Posts Tagged ‘Scientific misconduct’
March 14, 2012
Professor Akihisa Inoue
Professor Akihisa Inoue is the President of Tohoku University, is a leading materials scientist and the author of over 2,500 publications. But criticism from other Japanese scientists (as on this Japanese website) has now led to at least 7 retractions for plagiarism. Three investigations have been conducted so far with rather wishy-washy conclusions. The investigations are in uncharted territory since Japan has no established processes for handling cases of scientific wrong-doing. There is no institution or body for supervising ethics or misconduct in research. And now yet another investigation committee is proposed. Without the guidance of precedent Tohoku University and even the Japanese Science and Technology Agency are not really sure how to proceed – especially when the allegations are against as prominent a person as the President of a University. Almost a classic case of what in industry would be called “paralysis by analysis” where every analysis shirks the task of coming to conclusions, declines to make judgements and merely proposes further analysis.
Nature reports:
Japan fails to settle university dispute
It has been a rough year for materials scientist Akihisa Inoue, the president of Tohoku University in Japan.
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Tags:Akihisa Inoue, Japan, Nature, paper retraction, Paralysis by analysis, Scientific misconduct, Tohoku University
Posted in Academic misconduct, Ethics, Japan, Science, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Tohoku University struggles to handle transgressions by its President Akihisa Inoue
February 25, 2012
The plagiarism by Prof. CNR Rao (Science Advisor to the Indian PM) and Prof. SB Krupanidhi of the Indian Institute of Science which was the subject of an earlier post seems to be growing. It extends at least to 2 more papers as revealed by a commenter, x1, on Rahul Siddharthan’s blog post and as reported in the Calcutta Telegraph.
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UPDATE!! The body-count is growing and has now reached 5 papers. The intrepid sherlock here is again X1. (Comments 50 & 51)
Perhaps it is time for the PM to side-line this Scientific Advisor. At best he is a lazy and not very conscientious supervisor and at worst his ethical standards are sadly lacking. Keeping him on sends the clear message to the entire Indian scientific community that
- ethical standards are not that important,
- copying a few paragraphs without attribution is not such a big deal and can just be glossed over, and
- supervisors bear no responsibility or liability for what their students get up to and can pass the buck downwards
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Neither CNR Rao nor SB Krupanidhi come out of this very well. Their competence to supervise research leaves much to be desired. Krupanidhi, particularly, seems not even to believe that plagiarism is a serious breach of ethics.
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Tags:C. N. R. Rao, Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Krupanidhi, Plagiarism, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Academic misconduct, India, Science, scientific misconduct | 5 Comments »
February 25, 2012
Joerg Zwirner has been following this for some time at his AbnormalScience blog. Retraction Watch also posted about this. But it has now reached the ORI and even the main-stream media.
Yet another case of a Person of Indian Origin (PIO), Dr. Bharat B Aggarwal of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, being suspected of massive scientific misconduct this time at the University of Texas. Apparently 65 papers are being reviewed for the manipulation of images.
Deccan Herald:
A prominent Indian-American researcher at (the) University of Texas is under scanner for alleged falsification and fabrication in various publications regarding cancer fighting properties of plants.
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Tags:Abnormal Science, Bharat B Aggarwal, image manipulation, M D Anderson Cancer Center, ORI, Scientific misconduct, University of Texas at Austin
Posted in Academic misconduct, Medicine, Science, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Prominent Indian-American researcher being investigated at the University of Texas
February 23, 2012
The Global Warming priesthood have long experience in fudging data, cheating and suppressing opposing views. But Peter Gleick, a true acolyte of the religion, has now been reduced not only to lying, cheating and stealing but also to forgery and fakery.
The blogosphere has been full of the Fakegate or the Peter Gleick affair for the last week. First he used impersonation and lying to extract confidential documents from Heartland. He clearly has broken some laws. But he found nothing very damaging regarding climate sceptics so he forged a “summary” document so as to be able to add some spice to the affair. He then disseminated the documents widely and these were immediately publicised by a gullible and hypocritical orthodoxy.
Peter Gleick - Faker
Of course Gleick is a climate alarmist and activist and for him and his friends Heartland remains the “villain” and his ends of “exposing” the alleged bad guys apparently justifies his dishonest and criminal means. His authorship of the forged document was recognised by Steven Mosher and Climate Audit just from his writing style and bad punctuation. Needless to say Gleick is considered by the global warming priesthood as an expert exponent of integrity in science research. In this sordid case some are delusional enough to see him as a hero.
Gleick’s own work is unimportant and lacking any real scientific content. His lack of ethics (apart from his poor writing and general incompetence) is of no great significance. But his behaviour exposes and is in the tradition established by the Hockey Stick crowd (Mann, Jones, Hansen, Trenberth et al) of fudging and cheating and suppression of opposing views.
BREAKING: Gleick Confesses
Peter Gleick Confesses
Gleick’s AGU Resignation
Megan McArdle gives Mosher and the blogosphere props for pointing to Gleick
Peter Gleick Confesses to Obtaining Heartland Documents Under False Pretenses
FakeGate: Just Another Day at Team Green
Fakegate Illustrates Global Warming Alarmists’ Deceit and Desperation
Tags:Climate Audit, climate change, Fakegate, Forgery, global warming, Heartland Institute, Megan McArdle, Peter Gleick, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Corruption, Ethics, Fraud | 1 Comment »
February 22, 2012
The apparent over-representation of scientists of Indian origin in cases of scientific misconduct ought to be exercising the minds of the Indian scientific community – both in India and abroad. But any efforts to stamp out plagiarism in India – and many are trying – are completely undermined when eminent scientists from the most prestigious Indian institutions start trivialising or making excuses for plagiarism.
S. B. Krupanidhi
The Prime Minister’s Science Advisor Professor CNR Rao has admitted and apologised for his plagiarism but has gotten away without the paper written under his supervision being retracted. The apology should have been accompanied by highly-visible measures to stamp out the increasing incidence of “cut-and-paste” artists posing as scientists. Instead the nonchalant attitude of a co-author, SB Krupanidhi (Professor and Chairman, Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science) gives me little confidence that there is much value being given to the integrity of scientific research. He blames the student he was supposed to be supervising but will take no action as the Indian Institute of Science tries to brush everything under the carpet. “People make mistakes. There will be no action taken against the student, ” he said.
TOI reports:
India’s top scientist and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s adviser CNR Rao had to apologise to a leading scientific journal for reproducing text of other scientists in his research paper.
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Tags:academic misconduct, India, Indian Institute of Science, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Krupanidhi, Plagiarism, Rao, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Academic misconduct, India, Science, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »
February 21, 2012
The key requirement for the method of science is scepticism.
The scientific method is to make falsifiable hypotheses and then to check the hypothesis by gathering the evidence to check the falsifiability.
The IPCC and the Global Warming Orthodoxy have been making alarmist predictions for the last 20 years and their hypothesis comes in three parts:
- That global warming is occurring and will continue for at least the next 100 years
- That human activities are the primary cause of the global warming being observed, and
- That man-made emission of carbon-dioxide is the most significant human activity driving climate change.
In the last 20+ years, comparing actual observations show that each one of these 3 parts of this global warming hypothesis is – at best – oversimplified and – at worst – just plain wrong. “Wrong” in the sense that the causality proposed does not exist and that the mechanisms proposed for the causality are incorrect or non-existent. The IPCC predictions are being proved wrong and it is time to ditch the hypothesis.
IPCC predictions falsify global warming hypothesis
The 27th January article in the Wall Street Journal “No Need to Panic about Global Warming” by a number of scientists displaying true scientific scepticism was immediately criticised by members of the Orthodoxy. The original authors now reply to these criticisms in the WSJ:
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Tags:Alarmism, Falsifiable hyptheses, global warming, IPCC, Scientific misconduct, Wall Street Journal
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Environment, Science | Comments Off on When IPCC model predictions are wrong it is time to ditch the hypothesis
December 23, 2011
That psychology is a discipline and a field of study is indisputable. That the study of human (or animal) behaviour is a worthy field and that experimentation and research are well worth pursuing is also obvious. But I am of the view that it is far from being a science. Psychology can be considered to be a pre-science similar to alchemy. And the practitioners of psychology are similar to priests and shamans and witch-doctors and other practitioners of magic. Inevitably the field contains many charlatans.
During 2011 the high profile cases of Marc Hauser and Diederik Stapel where data was faked (and no matter which way the pill is coated they both fabricated data to suit their theories) only reinforces my view that their behaviour was essentially narcissistic and not uncommon in the burgeoning fields of psychology. In both cases inflated egos led to the creation of their “signature” hypotheses followed by the fabrication of data to prove their conclusions – which had already been reached! I am inherently suspicious of psychologists who are supposed scientists but who are seduced by the fame and fortunes of press adulation or tenure or who become Agony Aunts on TV.
Charles Gross writes in The Nation about the Marc Hauser affair and concludes:
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Tags:Diedrik Stapel, Harvard University, marc hauser, psychology, Science, Scientific misconduct, Tilburg University
Posted in Academic misconduct, psychology, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Data fabrication by Hauser and Stapel strengthen the view that psychology is no science
December 20, 2011
Hiroaki Matsubara
Hiroaki Matsubara has been Professor of Cardiology and Vascular Regenerative Medicine at Kyoto Prefectural University’s School of Medicine since 2003 and was earlier at Kansai Medical University.
A Japanese investigative website (http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/) has found 12 published articles where manipulation of images is very likely. The suspicious images in the papers published by the Matsubara lab are carefully deconstructed by Abnormal Science in an ongoing series of posts: here, here and here.
Joerg Zwirner of Abnormal Science comments:
(Part 1) Taken together, articles 1-5 are distinguished by the extensive reuse and mutual exchange of data, in particular Western and Northern Blot bands. A single band has been reused up to eigth times in distinct blots in Kidney Int. 2002.
It is apparent that band images from ‘real’ blots may have been digitally reassembled into new blot images pretending to be derived from distinct experimental settings. Since ‘reconfigured blots’ have been densimetrically scanned and the results illustrated in tables and figures, we are presumably confronted with a case of severe data fabrication. …..
(Part 2) ….. The images on the left were derived from nude rats, the images on the right from C57BL/J mice. ….
Apparently, histological images have been modified by the exchange/addition of image fragments. According to the figure legend, “five fields from two muscle samples of each animal (n=10) were randomly selected, and capillary density was shown as the capillary/muscle fiber ratio.”
Can we call this practice experimental science or should we term it digital art?
Apparently, anything goes.
(Part 3)….. Of note, the only coauthor on all 12 articles is Hiroaki Matsubara. The sheer scope of the alleged manipulations in these 12 articles is reminiscent of the research misconduct investigations at Borstel/Germany into the work of Prof. Bulfone-Paus and at NUS/Singapore into the work of Prof. Melendez.
The Japanese M3 Blog is run by just one person with its readership mainly among doctors but apparently runs a serious risk of being shut down by legal threats as has happened with an earlier investigative blog.
Tags:Alirio Melendez, Hiroaki Matsubara, Japan, Kyoto Prefectural University, manipulated images, Scientific misconduct, Silvia Bulfone-Paus
Posted in Academic misconduct, Japan, Medicine, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Suspicious goings on at Kyoto Prefectural University
November 22, 2011
Update 2100 CET: This has finally reached the Nature News Blog and the bits they quote are telling – especially in the light of the IPCC having to acknowledge that for the next few decades the global warming signal may be much smaller than the signals due to natural climate variation.
“I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present [climate] reconstructions,” one researcher is quoted as having allegedly remarked.
Another remark reads: “What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably.”
Indeed!
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The Global Warming Climate Change scam.
When it reads like a scam, talks like a scam and sings like a scam — it is most definitely a scam!
From the Air Vent:
It happened again.I woke up to find a link from FOIA.org on a thread. Thousands of emails unlocked with 220,000 more hidden behind a password. Despite the smaller size of the Air Vent due to my lack of time, there were twenty five downloads before I saw it once. As before, there are some very nice quotes and clarifications from the consensus. Below is a guest post in the form of a readme file from the FOIA.org group. – Jeff
/// FOIA 2011 — Background and Context ///
“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”
“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”
“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.
“Poverty is a death sentence.”
“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”
Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.
This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few
remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.
The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.
We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such
as…
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Tags:academic misconduct, climate change, Climategate 2.0, email-release, FOIA.org, global warming, IPCC, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Climate, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »
November 21, 2011
Over the weekend Erasmus University published their executive summary (in Dutch) of the investigation which resulted in the dismissal of Professor Don Poldermans. The investigation commission included members from Erasmus, Leiden and Amsterdam Medical Centres.
Prof. Dr. P.J. van der Maas, former dean of Erasmus MC (Chair)
Prof. Dr. B. Löwenberg, Emeritus Professor of Hematology, Erasmus MC
Prof. Dr. R.J.G. Peters, Professor of Cardiology, Amsterdam MC
Prof. Dr. A.J. Rabelink, Professor of Internal Medicine, Leiden UMC
Mr. J.M. Oosting, head of Legal Affairs, Erasmus MC
Administrative support is provided by Dr. RE Juttmann and Dr. R.M. Struhkamp.
DECREASE I: In high-risk patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery, perioperative beta-blockade with bisoprolol significantly reduces cardiac death and MI in the short- and long-term
DECREASE II: Patients identified as intermediate risk on the basis of a simple clinical assessment do not need pre-operative echocardiographic cardiac stress testing, provided that they receive bisoprolol to maintain resting heart rate at 60–65 b.p.m.
DECREASE III: In high-risk patients undergoing major vascular surgery, fluvastatin XL significantly reduces myocardial ischaemia and the combined endpoint of cardiovascular death and MI
DECREASE IV: In intermediate-risk patients, bisoprolol significantly reduces cardiac death and MI, with a non-significant trend towards a beneficial effect of fluvastatin XL
DECREASE V: In high-risk patients with extensive stress-induced ischaemia, coronary revascularization (added to tight heart rate control with bisoprolol) does not produce any additional reduction in death and MI and delays surgery.
DECREASE VI: is a trial for testing NT-proBNP for the evaluation of cardiac risk in patients undergoing vascular surgery.
The investigation concluded that there were serious deficiencies in getting patients’ consent for inclusion in the studies, that data collection was sloppy and that data was fabricated. However no patients were harmed. Data manipulation was not found. The responsibility for the misconduct was that of the Professor Poldermans and not of any of the other researchers. The Commission found several serious errors and protocol violations in the D2 and D6 studies and possibly in D4. Evidence of data fabrication was found in submitted abstracts for the D6 study (not published).
The D6 study sponsored by Roche Diagnostics is to be discontinued.
The Commission believes that the Journal which published the D2 study should be informed (The Journal of the American College of Cardiology) but that retraction of the publications was not needed.
Tags:Don Poldermans, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Poöldermans dismissal, Roche Diagnostics, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Academic misconduct, Medicine, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
The k2p blog 