ChemBark

A kind reader of the blog brought my attention to a piece of commentary in Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis titled “Ethical Conduct in Chemical Research and Publishing”. The lead author of the piece is none other than Ryoji Noyori, who won a share of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in asymmetric catalysis. Noyori is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the journal, while the second author is the Editor of the journal.

I agree with a lot of what Noyori has to say, because a lot of it is obvious:

The research supervisor – group leader, principal investigator (PI), however he or she is called – is the main person to pass on the tradition of science to the next generation. Senior scientists have an obligation to instill strong ethical and moral values in their progeny…However, the education of graduate students should not be the sole responsibility of the research supervisor; each department should have a collective responsibility for the education of its students and for the activities of its professors. It is regrettable to see that in many departments the professors each form their individual kingdoms with a minimum of departmental cohesion.

also:

Fraud is hard to detect in a manuscript and is usually discovered only after publication, if at all. This should lead to retraction of the article.

Yep. The majority of the six-page article is full of statements like the above, which are pretty hard to argue against. But every now and again, Noyori makes some statements that strike me as mostly right, but a little odd:

When the careers of students depend entirely on the relationship to their professor, and only successful results count, then there is a large temptation for abuse on both sides.

I’ll agree that this relationship is very important, but to the point of using the word “entirely”? That’s not an assertion I would make.

It is hard to understand the logic behind committing fraud in spite of the apparent short-term gains. Scientific progress is achieved on the basis of previously published results. Fraudulent results cannot obtain a place of significance in the advancement of science, because they are not reproducible. Therefore, scientific fraud is a suicidal act for the career of the perpetrator. Integrity is an essential requirement for conducting scientific research.

This statement strikes me as naive. I think I understand many of the reasons why people commit fraud, just as I can understand why someone would murder someone else. In both cases, these reasons do not justify the crime, but there is still reasoning and logic at play.

Now, on to two passages that greatly interested me:

Another form of self-plagiarism is to cut and paste large segments of text from previous publications. The case of the Breslow publications offers important insights into the question of self-plagiarism. Ronald Breslow is one of the most highly respected chemists alive, and has made an enormous contribution to chemistry in his distinguished career of over 50 years. He published three personal review articles on the origins of homochirality. Many people are irritated by attacks on Breslow, since it is the right of every scientist to repeat their own ideas in different contexts, especially in talks or review articles. Indeed Breslow was unaware of any misconduct, since he has specifically made changes so as not to infringe on copyright laws. Nevertheless, the invited Perspective in JACS was withdrawn “at the request of the author due to similarity to his previously published reviews..” This is a difficult matter. “Self-plagiarism” can in fact be highly beneficial to the community. Eminent scientists travel worldwide and present almost the same lecture to many audiences; the goal is to have the largest possible dissemination of the ideas and results. The bottom line in publishing similar overviews should be whether it serves the advancement of science by reaching different and larger audiences. Copyright law needs to be respected, but other solutions in the interest of science should be sought to facilitate the widest dissemination of seminal reports. In conclusion, the repetition of a sentence or parts of a sentence is not considered plagiarism or self-plagiarism.

I cannot believe that the top editors of a journal are going to the mat for Breslow’s duplicate publication. I think most editors view the case as a classic example of self-plagiarism that is wholly unacceptable. “Self-plagiarism” is not simply restating your own ideas; it is lifting identical or minimally-altered pieces of writing for re-publication in a new article without clearly indicating that this material was published previously. The reasons self-plagiarism is unethical are: (i) it wastes resources, like the financial resources of the second journal and the time of those scientists assigned to referee material that has already been refereed once before, (ii) it traps the second journal in an adverse legal position with respect to copyright law, and (iii) it uses deception to “game” a system where publications are viewed as the principal metric of accomplishment in research.

And there is a huge difference between giving scientific talks and publishing scientific papers. Justin Bieber can perform “Baby” to audiences in Ottawa, Newark, and Richmond, but he can’t get away with publishing the song over-and-over on subsequent albums under different labels. Noyori’s opinion here is nothing short of bizarre.

If Noyori truly feels that “self-plagiarism can…be highly beneficial to the community”, I suggest that everyone submit self-plagiarized material for duplicate publication in Adv. Synth. Catal. I think he and the other editors will quickly change their tune.

Finally, here is the editors’ requisite thumbing-of-the-nose to blogs:

The Internet has become a major medium of communication in research and is contributing to the democratization of the global science community. Society is conditioned to consider that the printed word is valid; unfortunately, this trust cannot be extended to the Internet. Scientific results put onto the Internet without peer review have a serious problem with credibility. The American Chemical Society guidelines contain a section on publishing outside the scientific literature, but more comprehensive ethical guidelines are needed for publishing in the social media. More harmful is the publishing of irresponsible criticism and slander, even in the blogs of highly respected journals (see the Comments to the C&EN article on Breslow, cited below). Ethical guidelines condemn personal criticism and yet one often sees unscientific accusations, rumor or innuendo in the Internet. The mass media tend towards sensationalism and are not considered scientific, but irresponsible personal accusations on the Internet in an alleged scientific context are damaging to the individuals and to the entire image of science.

What a surprise: the editors of an expensive peer-reviewed journal denouncing the prospect of publishing scientific research for free on the Internet. Also, I love how they criticize “irresponsible criticism” on blogs without specifically citing what they find wrong. They only drop a numbered reference to the web page for the Breslow duplication story at C&EN, which has a comments thread that is heavily moderated by the editors. Someone please identify the slanderous comments that Noyori thinks are so irresponsible. Is this the best he could do?

While the transgressions in the Sames-Sezen and Breslow sagas are very different, we can use both events as probes for how the ACS (through C&EN and JACS) deals with unethical behavior. A lot has changed in the past six years.

The first set of three Sames-Sezen retractions was published in JACS on 1 March 2006. I remarked at the time that these “addition/correction” notices had completely bypassed the ASAP page as well as the daily JACS e-mail feed. This move by the journal may have been unprecedented, and it certainly was not common. The move reeked of sweeping the scandal under the rug. Feeding into this perception was the fact that in spite of the magnitude of the situation, C&EN did not run a story on the retractions until the afternoon of 15 March 2006. Coincidentally—<rolls eyes>—the magazine happened to beat the New York Times to press by a couple of hours. Keep in mind, the ACS Publications division knew these retractions were coming for quite some time, yet once they were finally released, it took an additional two weeks for C&EN to write up a bare-bones story.

In contrast, C&EN ran a story reporting the withdrawal of Breslow’s offending paper less than a day after it was pulled from the JACS site. In both cases: (1) blogs reported the transgressions before anyone else and (2) once the papers were finally withdrawn, online traffic and discussion flared up quickly. The difference this time around was that C&EN did not wait to jump in and provide “official” coverage. It seems that C&EN might have learned a few lessons from 2006: (1) although these stories do not paint chemical research in a positive light, they are important to cover, (2) chemists are interested in these stories, and (3) these stories will not go away, so there’s no sense in waiting to report them.

This apparent change in approach makes sense to me, and I applaud it. In contrast, the editorial decisions made by JACS with regard to retractions—both then and now—are beyond my comprehension.

The recent Breslow perspective was published online and, I assume, in print since it was assigned page numbers (vol. 134, p. 6887-6892). Despite the publication of the paper in print—an action that cannot be reversed—JACS completely pulled the paper from its Web site. The site Retraction Watch noted that it is unusual for a journal to take this step, especially preemptively, before it has completed an investigation. It is more common to leave a copy of the retracted paper online, with a note that refers to its withdrawal. Retraction Watch points to an example where JACS has left a retracted paper online with a notice, and a different example where a paper was retracted and essentially had its DOI commandeered by the subsequent addition/correction notice. The original paper, which had been assigned proper page numbers, now appears as Supporting Information. The case is similar for another JACS article brought into question by the chemical blogosphere: the infamous NaH-as-an-oxidant paper. This paper never made it off the ASAP page—it has no proper page numbers—but it remains online as the Supporting Information for a subsequent retraction notice.

So, what is the pattern? Perhaps we can throw out the Breslow retraction because JACS wanted to avoid liability associated with copyright infringement, but what about the different treatment of the two other retracted papers that made it into print? Odd.

And if we go back to 2006, things get even more strange. Bengu Sezen’s 2004 paper in JACS remains online with a note about the retraction written under the title of the PDF. Fine. But take a look at the addition/correction notice:

After the departure of the first author, the laboratory of the corresponding author (D. Sames) has been unable to reproduce the key results in this publication. Accordingly, the corresponding author withdraws this paper, and deeply regrets that the chemical community was misled by its publication.

Now, look what you’ll see if you open a print edition corresponding to that addition/correction. A kind reader from Montreal sent me a scanned image of the page in question.

After departure of the first author, we were unable to reproduce the key results presented in this paper. The parent coupling between pyrrolidine and iodobenzene does proceed; however, the efficiency is far lower (GC <4%) than originally claimed. The authenticity of spectral data provided in the Supporting Information cannot be confirmed. Accordingly, we withdraw this paper. We deeply regret that the chemical community was misled by this publication.

The two publications are strikingly different. Also, I am not sure whom the “we” referred to in this case. Perhaps that is one reason why Sames and/or JACS decided to make the modification. Whatever the reason, the first version of the retraction completely disappeared from the JACS Web site.

So, in the Breslow and Sames cases, we have situations where the print versions of the Journal are different from the online versions. In the former case, an unfilled hole exists online. In the latter example, the Web and paper editions disagree, and there is no notice of this disagreement.

Why would a journal want to do this? My first thought turns to legal considerations. The original Sames-Sezen addition/correction notices were published under the names of all the co-authors on the paper. We know from Sezen’s comments to the press that she vehemently denied anything was wrong with her work, so she would seem to have a strong claim that she was misrepresented by both Sames and JACS.

But, I don’t know for sure. Everything above is a hot mess, and I don’t think JACS has any firm editorial policy regarding how to deal with retractions. That said, I could easily have overlooked something. Feel free to take me to task in the comments. Regardless, I think many of these actions are inconsistent with one of the central tenets of scientific publishing. Aren’t journals supposed to constitute a permanent record of information? If not, then why can’t we all correct errors we find in our papers by overwriting them online?

This image has been plagiarized from an unknown source

Since I’ve already given my advice to the ACS regarding how to deal with the space-dinosaur situation, it is only fair that I offer some thoughts to Ronald Breslow as well. Once faced with the facts, JACS pretty much had no other option than to pull the paper. In contrast, Breslow has a variety of options to pursue. Here is what I think is his best course of action:

(1) Stop talking, for the moment. While the “space dinosaur” aspect of the story has gone through the news cycle, the self-plagiarism aspect of the story is only just beginning. By giving comments to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that asks for an interview, you are only perpetuating the agony by ensuring a steady trickle of fresh, negative stories.

To make matters worse, there is probably significant bad news on the horizon: JACS is either going to verify that you violated their ethical guidelines, or there is likely to be considerable backlash from the same group of people who exposed the duplication in the first place. Your reputation is going to depend on integration of the area under the curve of bad-news vs. time. The bad news is coming, the only thing you can do to improve the outcome is to minimize the time that these stories are in the spotlight. You want all of the bad news to crash down like a ton of bricks, then once that happens, you can immediately start re-stacking them.

(2) Get a feel for JACS‘ timeline and act in concert with the journal. The ball is pretty much in JACS‘s court, as they have acknowledged starting an investigation. I have to imagine that this investigation will involve Breslow in some way, so these interactions can be used to get a sense for what is going to happen when.

(3) Try to shape the outcome by admitting some wrongdoing. The case at hand is probably a textbook example of duplication/self-plagiarism. Stuart Cantrill‘s highlighter pen and JACS‘s swift action in pulling the paper—rather than leaving it up—verify this assertion. I think the best way to mitigate the damage is not by fighting everything tooth-and-nail, but by admitting some fault and arguing that the offense is not that serious. You see this behavior all the time in the sports world. In soccer, you’ll see a defender raise his hand after a nasty tackle to admit the foul and wrongdoing in an attempt to avoid further punishment (i.e., getting booked). In poker, players with bad hands will purposely lead out with a small bet in hopes that the other player will just call the defensive bet instead of betting more.

Here, Breslow might volunteer to retract the paper and issue a public apology to avoid worse punishment.

(4) Publicly embrace whatever punishment JACS doles out. This step goes hand-in-hand with the previous advice, but whereas step #3 is designed to influence the punishment, this piece of advice is designed to influence public opinion. Those that see the JACS paper as a violation of ethics will want to be sure that Breslow is punished and learns his lesson. If no such punishment is publicly acknowledged, there will always be questions over whether Breslow was able to “get away” with it.

This perceived lack of justice is the main problem that Dalibor Sames’ reputation has suffered in the wake of the Bengu Sezen scandal. Sezen was exposed and punished to what is probably the fullest extent possible. Her reputation is absolute garbage. On the other hand, it appears that Sames has suffered no significant punishment for his role as a careless manager. He ignored the warnings of several of his subordinates—and in some cases, fired them rather than pursuing the matter—yet it appears that he never lost funding, and wasn’t sanctioned by JACS or Columbia. To my knowledge, he’s never spoken publicly on the matter. Perhaps as a result of this perceived injustice, Sames is a pariah in academic chemistry. When was the last time you saw him invited to a department to give a talk?

In contrast, look at the case of Leo Paquette, who was accused of plagiarizing information from a grant application. Paquette, while maintaining that he never intentionally stole ideas, accepted the (significant) punishment of renouncing all government funding for several years. Whether or not he did the crime, he certainly “did the time”. As a result, he enjoys a rather positive—albeit, slightly tarnished—reputation among organic chemists.

(5) Polish your story—hopefully, the truth. I have no idea what the truth is in this case, but I can see several possible stories that don’t strike me as particularly evil. For instance, Breslow could say he was very proud of this work with homochirality and wanted to share it with an audience larger than that of Tet. Lett. He might have felt the special issue of Isr. J. Chem. and the perspective that JACS asked him to write were perfect opportunities to showcase this work. He could continue to say that while he did cut-and-paste material from the original paper, he thought that he had made enough changes to the manuscript to avoid self-plagiarism. Next, Breslow could admit to making a mistake, in hindsight, and apologize for it. This story would pave the way to voluntarily retracting the JACS paper to free the journal from being held liable for copyright violations…etc.

(6) Sit for an in-depth interview when the punishment comes out. Once again, the best way to handle the impending storm is to get it over with quickly. Pull the Band-Aid right off. You can do this by sitting for one, high-profile, definitive interview. Every subsequent interview request could then be directed to the original one. You see this strategy employed all of the time in politics and showbiz: a star will get into trouble, then sit with Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, or Larry King for an hour-long broadcast that gets millions of viewers. Examples: Chris Brown, Pete Rose, Michael Jackson, Mel Gibson.

Don’t fall into the trap of giving an in-depth interview to a young science reporter or, even worse, a hard-nosed blogger. These people have no name-recognition and the interview won’t be regarded as the definitive interview. You are looking for a Barbara Walters—someone  well known who will ask the hard questions (that you expect), but let you tell your story. You do not want a Tim Russert—someone that will work to move through a laundry list of specific questions designed to probe every contentious detail about the issue at hand. The obvious reporter to target is C&EN‘s Rudy Baum. He is the head honcho at the magazine, and he’s already assigned himself the story for C&EN. Since C&EN is the official organ of the ACS, I don’t think the magazine will want to do anything to soil the reputation of Breslow, JACS, or the office of ACS President. Just look at how Baum’s story reporting the withdrawal of the JACS paper ended:

Breslow is a titan in the chemistry enterprise and a major figure at ACS. He served as the society’s president in 1996 and was the recipient of the society’s highest award, the Priestley Medal, in 1999. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the National Medal of Science (1991).

That’s a pretty fair/nice way to close a story about the start of an investigation about self-plagiarism.

(7) Keep your chin up. Remember that you’ve got strong records of achievement in research and service to chemistry. The community appreciates your many, many contributions; it just wants to ensure that all of us are held to the same ethical standards. You’ll move past this episode, as you have similar sticky situations in the past.

JACS has removed Ronald Breslow’s “Space Dinosaur” paper from its Web site. Users who click to view the PDF are greeted with the following message:

10.1021/ja3012897
This article was removed by the publisher due to possible copyright concerns. The Journal’s Editor is following established procedure to determine whether a violation of ACS Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research has occurred.

This is an interesting move by the editors. While the paper has not yet appeared in print, its presence on the ASAP site constitutes “official” publication. There is something unwholesome about making the paper vanish. After all, isn’t that why we have addition/correction notices? Otherwise, why wouldn’t we go just into the original documents and change them?

Update (9:05 PM) — The guide “Notice to Authors of JACS Manuscripts” verifies that the ASAP version constitutes official publication of the paper:

Authors must consider that the publication date for a paper is the date of first disclosure, either the Just Accepted date, ASAP date, or date on which the issue is posted on the web.

I guess it is possible to un-ring a bell.

The Breslow “dinosaur” story has intensified to a crescendo. What started as bewilderment over a silly press release issued by the ACS about an otherwise unremarkable paper, has morphed into serious accusations of misconduct in the form of self-plagiarism by a living legend of chemistry. The conversation has transpired almost completely on chemistry blogs and microblogs (e.g., Twitter). In an effort to keep track of everything, I have collected a list of pertinent links below, which I plan to curate as the story evolves.

It seems that once again, the collective chemical Internet has uncovered a serious case of misbehavior in our field. This amateur journalism was a truly distributed effort, with multiple sites contributing new facts and insights, and with each site building on the work of the others. The cooperation and openness of the system are two of the reasons I value blogs and blogging. It is heartening to see that small groups of people can catalyze positive change by drawing attention to obvious problems and stimulating thoughtful analysis.

Links Regarding the “Space Dinosaur” Paper by Ronald Breslow

General – Twitter – Commentary and links – #spacedino hashtag – Major contributors: @stuartcantrill, @NeilWithers, @Chemjobber, @SeeArrOh, @ChemBark, @Dr_PaulC, @edyong209, @Sci_ents, @sciencegeist

6/9/2010 – Tetrahedron Lett. – “A likely possible origin of homochirality in amino acids and sugars on prebiotic earth” – Original paper (?)

27/4/2011 – Tetrahedron Lett. – “Erratum to “The origin of homochirality in amino acids and sugars on prebiotic Earth” – Erratum notice

27/4/2011 – Tetrahedron Lett. – “The origin of homochirality in amino acids and sugars on prebiotic earth” – Corrected paper, republished

18/5/2011 – Isr. J. Chem. – “Formation of L Amino Acids and D Sugars, and Amplification of their Enantioexcesses in Aqueous Solutions, Under Simulated Prebiotic Conditions” –A review published by Breslow in the Israel Journal of Chemistry

25/3/2012 – J. Am. Chem. Soc. – “Evidence for the Likely Origin of Homochirality in Amino Acids, Sugars, and Nucleosides on Prebiotic Earth” – Breslow’s perspective paper in JACS

11/4/2012 – ACS Press Room – “Could ‘advanced’ dinosaurs rule other planets?” – Sensationalist press release from ACS referring to the above paper in JACS

11/4/2012 – Just Like Cooking – “Space Dinos! Prebiotic Chemistry Meets Paleozoic Commentary” – Coverage of paper vis-a-vis the bungled press release by See Arr Oh. Possible self-plagiarism is mentioned in the comments thread

11/4/2012 – Chemistry-Blog – “Taking a dinosaur’s name in vain” – Initial analysis of the paper vis-a-vis the bungled press release by Mark

11/4/2012 – Smithsonian Magazine – “Dinosaurs From Space!” – Analysis of the dinosaur idea with respect to evolution

11/4/2012 – Pharyngula – “Adding dinosaurs always makes research sexier” – Analysis of the evolution idea and the press release

12/4/2012 – Boing Boing – “The threat of intelligent space dinosaurs”

12/4/2012 – ChemBark – “Breslow and Dinosaurs in JACS, Oh My” – Analysis of the science in the paper and the bungled press release

12/4/2012 – Sciencebase –”Alien Dinosaur Chemists” – Analysis of the press release vis-a-vis the paper

14/4/2012 – ChemBark – “A Terrible Week for Chemistry” – An attempt at humor

24/4/2012 – Chemistry-Blog – “Space dinosaurs, the saga continues” – Mark posts about the self-plagiarism in JACS, includes Stu’s famous highlighter work. Note that Mark has alerted JACS about possible misconduct by e-mail.

25/4/2012 – ChemBark – “What the ACS Must Do Regarding the Dinosaur Paper” – An editorial calling for correction of the press release and retraction of the paper in JACS

25/4/2012 – In the Pipeline – “Breslow’s Chirality Paper: More Than Just Alien Dinosaurs” – Derek covers the story

25/4/2012 – Nature News Blog – “Eminent chemist denies self-plagiarism in ‘space dinosaurs’ paper” – Daniel Cressey, a reporter at Nature, begins to probe deeper. Breslow is interviewed and defends his paper.

25/4/2012 – Everyday Scientist – “self-plagiarism and JACS” – Sam returns to post thoughts on self-plagiarism

25/4/2012 – Chemical Connections – “I’m still here” – Stu checks in regarding recent and future personal events

25/4/2012 – Curious Wavefunction – “Would Ron Breslow’s dinosaurs be typing this post?” – Discussion of humor in papers, self-plagiarism, and evolution

25/4/2012 – Science 2.0 – “Former ACS President Denies Charges He Plagiarized Himself” – A general piece/note/report

26/4/2012 – ChemBark – “Breslow Dinosaur Paper Pulled by JACS” – First report that JACS has pulled the PDF of the “space dinosaur” paper and launched an investigation

27/4/2012 – Chemistry-Blog – “The case of the disappearing (space) dinos” – Mark comments on the pulled paper

27/4/2012 – Retraction Watch – “JACS temporarily pulls ‘space dinosaurs’ paper for alleged duplication” – Ivan O. reports on the pulled paper and previous retractions involving JACS

27/4/2012 – Nature News Blog – “‘Space dinosaurs’ paper withdrawn amid self-plagiarism allegations” – Daniel Cressey follows up on his earlier piece

27/4/2012 – Chemjobber – “Pentagon, defense industry, legislators respond to professor’s warnings” – Humor from CJ: fake press release regarding possible attack of Earth by alien dinosaurs

27/4/2012 – C&EN – “Breslow Paper in JACS Questioned” – Editor-in-chief of C&E News reports on the pulled paper in the official newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. The article was updated on 30/4/2012 with a comment from Breslow.

27/4/2012 – Skepchick – “Is it still plagiarism if you copy yourself?“ – A good discussion of self-plagiarism

29/4/2012 – ChemBark – “My Advice to Breslow“ – Advice on damage control regarding chemistry papers

30/4/2012 – Curious Wavefunction – “The anatomy of peer review: Why airing dirty laundry in public is important” – A fantastic post on two scientists’ quest to correct the scientific record in the wake of another infamous paper by Breslow

1/5/2012 – Just Like Cooking – “Same (Space) Science, Different (Dino) Day” – See Arr Oh points out other similarities among many of the recent origin-of-life papers written by Breslow

3/5/2012 – ChemBark – “How C&EN and JACS Have Changed Since Sames-Sezen” –A look at how ACS Publications handled the Sames-Sezen retractions in 2006 vs. the Breslow “space-dinosaur” retraction in 2012

17/5/2012 – In the Pipeline – “The Breslow Chirality Paper Mess, Resolved” – Derek follows up to note the withdrawal of Breslow’s paper

20/5/2012 – Retraction Watch – “JACS makes it official, retracting Breslow ‘space dinosaurs’ paper for ‘similarity to his previously published reviews’” – Ivan follows up now that the JACS paper has been withdrawn

Please draw my attention to new or missed items by using the comments.

The “Space Dinosaur” paper by Ronald Breslow of Columbia University continues to attract negative attention (1 2), and it does so because the American Chemical Society continues to mishandle the situation on two levels. The first set of problems centers on the press release issued by the ACS Press Room, while the second set concerns JACS and the ethical publication of research. Both sets of problems have obvious solutions, but these solutions require courageous action from an organization that, to many of its members, appears bereft of courage and reason.

Problem #1: The Dinosaur Press Release

We previously analyzed Breslow’s homochirality paper in JACS and its accompanying press release. The content of the paper was interesting, but the press release missed the point. Perhaps in an effort to engage a wider audience, the Press Room ran with a fanciful, poetic thought on dinosaurs that appeared at the close of the paper. In the process, they almost completely ignored the crux of Breslow’s scientific work. I am not alone in this analysis; the release was instantly ridiculed on Twitter and on many chemistry blogs, yet the ACS Press Room left the story on its front page and in its PressPac for a full week. While some news reports recognized the situation for what it is (1 2 3), other news outlets have run with the release (1 2 3 4 5), and as a result, are perpetuating the bizarre idea.

Solution #1: Issue an Updated Press Release and Draw Attention to It

The ACS must strive to communicate science accurately to the public and in a manner consistent with the spirit of the research. Breslow’s paper had little—if anything—to do with dinosaurs. The press release was an absolute farce. To not correct the focus of the release and allow it to snowball in the mainstream press is completely antithetical to one of the fundamental purposes of the ACS as outlined in its National Charter: “to foster public welfare and education.”

The ACS Press Room must pull the original release, issue a corrected version, and forward it to all news organizations that picked up the story. Furthermore, an employee should be assigned the task of posting links to the updated release in the comment threads for any news stories on the Internet where a corresponding comment threads also exists.

A certain degree of courage is required to publicly acknowledge a mistake, and even more is required to step boldly into the light and attempt to repair any damage that was caused. It is much, much easier to hide, do nothing, and wait for the story to die down. But while it is a thankless task, our society has a duty to spend a day fixing this damage before it moves on.

Problem #2: Ethical Concerns Regarding the Paper in JACS

It has been noted on Twitter—as well as in comment threads here, on See Arr Oh’s blog, and Chemistry-Blog—that it appears that large portions of Breslow’s paper in JACS have been self-plagiarized from not one, but two previously published papers (1 2). The most thorough analysis was conducted by Stu from Nature Chemistry, where he took a pen to the Breslow paper and highlighted the portions that were lifted “>97-98% verbatim from” the previous publications. The five pages of Breslow’s perspective are COVERED in ink (1 2 3). [These three photos are a must-see. Incidentally, I highly recommend following @stuartcantrill's Twitter feed.]

Some commenters have asked whether self-plagiarism is that big of a deal. I can see tenable arguments for either side of this question, and in cases where this is true, it makes sense that any journal should be allowed to set its own policy. The policy for JACS is stated in the ACS Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research:

Authors should not engage in self-plagiarism (also known as duplicate publication) – unacceptably close replication of the author’s own previously published text or results without acknowledgement of the source. ACS applies a “reasonable person” standard when deciding whether a submission constitutes self-plagiarism/duplicate publication. If one or two identical sentences previously published by an author appear in a subsequent work by the same author, this is unlikely to be regarded as duplicate publication. Material quoted verbatim from the author’s previously published work must be placed in quotation marks. In contrast, it is unacceptable for an author to include significant verbatim or near-verbatim portions of his/her own work, or to depict his/her previously published results or methodology as new, without acknowledging the source.

Note that this policy makes no distinction among articles, communications, and perspectives, so it should be assumed to apply to any publication in JACS. Furthermore, it is clear from the format and tone of Breslow’s manuscript that it was intended to be a “proper” report of research rather than an essay. The “perspective” label  can offer no wiggle room here. To me, the paper seems like a textbook case of self-plagiarism.

Solution #2: Retract the Paper

Ronald Breslow is a powerful member of the chemical elite, and he has led a distinguished career associated with a strong body of research. He has achieved the rank of University Professor, won the highest honor of the American Chemical Society, and even served as the President of our Society. But no scientist should be above the rules. The unfortunate duty of Peter Stang, the editor-in-chief of JACS, is clear. He must:

(1) Delay the publication of Breslow’s paper in print. It is unfortunate that the paper has been published, but unless the originality of the paper is verified, it must be held in limbo as an ASAP.

(2) Investigate the manuscript for self-plagiarism—a case that, unfortunately, seems open-and-shut.

(3) Force the retraction of the manuscript and make a public notice of doing so.

(4) Sanction Breslow, privately, by suspending him from publishing in JACS for a period of at least one year.

No person would relish taking these steps, especially against someone who wields the power and influence of a man like Ronald Breslow. But to take no action would make an absolute mockery of the ethics of publication in ACS journals. Stang must summon the courage to protect the integrity of our field’s flagship journal; the situation demands it.