Plausible Accuracy

This is the story of a scientific ethics incident. The names have been obscured, but the events are true. I know because I was part of the lab group it involves.

I’ll be telling this story in 3 parts, which I’ll link here when they are written.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Part Three: “What do we do now?”

The bombshell had dropped.  Dr. C’s students now knew that, within several months, their lab would no longer exist.  They still didn’t know why, and no one who knew was talking.   In addition to trying to make sense of what had caused this sequence of events, the lab members were now also thrown headfirst into a very practical concern: salvaging their careers as best they could.  In the end, the justification for the firing of Dr. C would be an ancillary issue.

For about a week or so, no one did much of anything in Dr. C’s lab.  They sent overtures to Dr. C in the form of letters and emails, which were met with little to no response.  The word was that Dr. C was distraught and angry, and couldn’t face the students.   Quickly they realized that they couldn’t wait for an explanation; it was time to go into damage control mode and recover as best as they could.

Each of the students chose a slightly different path.  D was relatively close to finishing his degree, so he simply focused on writing up his work and defending his thesis. Several of the students were already jointly advised by another faculty member, and they simply continued their work in that professor’s lab.  One of the students was still just getting started, so she transferred to another lab in the department and started over from scratch.  Three students were caught in an unfortunate point in their research projects: too early to simply finish and leave, and too late to start over and still finish in a reasonable amount of time.  The three each chose alternate strategies.  K, the youngest of the three, attempted to start over from scratch in another lab on campus.  After a few months, however, she decided that it wasn’t working out and decided to take a Master’s degree and get a job in industry.  She thoroughly enjoys her job and believes it was a great decision.  E continued research on a related project and attempted to integrate it as best she could with her original thesis work.  After a year or so of very hard work, she defended her Ph.D. dissertation and graduated.  J decided that his original project hadn’t been going great anyhow, so it was worth trying something new.  He began a wholly new research project almost 4 years into graduate school.  He remains in graduate school today, 2 years on.

In time, the investigation into Dr. C’s ethics violations was completed and the results made public.  While working at his industry position, Dr. C had falsified data on a protein he was working on, substituting another protein for the one that he claimed the data was collected on.  After moving to academia, Dr. C cited this “research” as part of grant applications.  In addition, he falsified figures on grant applications.  As part of the investigation, an alumni student of the lab was questioned in detail, and it was proven (rightly) to the satisfaction of the investigators that the lab members had no knowledge of the misconduct.  The investigation was settled, without an admission of guilt by Dr. C.  He offered to abstain from any government funding for 5 years.  Dr. C has never come forward publicly to explain his side of the matter.  The students, meanwhile, were deeply effected.

Contact with Dr. C was largely brief and combative for the lab members after this.  Those who had papers to publish engaged in tense battles over authorship issues and editing of the manuscripts.  The students felt a sense of betrayal, and it showed in any conversation.

There is a certain stigma associated with even being part of a lab in which misconduct was found, regardless of fault or complicity.  Because of this, the students are already at a disadvantage when moving to new employment.  Over time, as the students build up portfolios and careers of their own, this will fade, but at this crucial moment at the beginning of their careers, such a conception can be quite damaging.

So, why should we care?  In the grand scheme of things, it’s great that a dishonest scientist was removed from his position.  It’s unfortunate that the graduate students were adversely effected, but also impossible to avoid.  I would argue that in this case some major errors were made.  From the timing of the computer confiscation, it’s clear that the misconduct investigation had been proceeding for some time.  It would have been only fair to at least alert the students that this was taking place, rather than allowing them to sit in the dark until it was far too late.  The entire process should have been more open, at least to those directly involved.  Following Dr. C’s dismissal, it was clear that the department had no real idea what to do with the students.  They were left on their own, to chart their own recovery, at the very time when they were least likely to be thinking clearly.

It’s clear that ethics violators should be caught and punished.  They disrupt the very practice of science.  It’s also only fair to develop mechanisms to protect the innocent bystanders, so that the poisoning effects of these misconduct cases don’t spread to those who don’t deserve to be effected.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 2:11 pm and is filed under ethics, graduate school. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.