was related to dancing ability and ultimately, the authors related this finding to sexual preferences. Two years later, the director of the study, Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, suspected the data had been fabricated by the first author on the article, William M. Brown. Here followed a falling out between colleagues at Rutgers and Trivers was banned from the campus for 5 months following harsh words in 2012. Nature is actively pursuing whether or not to retract the paper. Meanwhile, Brown basks in glory at the University of Bedfordshire, UK as Senior Lecturer in Exercise Psychology and Biomechanics. He lists 13 journal articles including the controversial article in 2005. Trivers has a website with lots more information and good reading: roberttrivers.com. And so does Brown: http://william.brown.socialpsychology.org/

Posted in ethical concerns, news item, possible fraud

It’s All About Integrity

Posted on by Lanie — 45 Comments ↓

The newspapers in NJ are full of the disturbing news about Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Here in a nutshell is what has been and is going on:

Last year, Robert L Barchi, a medical doctor with a PhD in Biochemistry was selected to replace Rutger’s retiring President. Barchi’s credentials were impeccable: he had served as Provost at the University of Pennsylvania and as President of Thomas Jefferson University, a health sciences university similar to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ (UMDNJ). He was ideal for the job, more especially since most of the component parts of the UMDNJ were to be merged with Rutgers, a marriage that would be beneficial to both entities and presumably would attract more research dollars and prestige.

Unfortunately for Barchi, health sciences universities have little to do with athletics and the complexities of the merger must have been taking most of his time. But athletics are a big thing in New Jersey, add to that the Scarlet Knights are also about crashing in to The Big 10. And there arose a brouhaha in the basketball arena: one of the coaches used abusive, homophobic language and pelleted unsatisfactory players with basketballs. Some of this was caught on video. Last fall, when this became known to the Athletic Director (AD), the offending coach was temporarily suspended and fined. The video became public in April. The upshot of all this was that the abusive coach, Mike Rice, was fired and the popular and respected AD, Tim Pernetti, was forced to resign. Barchi was also under fire with some editorials calling for his resignation, as well.

The university lost little time setting up a search for a new AD. Their choice was announced in mid-April to loud accolades. They had chosen a woman, Julie Herman, who was currently the Assistant AD at the University of Louisville having come there under a conveniently forgotten cloud from the University of Tennessee. Her record at Louisville has not been questioned. It is the record at the University of Tennessee that everyone missed. While there, she was a bridesmaid at her assistant’s wedding and, jokingly, she warned in her toast to the bride against becoming pregnant. Well, the bride did become pregnant and she was fired. The bride sued and won $150,000 for gender discrimination. Not only that, Hermann’s basketball team felt so abused that together they wrote and signed a letter of complaint. When questioned about these things, Hermann suffered a severe case of amnesia.

Kathleen O’Brien said in her column in the Newark Star Ledger on May 30 “…that she can’t remember her assistant’s wedding. We even accept that she may have forgotten she was a bridesmaid. Ditto that she caught the bouquet: she’s a former volleyball player, so maybe she snagged ’em all the time…However, our credulity was taxed to the breaking point by the notion she forgot she wore a black bridesmaid’s dress. Black!” And she continues “perhaps the athletes she coached wouldn’t have resorted to writing a letter in which they said, “We have all come to hate the game we love.”

Steve Politti, the sports commentator for the Star Ledger had this to say “… the best Hermann could offer up when presented with the letter from that Tennessee volleyball team — with charges of “mental cruelty” and abusive language — was an impossible-to-believe memory lapse, a denial that she ever used the word “whores” and a dumbfounded “wow.” He goes on to say “This is what concerns the people at the university the most. It’s not just what Hermann did 17 years ago. It’s how she reacted to it, and how her tenure at Rutgers will begin on a series of lies and half-truths.”

What would Immanuel Kant have to say?

Posted in news item

Kenneth Jones’ qui tam suit fails

Posted on by Lanie — 1 Comment ↓

Kenneth Jones,a professor at Brandeis University, was a participant in a program project grant involving early detection of Alzheimer’s disease in a group of test patients.  The multimillion dollar program project grant involved had been funded over many years with several groups at various institutions in the Boston area participating.  Jones served as statistician on one aspect of the grant.  The studies involved a comparison of 2 areas of the brain, one of which changes in volume in Alzheimer patients.  The  MRI data reported in the grant renewal application showed a significant difference in the ratios between the two areas in the early Alzheimer’s patients compared with the normal age-matched controls. This finding would presumably have a positive impact on the funding decision.  Jones learned later that earlier measurements had been recorded that did not show the difference in the ratios.  These earlier measurements of the control subjects ratios were not significantly different from those of the Alzheimer patients.  The defendants had not informed the NIH that the data had been changed and Jones believed that, had the NIH known, the grant would not have been funded.  As a result, he brought a qui tam suit against the Brigham and Women’s, the Massachusetts General Hospitals and 2 co-defendants, one of whom, Ronald J Killiany, PhD, is a member of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Boston University who appears to have read the MRIs and the other, Marilyn S Albert, PhD, a member of the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School.  Dr Albert has a long grant history reaching back over many years and representing several million dollars of government funding.  The program project grant had been running for 23 years when it apparently terminated in 2008.

Qui tqm is a law suit filed by a relator (basically a whistle blower) on behalf of the government charging that the government has been defrauded monetarily.  Jones originally filed his case in 2007.  He lost in the District Court in Boston and he and his attorneys appealed.  Their appeal was successful and the case was remanded back to the same District Court and the same judge.  Jones opted for a jury trial.  The case was heard over 12 court days starting on March 18, 2013 and ending on April 9, 2013.  In the end, the jury was charged with answering 2 questions:

questions


The records of these proceedings are available at www.pacer.gov (Public Access to Court Electronic Records).  The case number is 1: 07-cv-11461-WGY.  Records can be downloaded at 10 cents a page.  The final documents will not be available until mid-July, 2013.  The decision to appeal has not yet been made by the plaintiff and his lawyers.    The odds of winning are not good: 1 to 2 in 10.  There have been few cases of this nature that have been filed as qui tam and most have not been successful.  This may have been the first to go to trial, let alone jury trial.

Posted in news item, whistleblower report