Last week’s C&E News had a feature article on irreproducible data, a worthy subject in light of the ongoing Dalibor Sames/Bengu Sezen saga. In fact, the article was written by William Schulz, the same reporter who “broke” the Sames-Sezen story a couple of hours before Kenneth Chang of the New York Times, but weeks after the publication of the retractions in JACS and months after the blogosphere was talking about them. As a side note, it was interesting to see that my boss was among the random assortment of chemists interviewed for the story.

There really isn’t much news in the piece, because 1) it’s a feature article and 2) Columbia is under an information lock-down. If you look at Columbia’s new policy on scientific misconduct, their “investigation” should have been completed by now. It’s good that the media hasn’t giving up; the community deserves the truth.

From the article:

Sames says the work by coauthor and former Ph.D. student Bengu Sezen cannot be reproduced in his lab or other labs. He has refused to speak further with the media because Columbia has been investigating the matter.

Allow me to fix that sentence for you:

Sames says the his work by with coauthor and former Ph.D. student Bengu Sezen cannot be reproduced in his lab or other labs. He has refused to speak further with the media because Columbia has been investigating the matter.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: if professors are going to share in the credit, they’ve got to be willing to share in the blame. As for the rest of the piece, I haven’t got much more to say. I agree with the general sentiment that in regards to irreproducibility, the overwhelming majority of the time it’s due to an honest mistake or some form of miscommunication.

Speaking of mistakes, Professor Richard Saykally might want to be a little bit more careful about how he expresses his opinions:

“We were about to submit this to a journal,” Saykally says, adding that he considers himself lucky to have caught the fabrication prior to publication. He notes that software programs to massage data, such as the one used by his former postdoc, have become more sophisticated in the years since the incident in his lab.

“Ultimately, we have to trust our coworkers,” Saykally continues, “but every now and then, some bad apple comes along.” He worries that today there is perhaps tremendous economic pressure for foreign students and postdocs to commit fraud in the interest of advancing their careers. He says most foreign students face tight job markets at home and in the U.S. and might be pressured to look for an edge, however that might be obtained. “Recent history points to that direction,” Saykally says, meaning cases of fraud that have involved foreign students or postdocs.

A statement like that isn’t something that can be casually dropped into a story. It’s discriminatory, xenophobic, and possibly racist. The statement is a serious allegation, and while it may be true, it must be backed up with facts. Are there statistically-significant data to show that foreign students falsify results more than American students? I’m not saying that Saykally is necessarily wrong, he’d just better be sure that he’s right. I would not be surprised if C&EN gets more than a few letters on the subject.

As a final note, I’ve been told that everyone at Columbia hates my guts. While I’m not entirely surprised, perhaps you people should consider directing your anger at the parties who may or may not have fabricated data, “fired” grad students, cheated the taxpayers out of thousands of dollars, and mislead the entire scientific community with junk papers. But hey….whatever makes you feel better about yourself.

It amazes me how reluctant people are to publicly recognize this whole story as regrettable. The parties that are responsible for this mess are in an inescapable lose/lose situation. The worst case scenario is that serious data fabrication occurred. The “best” case scenario is that the science is fine, meaning the retraction of the papers was completely bungled and the reputation of everyone involved was needlessly dragged through the mud. How will it all play out? Who knows, but we’re all allowed to guess:

As for the Sames/Sezen case, Whitesides cautions about drawing any premature conclusions. He says he doubts that scientific fraud is an issue, because the retractions dealt with “an interesting synthetic reaction” with no obvious payoff from fraud. “I assume both parties are right, but I wonder why they haven’t gotten together to resolve the matter. Cases of fraud in chemistry are pretty rare.”

My personal prediction is that at the end of this saga, Sezen will lose her Ph.D., Sames will resign, and Columbia will escape federal investigation by having severed ties with both of them. Sames’ resignation will include an acknowledgment of his negligence as an adviser but a firm denial of any participation in fabrication of data. The final C&E News article on the scandal will quote several respected chemists saying that “the system worked,” which is simply a truncated version of the truth: that the system worked poorly and inefficiently. Finally, I will be assassinated by the Czech Mafia, but only if the Turkish Mafia doesn’t get to me first.

I sure hope Santa gets me that Kevlar vest I want for Christmas.