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 Two: “There will be a meeting”

Months had passed since the computer incident of Part One.  Things in Dr. C’s lab had returned more or less to normal, with the day-to-day drudgery typical of research pushing aside any misgivings about what was going on outside of the lab.  There hadn’t been any further incidents to raise suspicion, so it was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” for those working in the lab.

It was late in the year, and if any change had occurred it was that Dr. C was even more absent than usual.  Sometimes more than a week would go by without any contact with the lab, with no explanation given when he did return.  Anyone who has been to graduate school knows in general how a research project tends to progress: the students to the bulk of the experiments and a fair portion of the analysis, while the professor provides additional data analysis and project guidance.  This analysis and guidance is crucial to progressing the research, and the case was no different in Dr. C’s lab.  Without regular input, the students were starting to bog down with problems that they couldn’t solve on their own.  They even took to starting a regular weekly meeting where they could sit down and bounce research ideas and results off of on another, in an attempt to make up for the absence of a senior researcher.

Then came a very lengthy period, several weeks, without any word from Dr. C.  His students, even though at this point they were accustomed to working for long periods without contact, began to be worried that something was truly wrong.  They wondered if he may be ill, or perhaps there were urgent family matters to attend to.  Dr. C’s wife was also a professor at the university, however, and she maintained a more or less typical schedule.  Although they were worried, the students didn’t really know what they could do about the situation.  They tried to continue with their work as best as they could, assuming that Dr. C would return shortly.  They were wrong.

It’s remarkable that life can seem so stable, yet be drastically altered by seemingly rapid and unexpected events.  In this case it was an E-mail, sent to all of the lab members by the chairman of the department.  It said, roughly:

Members of Dr. C’s lab,
There will be a meeting held next Friday at 10:00. Your attendance is mandatory.

No real information was given as to why the meeting would be held.  As with the computer confiscation, this E-mail sparked an intense flurry of speculation amongst the lab members.  Since it was from the chairman, they knew that it involved Dr. C in some way.  Since Dr. C himself wasn’t bringing the news, it was likely bad

In the week or so between the E-mail and the scheduled meeting, not a lot of work was done in the lab.  The students could often be found in small groups discussing in hushed voices the possibilities of what would be revealed at 10:00 on Friday.  Everyone had their own theory of what it might be; none of the theories were optimistic.  During this period, J had a meeting with Dr. C’s wife, who was also his co-advisor on a project.  Besides a perfunctory “how are things going?”, she didn’t offer any indication of what would take place at the upcoming meeting.  J was too frightened to ask directly.  No one had any contact with Dr. C.

It was Friday, time for the meeting.  The students walked together and filed into the conference room.  Three faculty members were there: the chairman of the department, the dean of a school in which Dr. C had a joint appointment, and another faculty member who was a personal friend of Dr. C and co-advisor to several of the students.  The dean opened the meeting.  Reading from a sheet of paper in front of him:

This is hard for me to do. For legal reasons I have to be careful about what I say, so I am going to read a statement from you, and then we will answer any questions that we can. Dr. C will no longer be affiliated with the university after June of this year. Until that time he has been stripped of all duties besides aiding you in finding new advisors to complete your research. I’m sure you all have many questions. Once again, for legal reasons we cannot answer all of them, but we will do what we can. I’m sorry.

The room was absolutely silent for what was likely several seconds but which felt like minutes. It was almost as if by speaking, the students would be admitting that this was truly happening and not some sort of twisted joke or nightmare.  Slowly, they began to ask questions.  The large majority of them at first were answered with “I cannot answer that for legal reasons”.  Eventually the students began to get a feel for what was out of bounds, and the questioning settled into logistical matters; should they interview faculty, could they continue their research projects.  One pertinent question that is still haunting was “Could Dr. C have been at this meeting?”.  The answer was that he was invited, but chose not to attend.

The question & answer session was over relatively quickly, mostly because the important questions couldn’t be answered.  The students filed out of the conference room and stood around in a stunned silence.  Several of them had predicted that Dr. C was going to be fired, but now it was real and it was devastating.  The students still had no real idea of what had happened.  It was clear that it was a firing and not a resignation, but no one really knew why.  All the students knew now was that their graduate careers had just come off the rails.

Next, Part 3: “What do we do now?”

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 12:50 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.