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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Land Shark who wrote (35382)	8/9/2012 11:40:46 AM
From: Land Shark	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

Price of academic misconduct (fudging data). Wingnuts keep levying charges against scientists at t he CRU/GISS etc. that they "fudge the data". They have this conspiracy theory that the oversight committees are in cahoots with the authors. They neglect to mention that academic misconduct means ruining the scientist's livelihood: Danish neuroscientist challenges fraud findings A committee investigating Milena Penkowa suspects misconduct in 15 papers. Ewen Callaway 08 August 2012 A prominent Danish neuroscientist could lose her PhD and medical degree, after a committee investigating her oeuvre found evidence that she may have falsified data in 15 papers. The 5 August report by an international committee assembled by the University of Copenhagen concludes that there are significant indications that Milena Penkowa misrepresented the number of animals in experiments and data that measured the level of proteins in tissues. A leaked version of the same report was posted to a Danish news site in late July (see ' Leaked report implicates Danish neuroscientist in misconduct case'). The university has passed the report to the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a government office that investigates research misconduct and will officially rule on whether misconduct took place. The university’s academic council for the faculty of health will also now consider the report and has the authority to withdraw the PhD and medical degrees Penkowa earned at Copenhagen if it conclude she is guilty. Related stories Fraud investigation rocks Danish university Leaked report fingers Danish neuroscientist Danish neuroscientist convicted of embezzling society funds The law firm representing Penkowa has not yet responded to a request for comment from Nature but in a response appended to the report, Penkowa said its conclusions “were not based on evidence”. Penkowa, who studied mechanisms of brain repair in animal models of multiple sclerosis, shot to prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, making numerous media appearances and winning accolades and awards from the Danish government and private funders. In early 2010, she was suspended from the University of Copenhagen after she was charged with embezzling the equivalent of US$5200 from a Danish neuroscience society. Accusations of scientific misconduct and misspending grants soon followed, and Penkowa resigned from the university in December 2010. The misconduct allegations sparked an investigation by the DCSD, which will report its conclusions later this month. In February 2011, the university asked an independent committee to look into Penkowa’s entire career. A Danish court found Penkowa guilty of embezzlement in early 2011. The committee examined 79 papers and asked Penkowa’s124 coauthors to complete a total of 472 questionnaires on data in the papers. The panel, chaired by Hans Lassman, a multiple-sclerosis researcher at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, also sifted through Penkowa’s available lab archives, including microscope slides, lab books and animal records. Lassman’s committee found evidence for “potentially intentional misconduct” in 15 of those papers, falling under three broad categories. Two papers reported animal experiments that could not be squared with records at the animal facilities she used. Five papers relied on experiments that measure the levels of proteins called cytokines expressed by different tissues. Lassman says that these experiments require rigorous controls, which could not be found in her lab archive. A total of 11 papers out of the 15, meanwhile, contain quantitative data from such experiments that did not correspond to the microscope slides. Lassman says his team looked through all the data and material from Penkowa's lab that was available, but he cannot be sure that included everything. “Many of the things we found that were suspicious were done between 2000 and 2005, a long time ago,” he says.“We cannot exclude there is somewhere additional material that could prove some of our suspicions are not valid.” In the response appended to the report, Penkowa says that the committee did not have access to materials in two freezers and a refrigerator, as well as important documentation. “Accordingly, the contents of the report are based upon assumptions, guessing and uncertainty as to what sections and tissues belong to which project, not to mention which publication,” she notes. Penkowa also charges that the chair of her department, biochemist Albert Gjedde, whom she says initiated the actions against her, “knew what to remove from my department in order to harm me most with regards to his accusations”. Gjedde, however, denies the charge. “There’s absolutely no substance to that accusation,” he told Nature. After Penkowa resigned from the university, her laboratory was sealed and all material was later moved to locked archive in the building’s basement. Gjedde says that Lassman’s committee had access to “everything in the Panum Institute that is in anyway related to her”. Lassman says his report found no evidence that Penkowa’s coauthors were responsible for any of the potential misconduct. KU has passed the report onto her coauthors and to the journals that published her work. So far, two papers 1, 2 not flagged by the committee have been retracted and a third 3 is subject to a notice of concern. Journal name: Nature DOI: doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11146