Springer Closes Wall of Shame

Springer Nature publishing closed the “Wall of Shame” website that recorded the retraction of medical research which failed for lack of procedural integrity. The website was pubished under the banner of Cureus, an open-access, peer-reviewed medical journal.

 

 

This is their statement:

Let’s talk about the Wall of Shame. As a peer-reviewed medical journal, we have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that potentially dangerous medical misinformation is not published. With traditional research integrity methods sometimes falling short, we decided to conduct an experiment by highlighting authors who have committed egregious ethical violations as well as the institutions that enabled them. While we will never abandon this responsibility, we have decided to remove the Wall of Shame tomorrow, May 12th, 2023.

 

Why, you may be asking? Especially when the Cureus community of authors, readers and reviewers were overwhelmingly supportive? We recognize that this is an ongoing problem, but we have determined that there are better ways of addressing academic fraud and dishonesty than by publicly sharing lists of authors. We wish to recenter the focus on correcting the academic record, as that is the ultimate goal of any correction or retraction. We will continue to vigorously investigate allegations of academic fraud and dishonesty, and we will do so objectively, without levying judgment on authors deemed to have acted unethically.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Dishonest Scientists: Who is the Guardian? 

20 Percent of Scientists are Crooks 

Science Fair Science Fraud 

Misconduct in Science and Research 

Eyewitness Testimony: Popper, Wittgenstein, and the Innocence Project 

 

Amateur Astrophotography is Baloney

“Are visual observers a dying breed?” is a topic on The Sky Searchers discussion board. It does not refer to the book The Last Stargazers by Emely Levesque but to the trend among amateurs to invest in cameras and software for capturing and processing images. The work also requires a special telescope—now very common—generally a larger objective eight to 14 inches (200 to 350 mm) with an equatorial mount with a tracking motor to keep the instrument aligned to the target for hours. Some astrophotography (AP) enthusiasts use traditional 35 mm digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras though charge coupled devices (CCD) and single-chip cameras are also common. Then, there is the post-processing. After the computerized (or computer controlled) camera snaps hundreds of long exposures (one to three minutes each), the images are “stacked” in software. Then the images also are manipulated with color filters to create a pleasing depiction of the object. To me, that is art, not science.

They decide in advance what they want for the product and they manipulate the data to achieve the effects they desire.

The Journal of Irreproducible Results was a humor magazine for scientists. Launched as a mimeographed samizdat in 1955, it remained popular for over 45 years. “A Drastic Cost Saving Approach to Using Your Neighbor’s Electron Microscope” by Aalbert Heine offered a photomicrograph that was captioned “Fig. 1: A eutectic mixture of quartz and plagioclase … Fig. 2: A cross section through the skin of a peripatus … Fig. 3: The surface of a root hair of a quadruploid species of crabgrass. … Fig. 4: Fragment of a hickory ax handle. …” 

And, so too, could these pretty pictures be almost any kind of target. Without spectroscopic data—or even right ascension, declination, and local time—the reader, reviewer, or following researcher has no way to gauge the validity of the data. And, more to the point, no objective way to reproduce it. These are irreproducible results. 

Interpretations of the Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49)

I do believe that photography is a powerful tool for the science of astronomy. On the same amateur discussion boards, some observers will post a snapshot along with their narrative. The photograph is a valid record. Early in its development spectroscopy came to depend on photography to provide the primary record. Photographic records of spectra have been replaced by digitized data, but analog images of the spectral lines remain important and valuable. 

The stars are pretty at any magnification.

On that basis, I just signed up for a class in astrophotography. As an observer without AP equipment, I paid the same price as the other client learners who will be bringing their gear to the night of classroom training (virtual), the night of observing at the Austin Astronomical Society dark sky site, and the follow-up class in post-processing. The cost was $250. By comparison, I also paid $130 for a class in astrophysics in order to learn the vocabulary and concepts of astronomy for my volunteer work as an editor with the American Astronomical Society.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Emily Levesque and The Last Stargazers 

Is Physics a Science? 

Backyard Astronomy 

Turn Left at Orion 

Redshift: Six Years with Amateur Astronomy 

The Perfect Machine 

 

Most Popular Pageviews

I write this blog for myself. As a contract technical writer, I get paid to write what other people want. I enjoy it. That work is near the top of my Maslow Hierarchy as self-fulfillment. But it is still primarily for other people, work for hire. This is my own diary. 

I do publicize some of the essays here. Even so, I only have seven followers. So, to have 178,133 pageviews in five years is interesting, if not laudable. Just under 100 times a day, someone else reads something here. But who reads what?

Sometimes, readers from Russia, China, or India have taken first place. Occasionally, other areas pop up in the standings. Usually, of course, most of the hits come from Americans. If I were not an American, that might not be true, but, of course, America dominates the Internet.

To me, the curious fact is that the most popular essay is "What (if Anything) Did Dorothy Learn?" which examines the penultimate scene of the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. Not in this blog, but available elsewhere, is an article that I wrote about the political, economic, and numismatic references in L. Frank Baum's classic fantasy. It appeared first in the Centinel of the Central States Numismatic Society, Vol. 58, no. 2, Summer 2010, p.58-61 as "The Wizard of Oz: Child's Tale or Numismatic Allegory?"  That issue is archived on the Newman Numismatic Portal here.

Generally, the articles here are about science and technology, numismatics, politics, and science fiction. But those easy rubrics mask what I consider to be more interesting threads.

Nerds, geniuses, and gifteds make it possible for the rest of us to survive. When the great glaciers were melting, we might have had one genius every three or four generations. Now, with 6 billion people on Earth, we have more of them all the time. And I am glad that we do.

Recently, I started writing about the military. On November 22, 2014, I volunteered to join the Texas State Guard. I came to that opportunity by way of contract technical writing. I was on assignment with the Texas Division of Emergency Management within the Texas Department of Public Safety. There, I found out about the work of the TXSG, which evacuates people from danger, manages shelters, carries out ground search, and other duties. My next assignment was for the office of the Executive Director of the Texas Military Department. So, it was easy to volunteer.  And I am learning a lot about leadership which is better than management for everyone in the business world. 

Numismatics is the art and science that studies the forms and uses of money. Numismatics opens the door to history, language, fine art, culture, commerce, and, of course, economics. It is a large lacuna that the great economists were not themselves "coin collectors." (A modern exception is George Selgin, author of Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage.)  Money has many forms and functions, and numismatics is about much more than coins. 

I love cities. I admit that a week in New York is about two days too many, but having lived in two small towns and two villages (in America), a city of one or two million is just about right for me. Austin is perfect. My choices aside, megacities are the jewels of planet Earth.

When I was in graduate school (2009-2010), I had a criminology class in Miscarriages of Justice that focused on misconduct in police laboratories and junk science in the courtroom. From there, I expanded my reading into laboratory misconduct and academic fraud. The two areas are inter-connected. They each can be extended to include electoral voting fraud.

But I write about whatever interests me from astronomy to firefighters. Apparently, other people find some of it interesting, also, and I am glad that they do.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Most Popular Necessary Facts
100,000 Page Views
World Peace Through Massive Retaliation
Armies Without Weapons
Debt: The Seed of Civilization
B-Sides Austin 2016

Dishonest Scientists: Who is the Guardian?

The "Routine Activities" theory of crime developed by Marcus Felsen and Lawrence Cohen posited a crime triangle: a willing perpetrator, an available victim, and the lack of a capable guardian. That guardian could just be a neighbor, sitting on their porch, watching the street. In scientific research, it seems to be not clear to some that we all share the roles of capable guardians.

Elsevier's executive publisher, Dr. Jaap van Harten, offered a fallacious analogy when he likened the dishonest researcher to a thief in a shoe store and the reviewer to the shop owner. Dr. van Harten wrote:  

 “No. It is NOT the role of the reviewer to spot ethics issues in papers. It is the responsibility of the author to abide by the publishing ethics rules. Let’s look at it in a different way: If a person steals a pair of shoes from a shop, is this the fault of the shop for not protecting their goods or the shoplifter for stealing them? Of course the fault lies with the shoplifter who carried out the crime in the first place.”

The comment is in a sidebar to this article: “Why unethical research behavior could result in a revoked doctorate: An expert who investigates misconduct cases shares his thoughts and experiences” by Tony Mayer (Posted on 5 April 2016), here. I read it first on the Retraction Watch blog (here). I sent this comment, which was not approved by the moderator:

“The analogy is not parallel. The reviewer is not the shop owner, and neither is the publisher. The publisher is the purchasing department of a retailer. The reviewer is an auditor. If an auditor discovers that the purchasing department is acquiring goods that lack clear title, that fact must be reported. It must be reported, first, internally, but, also, quite likely, to law enforcement authorities with competent jurisdiction. Those people are analogous to the ethics committee or integrity office of the institution for which the authors work.
 Rather than a dodge, we deserve a higher standard of ethics from one of the world's leading publishers of scientific research. Instead of limiting the roles of publishers (and their reviewers), it would be more productive for a renowned expert like Dr. van Harten to suggest the standards and means for strengthening and extending them.”

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Four Books About Bad Science

Misconduct in Science and Research

Criminality in Scientific Research: Why Scientists Go Wrong

Science Fairs and Science Frauds

Teaching Ethics to Engineers

Convicted by a Hair: Laboratory Misconduct in the Courtroom

Science Magazine recently posted a self-quiz on forensics (see here). The results are important because so many of us know so little about what actually is, and is not, science. (I scored just over the median.) Most informative - and disturbing to me - were these two:

• Twenty-six of 28 FBI hair analysts who were investigated provided testimony or submitted laboratory reports with “grossly exaggerated” data that often helped prosecutors.
• Very small amounts of DNA can lead to false positives…. Analysts have picked up DNA transferred from one person to another by way of an object that both of them have touched, or from one piece of evidence to another when two items jostled against each other in an evidence bag.

On the upside, from that quiz, bite marks have been disallowed as evidence here in Texas. Unfortunately, tire tracks, shoe prints, lip prints, and repressed dreams were not part of that decision.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
The Fallibility of Fingerprinting
Star of Wonder: Arguments over the Christmas Star
Austin Energy 2016 Regional Science Festival
Impossible Usually is Not

Science Fair Science Fraud

With over 2500 entrants, the occurrence of misconduct is a statistical likelihood.  I served as a judge for Behavioral and Social Sciences and I am pretty sure that I reviewed one of the problems.  The questions only came to me later. 

(Almost) every science fair entrant deserves special recognition.  Woody Allen famously quipped that 85% of success is showing up. The great majority of these kids made that mark.  The scoring and ranking was generally close.  Identifying the first place works was effortless as were the ones that ranked lower than fifth.  But overall, not much (if anything objective) separated third from fourth from fifth place.  We worked by consensus and discussion to discover and validate the rankings.  As a regional science fair the exhibits already passed previous judgings.  

Biotech and Life sciences broadly dominated the science fair. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, and computer science were present, of course, but animal science, plant science, environmental management, bioengineering, biochemistry, behavioral and social sciences, cellular and molecular biology, medicine and health eclipsed the physical sciences.

Among the many entrants, these were some of 1st through 5th place winners in the junior and senior divisions: 

• The Effect of Temperature on the Activity of Catalase
• The Effects Of Various Light Conditions On Bioluminescent Marine Dinoflagellates
• How To Most Effectively Grow Algae For Biofuel
• Biodegradable Packaging: A Cleaner Future
• Zombie Plankton Apocalypse
• Children's Blood Pressure
• The effect of Capsaicin levels on E.coli bacterial growth
• The Anti-Microbial Properties of Sauerkraut Ingredients on E. coli
• Are horses auditory or visual learners?
• Animal Lipid Vs. Vegetable Lipid Based Mascara
• The Effect of Ginkgo biloba on Protein and Genetic Expression of C. Elegans
• Desalination Using a Microbial Fuel Cell
• Disease and Drought Resistance of Tomato Plants When Treated with Bacillus subtilis

Over all, I was greatly impressed. 

The Austin Energy Regional Science Festival is an affiliate of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.  Therefore, we comply with all of those rules and guidelines. 

Scientific fraud and misconduct are not condoned at any level of research or competition. Such practices include plagiarism, forgery, use or presentation of other researcher’s work as one’s own, and fabrication of data. Fraudulent projects will fail to qualify for competition in affiliated fairs and the Intel ISEF.

My problem was in the Junior Division.  Judging was on Thursday.  This morning (Saturday), I was pretty sure that the entrant did not employ the equipment, and did not actually run the experiment.  They made the whole thing up.  I asked about their Informed Consent forms and they said that they called someone who said that the forms were not necessary.  That should have tripped an alarm, but in the crush of judging, I only kept my questions to myself.  This morning, I added that to the evidence.  In my professional opinion as a card-carrying criminologist, this was an example of scientific misconduct and research fraud. 

Unfortunately, this problem is nowhere in the many forms we receive.  In the verbal briefings, it was said that in the past some students did not understand that they had plagiarized someone else’s work. Nothing like planfully competent research fraud was addressed this year or last.  Last year, I found a different problem, an example of the mass mediated hyper reality of crime. 

What I do about this, whom I tell, and what I recommend are as yet undetermined.

Previously on Necessary Facts
Science Fairs and Science Frauds (2012)

Teaching Ethics to Student Engineers
Misconduct in Science and Research
Another Case of Fraud in University Research
20% of Scientists Are Crooks
Four Books about Bad Science

Also on Necessary Facts

• Criminality in Scientific Research: Why Scientists Go Wrong; And Why the Wrong People Become Scientists
• CSI: Flint 2011 - "Who Guards the Guardians?" (Super Science Friday presentation to Middle School science students on fraud and misconduct in research and junk science in the courtroom.)

Four Books About Bad Science

When Science Goes Wrong: Twelve Tales from the Dark Side of Discovery by Simon LeVay (Plume Penguin, 2008).  LeVay lays out his facts in careful narratives.  In many cases, he interviewed the key actors, albeit some years after the events.  He marshals the pros and cons before stating his final conclusion.  The cases come from a several sciences, including volcanology, criminology, meteorology, microbiology, genetics, and nuclear physics. 

In 1993, geologists attended a conference in Columbia where the Galeras volcano had become active. They visited the calderon, climbing down into the crater. When it erupted, most of them were killed.  Among the survivors was the only scientist actually wearing the protective gear mandated by the National Science Foundation.  Some of the victims were in jeans and sneakers. 

The case from criminal forensics about Josiah Sutton of Houston, Texas, took DNA evidence past the confines of even the Innocence Project.  In this case, the so-called gold standard of physical criminalistics proved to be fool’s gold.  The police lab had committed a series of mistakes, some perhaps accidental and careless, others apparently purposefully fraudulent.  The victim wrongly identified two men as her attackers.  When the DNA samples matched neither man, the prosecutor insisted on their guilt, and posited the existence of a third unidentified attacker.  This is a common ploy with prosecutors who refuse to admit their mistake. 

Embargoed Science by Vincent Kierman (University of Illinois Press, 2006).  Major academic journals such as Nature, Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, and a hundred or so others, have a policy of announcing important publications by sending press releases to major mainstream media on the condition that the reporters not publish until the journal does.  The result is loud bursts of astounding science stories breaking on our awareness ... which then fade … until the next time.  The true costs include the loss of reflection and review, as contradictory findings roll out over the years without in-depth comparison and contrast.  Another cost is the loss of independence both of the news media which will not pursue a story beyond the press release; and also among the scientists who are constrained to divulge only what they publish in peer-reviewed journals. 

Yes, We Have No Neutrons: An Eye-Opening Tour Through the Twists and Turns of Bad Science by A. K. Dewdney (John Wiley & Sons, 1997).  Dewdney took over from Martin Gardner in Scientific American, and this book is a modernization of Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.  The stories here about N-rays, intelligence quotients, Freudian psychotherapy, cold fusion, Biosphere 2, and SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) are exemplar warnings to avoid the known dangers of confirmation bias, arrogance, and ambition. 

Dewdney offers the model of the sorcerer and the apprentice for his narrative analogy.  It is the familiar story from Goethe as delivered by Disney.  We all make mistakes, even sorcerers.  It is when the apprentice presumes beyond his true abilities that disasters unfold.  In these stories, disasters come from scientists who should be sorcerers acting like mere apprentices, forgetful of the full canon of the scientific method, from the creation of testable hypotheses to publication and peer review. 

“Yes, We Have No Neutrons does not address fraudulent science, but mistaken science. The appropriate persona, therefore is not the con artist, but the bumbler: the apprentice if you will.” (Page 2) “What is bad science? To begin with, whatever it means, bad science must be distinguished from fraudulent science.  Apprentices, by definition, honestly believe that they are sorcerers. Fraudulent scientists (and would-be scientists) know that they are cheating when they fudge experiments, steal ideas, or make false claims. They are more like evil magicians than apprentices. …  Bad science happens when someone strays in a fatal way from the scientific method.” (Page 17).

Dewdney takes the reader through three doors to explore the castle of science.  First, he differentiates technology from science.  “Technology consists of objects that have specific purpose. Science consists of methods and results.”  This is important because in the mass media the equipment of science – antennae, computers, reactors, satellites, etc. – stand for science.  Dewdney points out, however, that these are not essentially different from other examples of our material culture such as bicycles, dental floss, lawn mowers, refrigerators, and telephones. 

Indeed, I add here that in the book Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life by Marcus Wohlsen (reviewed on Necessary Facts here), the author points out for 100 years, scientists from Pasteur to Salk worked without apparatus that we have in our kitchens. The same applies to our garage and basement workshops.  The point is that the mass media presentations of the gizmos and gadgets confuse technology with science, which Dewdney carefully delineates.  Science is a method.

However, Dewdney falls into the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. His second door delineates deductive from inductive science.  He does not unify the two, though, indeed, they must both identify the same reality.  Behind the third door is the getting and testing of ideas.  Scientists observe, ask questions, formulate hypothesis and perform experiments.  The goal of the experiment is to challenge and pass the theory.  This is where most of the fallen sorcerers reveal themselves to be mere apprentices.  Sigmund Freud built his wonderful theories from six case studies and no statistical samples or blind tests. 

Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us by Dan Agin, Ph.D., (Thomas Dunne St. Martin’s Press, 2006) repeats many of the known stories of Piltdown Man, eugenics, phrenology, and Lysenko.  As a working biologist, he also offers cases that are less well known to the general public, such as Emil Abderhalden’s “defense enzymes.”  Agin also writes about the recent cases (1997-2004) of Marion Brach, Friedhelm Herrmann, and Roland Mertelsmann who conspired to publish at least 37 and perhaps 100 papers for which the experiments and data were entirely fabricated.

“There are two prevalent myths concerning scientific fraud.

The first myth states that most scientific experiments are replicated by other laboratories, that science is self-correcting because the discovery of fraud involving the fabrication of data is inevitable.

 The second myth is that scientific papers involving fabrication of data are extremely rare, with only a few fraudulent papers published in any one year." (Page 39)

In fact, given the huge body of published papers, even a small percentage of fraudulent cases – perhaps only 0.04% according to the arithmetic of published cases from the Office of Research Integrity of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – means that from the 5,600 significant scientific journals come 400 fraudulent papers each year.  However, by the metrics of criminologist Liqun Cao, (see previous posts on this blog) the number might be closer to 200,000 given that the intentional harms might be small: rounding up or rounding down, dropping inconvenient data, etc.  The median guess might be the most accurate. “In one survey published by American Scientist in 1993, between 6 and 9 percent of scientist respondents said that they were personally aware of results that had been plagiarized or fabricated within their facilities.” (Page 40)

The downside is that Dr. Agin has his own political views which color his diagnosis and remedies.  Corporations can be evil in selling us what we demand – such as junk foods and the fad diets to counter their effects, to say nothing of cigarettes – but the government is only unresponsive when politicians give in to the “wrong” pressure groups, such as Christians who were opposed to embryonic stem cell research.  Agin accepts all of the claims of anthropogenic global warming. He agrees with its fundamental reality. He falls in with the inevitable consequence that governments must do something immediately, no matter how severe. 

Dan Agin’s politics aside, the book is nonetheless an outstanding expose of many instances of bad science, much of it going on right now.

Criminality and Scientific Research:Why Scientists Go Wrong; and Why the Wrong People Become Scientists

“Crime knows no neighborhood” is an axiom of criminology. In other words, every population contains members who stray from folkways, violate norms, harm others, break laws, ignore contracts, and betray trusts.  Occupation, avocation, ethnicity, nationality, language group, religion, philosophy, ideology, age, sex, gender, height, weight, body mass, and shoe size are all irrelevant. 

So, of course, some scientists are criminals.  They falsify data; and they embezzle research funds. They also harass coworkers and subordinates, discriminate on the basis of race, age, religion, and gender. And they cheat on their spouses, beat their dogs, and kick their cats.  But not every scientist who falsifies data abuses their aged parents. In fact, very few do.  The arithmetic of intersecting sets limits the count.  If 20% of scientists publish phony findings and if 20% of researchers carry non-existent students on their payrolls, then only 4% of research scientists do both.

At the same time, criminality is a way of life.  The criminal researcher does not round up the value of a single point on one graph to make the curve smoother.  And the vagary is not the first lapse after 35 years of devotion to truth.  If a complete and nearly omniscient investigation could be conducted, it would most likely show falsified lab reports in ninth grade biology. 

Of course, “most likely” is not “certainly.” When the case of Jan Hendrick Schön was finally resolved, the University of Konstanz revoked his doctorate, even though his dissertation was above reproach. 

Revocation of degree is perhaps the most serious punishment any scientist can face. 

See “Another Case of Fraud in University Research” here.  Even though Dr. Eric Poehlman was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. he kept his degrees.

It seems that in the instance of Jan Hendrick Schön the pressure for results was his motive for crime.  The pressure for results has been cited as a cause of research fraud.  However, it is also true that truck drivers also labor under a call for results and that does not justify crime for them.  Basically, everyone whether in a market economy or a centralized state is called upon to produce.  At the end of a sabbatical, a professor is expected to show more than a sun tan.

Given all of the above, the research enterprise that does not engage independent investigation jeopardizes its funding and its social status.  Which loss would be the worse is hard to say.

Whether all crimes are evenly distributed across all neighborhoods is another question.  It remains an easy assumption that life sciences are more susceptible to deviance than physical sciences.  Tons of public money are thrown at both; but as living entities are more complicated than subatomic particles, experimental results may be harder to quantify rigorously.  Confirmation bias may be a greater danger when we want to believe that we are helping other people live longer and better.  Another explanation is that the US Department of Health and Human Services actually has  an active Office of Research Integrity, while the U.S. Department of Energy has none. 

On 6 April [2011], a federal district judge in Boston, Massachusetts, dismissed a lawsuit that I had filed in 2009 under the US Freedom of Information Act. He concluded that the US government does not have to release a report on an investigation into a case of alleged scientific misconduct at a national laboratory. The ruling was disappointing but liberating: I finally had occasion to write about a case that has shown how the US Department of Energy (DOE) takes a strikingly hands-off approach to the oversight of such investigations.
"Misconduct oversight at the DOE: Investigation closed" by Eugenie Samuel Reich
Nature 475, 20-22 (2011) Published online 6 July 2011 here

University oversight committees focus on human factors. We seek to protect individuals from unintended harm during experiments and surveys in psychology and sociology. But you cannot hurt a chemical or a star.  Short of serendipity, we only find what we seek. 

Previously on Necessary Facts

Twenty Percent of Scientists are Crooks

Misconduct in Research and Science

Another Case of Fraud in University Reseach

Who Guards the Guardians?

20% of Scientists are Crooks

At university in both "Introduction to Criminology" and the "Senior Seminar in Criminolgy", our professor, Liqun Cao,  liked to cite an easy claim of “twenty percent.”  For instance: 20% of goods on the market have no clear title.  The exact numbers did not matter and neither did the specific study or survey.  The teaching point was that criminality is not unusual.  Heinous crimes are rare.  Daily harms are all too frequent – and we all engage in one or another of them whether speeding or padding expense accounts.  So, too, in science is it important to realize that fraud and misconduct in research are not rare.

  

False Prophets: Fraud and Error in Science and Medicine by Alexander Kohn (Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 1986), is a classic work that remains important. It sets a baseline for understanding fraud and misconduct in research.  Kohn repeats famous cases such as Margaret Mead, Robert Millikan, and Trofim D. Lysenko.  He also tells of N-rays, the Allison Effect, the Davis and Barnes Effect,, and polywater. From there, Kohn focuses on his special interest, clinical research.  The book closes with chapters on broad and deep issues in ethics and science. Kohn offers no solutions.  He does say that whistleblowers should not be fired. He also quotes a university ethicist who cautions scientists not to engage in any research activity that they would not commit as laity.  That is largely unsatisfactory, especially as this philosopher (Prof. Michael Riese, then of the University of Guelph) calls ethics “a shared illusion of the human race.” I believe that a more objective standard is required.

Marshall Thomsen of Eastern Michigan University has been teaching “Ethical Issues in Physics” for over twenty years.  A search of “ethics physics” and similar items will return citations to Dr. Thomsen’s work at websites from the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois, the University of Massachusetts, and Physics Today, among many more. When I had the class, he was on sabbatical and our professor was Patrick Koehn.  The class also has been taught by Prof. Mary Elizabeth Kubitskey. Dr. Kubitskey’s master’s thesis was Teaching Ethics in a High School Physics Class.

The Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services investigates and acts on cases of fraud in research when federal grant money is involved.  You can find Case Summaries, ethics tutorials, an interactive video “The Lab”, and much more here.

What remedies are available when private money rather than public funds are at stake?  I believe that revocation of the university degree can be appropriate.  See my paper here.

Previously on Necessary Facts:
Misconduct in Science and Research
The Case of Diederik Stapel 
Science Fair Science Fraud
Criminality and Scientific Research
Teaching Ethics to Student Engineers

Science Fairs and Science Frauds

Last month, I volunteered to judge the exhibits in “Behavioral and Social Sciences” at the Austin Energy Regional Science Festival.  After the judging, I spent an hour walking the hall, looking at other exhibits and talking with the entrants.  Overall, I was impressed.  Woody Allen quipped that 85% of success is showing up and every exhibit was worthy of some positive acknowledgement.  Largely, these were winners at school science fairs; and competition gets tougher the further up the pyramid you go.  Of course, the bell curve applies: most exhibits were honest C+ efforts, midrange examples of high schools science.  What else could they be?  Some were outstanding; a few were tagged for us by the sponsor panel as being ineligible for award. 

Ineligibility is defined as failure to make the minimum benchmarks.  The rules and guidelines are provided on the local website – and they are the universal Intel International Science Fair rules and guidelines.  The materials for the judges are available to the exhibitors as well.  Among the many materials simple searching will uncover is a blog from Scientific American on what not to say at a science fair.  (“How to Answer the Five Most Common Questions from a Science Fair Judge,” by Dr. Maille Lyons, here.)

There was one exception.   And it bears on the “mass mediated hyper-reality of crime”  when television shows such as the CSI franchise inform us of what we tell them we believe.  “Criminal Eyewitness Identification” was a reasonable effort for a high school science fair project.  Having left the required log book and final paper (with reprint file) in the car after the first TV interview should have disqualified the entry for an award, but did not.  There was no “green warning tag” from the oversight committee.  The exhibitor was personable, even charming, conversant, and not at all nerdy, and garnered another television interview literally on the heels of the judges.  We judges noted the lack of data and methodology.  The poster display identified two different hypotheses being tested at the same time.  We even heard one of the Five Wrong Answers: “My cousin did it last year.”  The exhibitor seemed to believe that any criminal conviction is a correct conviction; and that convictions fail because witnesses cannot agree on identification of the perpetrator.  Like most of the others in the hall, this was a nice effort by an early high school student; and it could open the door to refinement, improvement, and well-earned recognition.  The judges could not give a place award; but the television cameras – shepherded in by the sponsor committee – were all the recognition required.  This was mass media, not science. 

We know that science collides with mass media in the courtroom.  It is an old story.  Tainting Evidence: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab by John E. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne (Free Press, 1999; 2002) is at once a shocking exposé and a tiresome rant.  Any large, old organization will have bad experiences.  The FBI is not alone in wanting to be perceived as the paragon of best practices.  We all think well of ourselves.  Moreover, the authors rely heavily on public documents which are evidence of internal controls and corrections.  The authors claim that too little is done too late; and that real champions of justice is Frederick Whitehurst, whose insistences led to retaliations by a bureaucracy that could not admit its errors.  And the evidence is damning.  In case after case, the FBI crime lab worked backwards, starting with the prosecution’s claims and finding evidence to support them.  Compounding the falsehoods, FBI agents – the lab was run mostly by field agents, not professional scientists – committed perjury, when testifying under oath. 

Tainting Evidence examines the Oklahoma City Bombing, the O. J. Simpson case, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Unabomber and Ruby Ridge, among other cases.  Of special interest to me was the case of former Green Beret doctor Jeffrey Robert MacDonald whose guilt was proclaimed by Robert Bidinotto, an investigative writer in his book, Criminal Justice? The Legal System versus Individual Responsibility.  I know Bob Bidinotto from Objectivist blogs where we disagreed on basic issues of criminology.  He believes that MacDonald talked himself into murdering his wife and daughters and only denied it to escape responsibility for his actions.  The evidence – or lack of it – suggests otherwise: and an innocent man has spent 15 years in prison while the perpetrators are among us.

That said, Kelly and Wearne imply, also that the people we think are guilty – Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski, O. J. Simpson, Nidal Ayyad, and others – may only have been railroaded or left holding the bag.  It is a bit of a stretch.  But it does not excuse the documented errors, oversights, omissions, fabrications, and denials.  If the FBI lab failed in these high-visibility cases where all available resources were marshaled, what then of the day-to-day work?  When the laboratory begins with the conclusions needed by the prosecution, science has been excluded from the process.

Online Universities is a resource for students interested in going to college via the Internet. "OnlineUniversities.com's goal is to assist students in finding the best online university that fits your needs and demands as a student."  They have a blog for February 27, 2012, “The 10 Greatest Cases of Fraud in University Research” (link here). 

A hundred years ago, criminologists sought to use biology to identify criminals, not in the pursuit of evidence, but in the prevention of crime by culling the population of genetic defectives.  The eugenics movement attracted Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and millions of others, many of them highly placed public officials.  Based on the work of Cesare Lombroso (among others), the theory was that physical measurements of body parts could reveal ratios and proportions indicative of criminality.  Today, we seek it in genes, but it remains pseudo-science, what Richard Feynman called “Cargo Cult Science” i.e., the outward forms without the inner substance.

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