Archive for the 'Scientific Misconduct' Category

More than a few of the posts I’ve made in the recent past are kind of depressing. Things like scientific misconduct, atrocious teaching, over-hyping mundane results, and slimy departmental politics are an unfortunate part of the chemical landscape and merit commentary. On the other hand, I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that I think the world of chemistry is bankrupt of joy. To the contrary, there are lots of things that keep me excited about our field. Here are just a few of them:

1. Chemistry works. There is an incredible amount of reliable, fundamental work in our field. The thrill of a reaction that you’ve only seen on paper actually working in the lab never gets old.

2. Chemistry has substantially improved life. Chemicals are everywhere doing all sorts of useful stuff. From materials to detergents to lubricants to drugs, chemical technology has solved an astounding number of problems for humanity.

3. Chemistry is not too complicated. There is so much craziness in biology—so many variables, so many things to go wrong—that a lot of the time you end up having to play a numbers game to understand if what you’re doing has any significance. Chemical experiments, on the other hand, are much easier to characterize and follow. There is something satisfying about being able to keep tabs on what’s going on.

4. Chemistry has got to be the basis for figuring out a number of important unsolved problems. The greatest historical question of all time is how life originated on Earth four billion years ago. That is all but certainly a chemical problem. The greatest technological problem of our time is finding an environmentally-friendly solution to our energy needs. This is all but certainly a chemical problem. Don’t let anyone tell you that all the interesting chemistry has been done already.

5. The vast majority of chemists behave ethically. Fortunately, the fraction of posts on this blog about scientific misconduct dwarfs the fraction of crooked chemists in our field.

6. There are good teachers among us. I’ve lamented how many professors and grad students don’t take their teaching responsibilities seriously, but on the flip side, there are a number of fantastic teachers in our field. This goes beyond basic instruction in the classroom to include those who take time on the research side to develop their students into good scientists.

7. The chemical world is largely a meritocracy. Yes, there are people at the top who pull strings with editors to get their “bad” science into good journals, but if you do “good” science, it will get published and catch on. At the end of the day, there is no substitute for good ideas, reproducible results, and talent.

8 through 10 (and beyond). The Simple Pleasures. See here.

I’m sure I’m missing some good reasons chemistry rocks, but that’s not the point. The point is that despite the occasional sour taste of some of the posts here, the above list trumps everything. I’ll keep a link to this post on my desktop for the next time I lose the will to live.

• The ACS announced this week that Gabor Somorjai is the 2008 Priestley Medalist. The award is well deserved, but I was kind of surprised to see two surface scientists get it back-to-back. Since this year’s Nobel Committee for Chemistry seems stacked towards the physical side of the field, will 2007 be the year the surface crowd hits paydirt?
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• The Class of 2007 graduated from Harvard this week and left its report card for each “concentration” (that’s Hahvahd speak for “major”). The CCB department had a poor showing: Chemistry placed in the bottom half of the table with 3.69/5.00 (20th of 31) and Biochemical Sciences fared even worse (3.27, 27th). Earth and Planetary Sciences (5.00) earned a spot in the Champions’ League by topping the table, while Biology (3.06) finished dead last and faces relegation.
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• Dr. Free-Ride (who was extensively quoted in a recent issue of C&EN) at Adventures in Ethics and Science has an interesting pair of posts about the consequences of graduate students’ blowing the whistle on fraudulent research. Post #1 is based on a news story in Science about probable scientific misconduct by a geneticist at Wisconsin. Post #2 is Dr. Free-Ride’s analysis of the current system. Both posts are good reads—read post #2 even if you don’t give a lick about scientific misconduct.

Money makes the world go ’round, and the research world is no different.  Chemical and pharmaceutical companies exist to make a profit, so they will explore lines of investigation not because they are interesting, but because they are rewarding.  This purpose does not make these companies inherently evil—they simply value profit above everything else.  We have to accept this fact and make sure that we pass laws to protect the public from harmful and unethical business practices.  Part of the reason these laws are effective is that they provide a financial disincentive for undesired behavior.

In the academic world, our thirst for knowledge should be greater than that for cash, but we have all seen examples of departments choosing to tenure professors who rake in money over those who are excellent educators. Of course, who can blame them?  Schools need money to exist and funding is easy to measure, whereas scholarship, mentorship, and teaching ability are not.

Despite the fact that they are difficult to quantify, these “intangibles” can still be examined in financial terms.  Students pay tuition, so when you accept a teaching position, you owe it to them to do a good job.  What counts as a “good job” will always be a subject of debate, but knowingly slacking off in your teaching duties is despicable behavior.  When a grad-student TA proudly decides that teaching is not something to be taken seriously, he is cheating his students and their families out of their hard-earned money.  Of course, there are many other reasons to take teaching seriously, but I think the monetary aspect is lost on many of the proudest slackers.

In the lab, we must remember that we are the stewards of the taxpayers’ money.  Whether you are paid by a fellowship or off of a grant, you owe the public a good job in return for your stipend.  This includes maintaining a respectable work schedule and upholding the ethical standards of our profession.  Fortunately, most of us enjoy our work and are proud to defend our profession against those who would damage its reputation for personal gain, financial or otherwise.  Researchers who engage in scientific misconduct show a callous lack of respect for science and profound disregard for the sanctity of taxpayer money.  Those who commit fraud—and those who are grossly negligent in their responsibility to police the activities of their employees—should be charged criminally, punished by the government, and dismissed from their institutions.

Beyond the truly loathsome individuals among us who lie about or misrepresent their results, I also get upset with researchers who win grants for one set of ideas, then spend the money on projects that are not just tangential, but completely different.  To me, this smacks of obtaining funding under false pretenses, and I consider it to be dishonest behavior.  If someone offers you money to work in an area, either use it to do what you said you would do or decline the offer.  At the very least, you should contact the funding agency to disclose your intentions and make sure they are acceptable.  A famous professor here has been chided by students and colleagues alike for returning unused portions of his grant money back to the funding agencies upon completion of a project.  While this practice is viewed by many as an incredible waste of an opportunity, there is definitely something gallant about his honesty and sense of responsibility to the public.  For the record, I would have no problems with his using the remaining balance to improve his students’ efficiency by purchasing new equipment—it would probably be better for his lab to use the money instead of it getting distributed to someone else.  Still, I respect his choice.  Government funding should not be viewed as an entitlement to the scientific community. We must earn our keep and prove that it is in society’s best interest to continue to fund our work. We live in a democracy—a government of the people—and correspondingly, we owe it to everyone to spend their money in a responsible manner.

I try to be on my best financial behavior when in lab.  While in many labs at Harvard it seems like we have a limitless supply of grant money, it irks me to see people waste it.  I try not to waste time on the NMR instruments.  I try not to leave the HPLC pumps running longer than necessary.  I shut off UV lamps.  I shut off lights. I always search for the best prices on chemicals and supplies.  (With the ease-of-use of the Available Chemicals Database, there is really no excuse not to.)  Occasionally, I undertake projects like rounding up empty nitrogen cylinders in our lab and returning them (they cost us $3/month, each, to rent).  Does any of this make a difference?  I hope so.  Is it a big one?  Probably not.

Despite my best intentions, there are still times when I cheat.  I use solvents to clean stains from personal belongings.  I use bits of dry ice to blow up microcentrifuge tubes.  When pulling spotters, I warp a few Pasteur pipettes with the Bunsen burner because it is fun.  I rationalize these perks by thinking about how much money I’ve spent on office supplies for research and how many articles of clothing I’ve lost in the name of science, but I realize that these considerations don’t make my indiscretions right.  Still, my violations equate to jaywalking where the crimes described above amount to first-degree murder.

At the end of the day, my guiding principle is simple: If reports of my behavior were to become public, would I be embarrassed?  If someone were to step forward and describe my actions that day, in explicit detail, would I be proud of myself?  Could I defend my conduct without feeling dirty or guilty doing so?  Thinking back over my days in chemistry, I can’t think of any event of which I would truly be ashamed.  Don’t get me wrong: I’ve made mistakes—tons of them—but they were all honest mistakes.

Sadly, I think we all know of individuals in our field who could not make the same claim.

Don’t become one of them. 

The bubble fusion investigation at Purdue University is now complete, and the school has reached the conclusion that no scientific misconduct occurred.  What is unclear is what exactly was being investigated.  The case centers around an exciting experimental result reported in 2002 that neutron emission and nuclear fusion occurred following the collapse of bubbles in deuterated acetone.  Many researchers have been unable to reproduce the results, and many of them think something fishy might have been done to the data.

The Purdue news release said that the inquiry was raised internally, but Ken Suslick, a chemistry professor at UIUC, admits he contacted the administration at Purdue to suggest that the 2002 report was fraudulent.  The conclusion that most people are drawing is that Suslick’s questions were not among the questions investigated by Purdue.  Instead, it appears that the investigation centered on whether the P.I. should have put his name on more (!) papers.  We’ll never know exactly, because Purdue is claiming that it has already said too much:

Purdue’s policy on integrity in research requires that all allegations of research misconduct be reviewed under procedures that ensure strict confidentiality. The policy states:

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“The mere suspicion or allegation of wrongdoing, even if totally unjustified, is potentially damaging to a person’s career. Consequently, no information about charges of a lack of integrity in research may be disclosed except to the appropriate university and federal authorities.”

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However, in the interest of ending speculation regarding Purdue’s inquiry, Dr. Taleyarkhan has agreed to allow the university to confirm the existence of the internal review and disclose its final result, according to Joseph L. Bennett, vice president for university relations at Purdue. “Professor Taleyarkhan cooperated fully throughout the inquiry,” Bennett said.

Scientists are going to have to get together and decide what information should and should not be released at the conclusion of investigations into alleged scientific misconduct.  Steadfast silence, regardless of the circumstances and outcome of an investigation, seems unacceptable.

Some form of the bubble fusion report should be made public so that the community knows what questions were examined and how thoroughly.  What have they got to lose?  If the evidence led the panel to conclude that no scientific misconduct occurred, then they should be confident that the scientific community will reach the same conclusions with the same information.

Along the same lines, if you are going to fund your research with taxpayer dollars, the taxpayers have a right to know what is going on.  If you want all of this business to be private, raise private funds. I would hate to see the government stymie scientific creativity by imposing burdensome oversight of publicly-funded research, but if scientists can’t decide how these investigations should be handled, Congress will step in sooner or later.

While chemists were home for the holidays, Dalibor Sames rang in the New Year by retracting more data from the Journal of the American Chemical Society. For those of you keeping score, that makes a total of eight retractions and partial retractions for Dr. Sames & Co.

This latest move was especially surprising because Bengu Sezen was not an author on the publication. While she was listed in the acknowledgments for “helpful discussions,” that would appear to exclude any experimentation. Dr. Benjamin Lane was the first author on the paper, and his name may sound familiar to you. Lane was interviewed by Science magazine for its initial story on the Sames retractions back in March of 2006. From that article:

Benjamin Lane, a former Sames group member now working as a chemist with the pharmaceutical company Biogen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says some of Sezen’s work has been replicated and has been used by chemists in the pharmaceutical industry. Says Lane, “She has done some good things and made an impact on the field.”

So, the plot thickens. From the newest partial retraction:

For comparison purposes, this article refers to a palladium-catalyzed arylation of free azoles in the presence of magnesium oxide, published previously in a separate communication. Although the magnesium oxide procedure has recently been found irreproducible (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 8364), this fact does not affect the conclusions of this paper. Consequently, the magnesium oxide protocol has been removed from the Supporting Information. Also, Figures S5 and S8 have been replaced with corrected versions.

The previous retraction notice also stated that MgO could not be used as a base to give product, but cited Lane’s 2005 paper as showing that both Grignard reagents (RMgBr) and Mg(HMDS)₂ are appropriate bases. What exactly was retracted remains a mystery. The authors don’t offer specific details in the “addition/correction” notice, and the editors of JACS have overwritten the old supporting information so you can’t track the changes. It appears that the MgO reaction was compared against the new reactions in the paper, apparently in the context of kinetic studies. What is important—and completely ignored—is whether Lane’s paper used data from the old Sezen paper or if he repeated the previously-published experiments to generate new data.  If it turns out to be the latter, that would be odd.  And if I’m missing something obvious here, let me know.

Like its predecessors, the latest retraction also bypassed the JACS RSS feed and the daily ASAP alert e-mails. Why do the editors of JACS choose to post Sames’ retractions in this manner? By putting different information in their feeds, e-mails, and print editions, the editors are making it hard for their readers to process information. It seems to run counter to the whole idea of why the scientific literature exists.

As far as the significance of this latest retraction, here’s how I see it:

1. The development is especially bad for Dalibor Sames. He keeps his name in the news by retracting more data, and it will be hard to pin these results on Sezen because she isn’t listed as an author.

2. The fact that Sezen isn’t listed as an author in this work suggests a number of possible explanations:

i) Sezen performed these latest retracted experiments but was not credited in the paper as having done so.

ii) The “irreproducibility” goes beyond Sezen.

iii) Something happened in 2006 where this C-H activation chemistry ceased to work. For instance, the reagents they used in their lab were contaminated with a catalyst that worked and they finished that bottle. This would be the best possible explanation for everyone, but would still leave Sames on the hook for the aftermath.

iv) Experiments were sabotaged. (The use of the passive voice here is intentional.)

3. The editors of JACS, once again, have made some questionable moves. They have completely overwritten the retracted data instead of just posting the updated supporting information under the addition/correction notice. As far as I know, the generally-accepted, “standard procedure” in scientific publishing is to place a conspicuous note in the PDF file of the old publication and link to the correction notice. Furthermore, JACS has again allowed a Sames retraction to bypass their daily ASAP updates, which does a good job of making the news less visible. This practice of having addition/correction notices (which include retractions) bypass the ASAP system is not standard procedure. For instance, you can find addition/correction notices like this one on ASAP right now. In fact, there were four addition/correction notices on the JACS when when I made the last Sames-Sezen post a couple of weeks ago, and one of those had been sitting there since December 24, 2006. I have no problem with the editors sending retractions straight to the printers, but the notices should simultaneously go through the ASAP RSS feed and e-mail alerts. I mean, is there any reason they shouldn’t?

4. I have obviously lost some credibility as a blogger for missing this latest retraction. It had been out for over a week before I got the initial post up. I’ll blame JACS, but the fact of the matter is that I will have to change the way I read journals. What other important articles have I missed because they didn’t show up on ASAP?

4a. Thank you to the kind person who sent an e-mail alerting me to the retraction. It goes to show you how important blog readers are as sources of interesting info. If you see something of note, please speak up. Leave comments, use the wall, or send an e-mail. And “interesting” doesn’t necessarily mean “bad.” Pass stuff along that is remarkably good, bad, funny, strange, or inspiring. Anything goes.

Finally, in case you missed them, the Sames-Sezen retractions drew two mentions in the news this week. First, the outgoing Deputy Editor-in-Chief of C&EN, Pamela Zurer, raised an indirect reference to the case in her farewell editorial (C&EN, Jan. 22, p.5):

Misconduct in research is another complex issue the scientific community has yet to fully come to grips with. Although chemists like to think such unethical behavior is rare in our discipline, News Editor William Schulz reported on a couple of troubling cases in the past year and is digging into yet another. As I wrote in 1996, “The real question is not how often scientific misconduct occurs, or whether the scientific record is ultimately self-correcting. It is how the community behaves when faced with unpleasant allegations against one of it established members.”

Second, Nature singled out Sezen and Sames, by name, with regard to a story on the current status of some high profile cases of (alleged) scientific misconduct. Sames was clearly given a reprieve by the editors, as the section discussing the Columbia case was simply titled “Bengu Sezen”:

In March 2006, Dalibor Sames, a chemist at Columbia University in New York, withdrew two papers and part of a third from the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS).

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Work done by graduate student Bengü Sezen, he said, couldn’t be reproduced. The work was in the field of carbon–hydrogen bond functionalization, which aims to selectively break bonds within a molecule. The case got a lot of coverage on the ever-lively chemistry blogs, and a few press outlets mentioned the issue, including Nature (440, 390–391; 2006).

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Sames is not commenting further until an inquiry is completed, and Columbia University says that it is against its policy to “comment on the existence or non-existence of any internal investigation into allegations of research misconduct”. But Sezen has vigorously defended herself in e-mails to the editor of JACS and the press.

So, that’s that.  Next time on this “ever-lively chemistry blog”: something less unhappy.

After thorough examination, the Chemmy “Award” for Villain of the Year goes to:

Prof. Dr. Dalibor Sames for the Columbia C-H Activation Fiasco

The sad part of this post is not that Sames won, but that there were other legitimate contenders. The strongest cases could be made for Dalibor Sames, Bengu Sezen, and JJ La Clair. Some people might have also thrown R&D at Pfizer into the mix for ruining our stock portfolios, but that’s not really fair. The fact of the matter is that the system seems to have worked in the case of Torcetrapib—the drug’s danger was discovered in clinical trials and the project died. That’s life.

So, why not La Clair? Any other year he probably would have won, but in the end: 1) the hexacyclinol story was not as disgusting as the Columbia case, and 2) hexacyclinol has locked up the Chemmy in a different category.

The decision between Sames and Sezen was a tough call. If Columbia’s investigation shows that Dr. Ms. Dr. Sezen did naughty things with her data, you can bet that she’ll will run away with the Chemmy next year. For now—as is the custom in academia—the advisor takes home the award.

And I really think that Sames deserves it. Let’s review his credentials:

1. He retracted six papers and a significant part of a seventh. What chemist (besides Sezen) has ever had to do anything like this?

1a. If you think that Sames might be an “innocent victim,” please refer to Columbia’s policy on professional misconduct:

In modern collaborative research, the implications of academic misconduct or fraud go far beyond the individual; they also affect collaborators whose own work has been committed to objective search for truth. The specter of guilt by association may lurk in the background for many years to come. Therefore, joint authorship requires joint responsibility; each author claiming credit for the entire work must also be aware of joint discredit. Investigators in collaborative research projects each must make reasonable and periodic inquiry as to the integrity of and processes involved in gathering and evaluating data. It should be understood that overall responsibility for the integrity of collaborative research rests with the principal investigator. Senior investigators cannot be allowed to escape the consequences of the discovery of misconduct or fraud committed under their supervision.

2. The first round of retractions submitted by Sames had Sezen’s name on them without her approval or any indication that he was acting without her consent. (Note that JACS changed the wording of these retractions after publishing them—without making note of the edits).

3. While it has yet to be confirmed by Columbia, a lot of people have said that one or more students were essentially encouraged to leave (a.k.a. fired from) the Sames Lab for incompetence, at least in part because they could not reproduce the results that were eventually retracted. If someone in your lab raised questions about the reproducibility of an experiment, wouldn’t you feel obligated to check the procedure out for yourself? It’s not like Sames was that far removed from bench work; he easily could have run these reactions. Doing so probably would have prevented a lot of the subsequent mess.

4. When it became clear that something was wrong, Sames waited at least six months before publishing the retractions. Why did he wait if it wasn’t for her approval? Taking so much time was inconsiderate, as other chemists in the area of C-H activation wasted time trying to use Sames’ reactions (for example: Bellina, et al. Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2006, 1379).

5. Sames has publicly blamed Sezen in a variety of ways, such as in his wording of the retractions, in statements to news organizations, and by removing her from his lab’s Web page. While he was willing to fire these shots at her, when the press came calling to question him, he threw up his hands up and claimed that he’s not allowed to comment on the case due to the ongoing investigation. Either talk or shut up. Pick one. To do otherwise is unfair and cowardly.

There’s more, as you know, but you can use Google to refresh your memory. And if anyone thinks that this wasn’t a significant story, feel free to go crying to the editors of C&EN, Science, Nature, and the NY Times, too. The story is legitimate and newsworthy. If you don’t want to hear people talk about it, go somewhere else.

In fact, given the gravity of this particular story, I think we should consider including an actual prize with the Chemmy. Perhaps we can put Ed the Dog in charge of raising funds for an all-expenses-paid trip to Circle 8, Bolgia 8.

Who’s willing to chip in?

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.