Investigating scientific misconduct: Divya Gandhi on the Kundu case

MSM takes a closer look at curious case of Gopal Kundu, with Divya Gandhi's column in The Hindu examining several different issues surrounding this case. Her column uses this case to explore some other questions as well, but I want to stick to the Kundu case here.

Here's the key point:

In an unusually public mark of dissent, the generally discreet Indian scientific community has voiced its concern over what could be the latest case of science gone astray. [...]

The unprecedented attention this case has received, however, has to do with more than the alleged malpractice. The disquiet in science circles comes instead from what is seen as the failure of institutional mechanisms in dealing rigorously and impartially with such cases — and also from the frustration at the absence of a central authority to bring closure to the growing incidence of misconduct. [bold emphasis added]

Given Rahul's analysis of the available evidence (using online documents at the Society for Scientific Values -- SSV), we are led to a pretty inescapable conclusion: identical figures -- in seven sets! -- have been passed off as arising from different experiments. Thus, there has been some closure in the minds of people who have taken a look Rahul's analysis.

However, it is also true that this case has not seen an 'official' closure. And that's because of two conflicting conclusions: one from an official body and the other from an 'almost official' body (the journal that published Kundu's papers). Specifically,

• The official committee, headed by Prof. G. Padmanaban, an ex-Director of IISc, exonerated Gopal Kundu and his coworkers of any wrongdoing. This happened in August 2006.
• However, in February 2007, the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) withdrew one of Kundu's papers. On being queried by SSV (and also a Science reporter), the journal has admitted that the withdrawal of the paper followed the adverse conclusions of its own committee that went into the allegations against Kundu. More damaging was its admission that it was aware of the Padmanaban Committee's exoneration of Kundu.

JBC's withdrawal of the paper is clearly a slap in the face of the official investigative team, and it is this slap that's keeping this case alive (even though it has also been the subject of some sharp criticism in a Current Science editorial). Unless the Padmanaban Committee -- or NCCS, Kundu's employer, or the Department of Biotechnology, NCCS's official boss that the Padmanaban Committee also reports to -- gets the paper reinstated, the needle of suspicion will keep pointing at Kundu (and indirectly, at the investigative team as well).

Gandhi does a good job of highlighting the disconnect between the Padmanaban Committee's findings and what many others (including JBC) believe:

... Baffled by this verdict [of the Padmanaban Committee] and anxious for a resolution, many scientists have felt compelled to examine the papers for themselves. The two sets of photo-strips of the little protein bands have since been scrutinised keenly — as many as seven times — formally and voluntarily, by committees, individuals, and institutions, and have been discussed in the public domain.

The spotlight has shifted decisively from the authors of the contested paper ... to the Padmanabhan committee. Formed to bring an authoritative closure to the case, the committee has instead been embarrassingly contradicted by the JBC, which withdrew the paper, and finds itself increasingly isolated within the Indian scientific community, with its motives and investigation methodology brought under the scanner.

Here, then, is the current status of the Kundu case:

And so the NCCS saga continues. The Department of Biotechnology recently called for another report from the Padmanabhan committee, a vindication of sorts for SSV’s position. But the committee’s new report of 120 pages upholds its previous findings. The DBT will hand this one over to a set of three scientists for yet another review. The verdict of this eighth (and, with some luck, final) inquiry will signal more than the fate of this specific case. [bold emphasis added]

Clearly, there's something deeply wrong if a simple question -- Are two figures (bearing different labels) identical? -- needs an eighth inquiry (and more than a year) for a closure.

* * *

One final note. Gandhi quotes Satyajit Mayor (of the National Centre for Biological Science, Bangalore):

... [Others] in the scientific community are concerned that such cases could dent India’s credibility in the international sphere. Satyajit Mayor, a biologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, observes: “We need laws to protect the country from what happened to Korean science after the stem cell debacle. Now nothing they say is taken seriously, even though important research is being done.”

This quote (and it is possible that Mayor is being misquoted or quoted out of context) gives one the impression that Korean science was let down by their laws (or lack thereof). This impression cannot be more wrong. In the Korean case, when the allegations (which were doing the rounds in mailing lists and online forums for quite a while before they) finally broke through to the news media, the official investigation did its job impeccably well. And its conclusions and credibility have not been questioned! Acting on the conclusions of that inquiry, the papers with fabricated data were promptly withdrawn by the university. If at all any lesson needs to be learnt from the Korean episode, it is on how to act swiftly, impartially, dispassionately, and fairly.

The Kundu case: Did JBC do the right thing?

In the controversy surrounding the two papers published by Gopal Kundu's group in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), the ethics of the journal's actions have come under some critical scrutiny. The questions revolve around the journal's unilateral withdrawal of the second of the two papers, overruling the objections from Kundu and his coworkers. [JBC is an open access journal, so you can see the original paper (May 2005) and the withdrawal notice (February 2007)].

The first question is straight-forward: the withdrawal notice states, simply, "This manuscript has been withdrawn." That's it! It does not elaborate on the reasons for the withdrawal. For example, it does not say that the journal was yanking Kundu's paper in spite of his objection (and probably, his protest). I believe a journal owes it to its readers a transparent account of the circumstances under which a published paper is withdrawn.

Let's turn to the second and more important (and also problematic) question now. In his Current Science editorial (in the 10 June 2007 issue which also carried several letters by key players in this saga), P. Balaram compares the fate of Kundu's 2005 paper with that of a University of Wisconsin researcher:

[...] A sad and disturbing case at the University of Wisconsin, which hinges curiously enough on manipulated Western blots, ended last year with the resignation of a professor, leaving questions about the veracity of data in three published papers in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, Developmental Biology and Molecular Cell (Couzin, J., Science, 2006, 313, 1222). Over nine months after this report, none of these papers has been withdrawn, with one journal reportedly waiting for the results of an ORI investigation. The reluctance of journals to publicly state a position on these papers is in sharp contrast to the treatment of the NCCS paper by the Journal of Biological Chemistry. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion of bias; [...] [Bold emphasis added]

[For a background on the "disturbing case at Wisconsin," let me direct you to Janet Stemwedel's two posts on Elizabeth Goodwin of the University of Wisconsin at Madison; the focus of these posts, however, was on the rather sorry plight of her graduate students who did the right thing by blowing the whistle on her fraud.]

Let's recap: In the Goodwin case, "a UW investigation reported data falsification in Goodwin's past grant applications and raised questions about some of her papers." Yet, as Balaram points out, none of her papers have been withdrawn (at least as of June 2007). In the Kundu case, on the other hand, despite a clean chit from an 'official' committee and despite JBC's knowledge of this fact, the journal went ahead and yanked Kundu's 2005 paper. The difference between the two cases cannot be more stark. Is this fair?

Let's leave aside the question of whether all journals (should) follow the same procedure. If we focus instead on what we know about how JBC handled the Kundu case, it would appear to have followed a fair procedure. For example, the JBC committee probing the allegations against Kundu's papers gave him a chance to respond to them. From the fact that Balaram has not mentioned any specific shortcoming in the JBC process, I gather that his complaint is probably about (a) whether a journal has a right to order its own investigation, and/or (b) whether it can unilaterally yank an article even though an institutional inquiry found no wrongdoing.

I spoke to an editor at a top materials journal about this issue, and his answer was blunt and categorical: a journal has the responsibility to protect itself from getting sullied and therefore it should always have the right to conduct its own independent inquiry into any allegations of misconduct. And of course it has to follow a procedure that's fair to the accused authors, who must be presumed innocent unless proven guilty. When probed further about situations (such as Kundu's) where the journal's conclusions go against those of the official committee, he insisted that the journal should go by its own committee's decisions. He further asked, semi-rhetorically, "what would Current Science do?"

For the moment, I think I am with the editor I spoke to. Which makes me wonder why the journals that published Goodwin's papers have not yanked them; Balaram, on the other hand, is using the other journals' reluctance to withdraw her papers to imply that JBC was too harsh on Kundu. Since I know virtually nothing about what the other journals did or did not do, I would like to leave this angle for now.

So, as I said, I'm with the editor's view that journals should retain the right to pursue their own investigations into misconduct. But I am keen to see the arguments for the other side. What would they be?

The Kundu case: What if ...

Update: In this long post, it is easy to lose oneself in the multiple links (and links within links). So, let me cite here "the featured link" that really clinched the issue for me: Rahul's GIF animations of seven -- yes, seven! -- sets of figures. If you want to dig more, you can follow the links on his page, as well as those at the end of this post.

Here's a quick summary (follow the links at the end of the post for details): Two papers published in 2004 and 2005 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) by Gopal Kundu and members of his group at the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) have been under a cloud because of allegations that several experimental figures have been used more than once with different labels. These allegations were investigated during August 2006 - April 2007 by three different external committees (in addition to an internal one).

The very first external committee to investigate the case returned a "Not Guilty" verdict. This committee, headed by G. Padmanaban, former Director of IISc, also enjoyed an "official" status, as it was constituted by NCCS itself. Instead of settling the issue once and for all, its clean chit to Kundu has to now contend with the diametrically opposite verdict from the other two committees. After Current Science allowed its space to be used by all the key players in this controversy to air their side of the story, the debate has entered the public domain.

Last month, Rahul used very clever and expressive GIF animations of the offending figures. His work allows us to see the evidence for ourselves in all its live action glory, and the conclusion is inescapable: the figures within each set are extremely, astonishingly, and oh-so-improbably similar. In particular, I urge you to check out the sixth example to see how dramatic the similarity is -- across two different sub-figures!

Rahul has also presented his analysis in a letter to Current Science:

A thorough forensic analysis would take into account a more realistic estimate of the horizontal shifting, the vertical alignment, the positions of streaks, smears, spots, and so on – all of which are evident to the naked eye, and all of which line up as soon as one aligns the black borders. Even if every one of these metrics has one chance in three of lining up, the probability of all of them doing so would quickly become infinitesimal, even for a single image.

However, as already noted, the presence of nine duplicated images makes such an effort unnecessary. If we unthinkingly estimate that a single image has a 5% – or even 10% or 20% – chance of being genuine, the probability of all nine being authentic is already vanishingly small.

For the record, Padmanaban has responded to Rahul's letter. And Rahul has a follow-up note on his website as well.

* * *

I think it is safe to say that this game is up for Kundu. Unless he introduces some dramatically conclusive evidence.

* * *

This allows us to step back and look at a couple of "what if" questions. The first is this: what if Kundu was alerted by, say, a reviewer of the 2005 paper about the similarities between some of its figures and those in the 2004 paper. Would he have challenged the reviewer's alert as strongly as he has contested the allegations? By his own admission, the papers' scientific merit is unaffected by the suspect figures, since they form only a small part of the work. Is it possible, is it just possible, that he might have chosen to change the problematic figures with those from other experiments? Could he have chosen a similar path when the original allegations arose? Could he have opted to "correct" the paper through an erratum, instead of denying that the offending figures were the same?

The second, and the more important one, is this: what if NCCS had taken the journal JBC into confidence, and asked the latter to appoint a representative to be a member of the Padmanaban committee? After all, these are not just some results doing the rounds within NCCS; they had already been sent out into the big bad world! And it was only a matter of time before JBC decided to take another look at the paper. So, it makes sense to get all the players on board the investigative committee so that its conclusions are final and binding on everyone. This way, the matter would have seen a clean closure.

Now, look at the consequences for NCCS of the current closure-less status in which Kundu is "officially" not guilty, but his JBC paper stands withdrawn. NCCS has the obligation to do everything in its command to fight his case with JBC -- in court, if it is needed -- to get the paper reinstated. Not doing so would imply that the Lab is not sufficiently interested in protecting the interests of its scientists.

On the other hand, if Kundu loses his case in the hearts and minds of biologists (which is very likely, given the evidence that is now in the public domain), and if the perception that he is being 'protected' takes root, it can only do long term damage to NCCS. Honest scientists would think many times before wanting to work there.

Clearly, NCCS is staring at some bleak choices.

* * *

Links:

The Society for Scientific Values maintains a web page on its own investigation of the Kundu case. This page has links to the 2004 and 2005 papers from Kundu's group, and to newspaper stories on this case following the release of SSV's report.

Current Science opened up this affair to the public in its issue dated 10 June 2007. Several letters have appeared in a subsequent issue. Rahul's letter, and Padmanaban's response appear in the latest issue.

Fraud in Science: Indian edition

T.V. Jayan and G.S. Mudur of the Telegraph have a great article on fraud in Indian science. They cover many different things, including the good work by the Society for Scientific Values in an unfriendly -- if not openly hostile -- environment. Most of the examples they cite are familiar, but their reporting provides a few new details. For example, here's a mea-culpa-of-sorts from R.A. Mashelkar (this story broke February 2007):

In March 2007, Mashelkar admitted in a letter to the SSV that sections of a book he had co-authored on intellectual property rights had reproduced verbatim material from a paper by a British scholar without crediting him. “…I am highly embarrassed by this and I have decided to take some hard actions,” he wrote. He said he would stop further editions of the book and not take any personal gains from it.

Another very interesting news is about the Kundu case:

... [T]he US Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) retracted a research paper by Gopal Kundu and his colleagues at Pune’s National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS). Kundu was accused of using the same data or images relating to proteins in two unconnected articles submitted to the journal. Kundu holds there was “absolutely no wrongdoing” by his team. He says another international journal has accepted the data.

But the authorities are still wary of confronting such accusations. Three committees, for instance, looked into the Kundu affair. A seven-member panel of top scientists exonerated him despite JBC’s withdrawal of the paper. Panel chairman G. Padmanaban says the journal’s decision was not “wrong”, but “harsh”.

Coming from the chairman of the committee that exonerated Kundu and his coworkers, the view that "[JBC's] decision was not 'wrong', but 'harsh'" is quite revealing. In discussing the Kundu case, Jayan and Mudur also have tapped Rahul Siddharthan for his views (Rahul's analysis of figures in the papers by Kundu et al was the clincher for me):

... Rahul Siddharthan, a physicist and computational biologist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, says he stepped into the controversy with “a sense of deep indignation” at the way the committee decided to dispose of the case. He says the duplication — intentional or unintentional — of images is so “blatantly obvious” that he cannot understand how a top scientists’ committee can dismiss the charges.

“There seems to be a mistaken notion that national pride is somehow involved, and this leads to pressure to exonerate or hush up cases,” says Siddharthan.

Finally, we have this:

The growing volume of scientific misconduct has intensified demands for an independent regulatory mechanism to deal with such cases. But Atomic Energy Commission ex-chairman R. Chidambaram, now a top scientific advisor to the government, told the US journal Science in January that the number of cases of scientific misconduct was still too small to justify a “full-time oversight body.”

Jayan and Mudur cite several other views that contradict this strange kind of 'wisdom' from R. Chidambaram. Rahul has an appropriate response on his blog:

I think the essential point, that [Jayan and Mudur] have brought out well, is the reluctance of our scientific establishment to deal with such matters or even acknowledge that they exist. The article quotes R Chidambaram as telling the journal Science that the number of cases of fraud in India is too small to justify a full-time oversight body. I'd say that, taken as a proportion of the research from the country published in top-tier journals (which is pathetically low even compared to other Asian countries), the number of cases in India is probably among the highest in the world -- and it's thanks to the attitude of our science administrators, which is either ostrich-like or deliberately condoning of such things.

A New Twist to the Kundu Story: Did a Government Panel Shield the Accused?

Drop everything and read The Telegraph story by T.V. Jayan.

In case you didn't know about l'affaire Kundu, here's the back story from early 2007 when the Journal of Biological Chemistry retracted a paper by a team led by Gopal Kundu of NCCS, Pune, because several experimental figures were used more than once (in two different papers) with different labels. A committee headed by Prof. G. Padmanaban (former Director, IISc) gave Kundu and his team a clean chit -- a verdict that was contested vigorously by quite a few (see this post and the links in there; the key, at least for me, was the set of animated GIF images put together by Rahul Siddharthan).

The controversy generated by this debate was reported to have led to several more "official" investigations, and it was rumoured that Kundu was exonerated by some high-level committee (whose report was never made public -- which is really, really strange), bringing a closure to this case.

Except that the Indian Academy of Sciences at Bangalore decided to re-open this case, and have it investigated by its own panel on scientific values. This new investigation found Kundu guilty.

And the guilt is serious enough that the Acadcmy has imposed some sanctions on him. [Whether the sanctions really match the seriousness of the crime is a different issue! I just want to keep this post restricted to the guilty verdict itself.]

It is this second act that's the focus of T.V. Jayan's story in The Telegraph. Jayan gets it just right when he says that the Academy's "unprecedented" action "appears to vindicate claims by some scientists that the government-appointed panel had tried to shield the accused." And, Nandula Raghuram, a member of the Society for Scientific Values, is quoted by Jayan:

This episode shows that the government mechanisms to deal with this case had been compromised.

There are several other things in the new revelations (in Jayan's report) that are worth commenting on -- I just don't have the time right for a longer post now; do read the story!

Thoughtful comments

I spent a huge part of the last ten days in Chennai; while I managed a bit of blog reading during that time, I didn't get a chance to respond to comments here on my blog. I have been very lucky in getting some thoughtful comments, and I say to all the commenters: Thank you!

Here are some comments that I want to highlight:

In the comments thread following a new twist to the Kundu case, an anonymous commenter tried to use this case to justify closed access publishing. This comment received a fitting reply from Rahul:

Open access is refereed just as stringently as closed access, or more so. Take a look at PLoS and BMC, the two most prominent open-access publishers. In addition many publishers -- OUP, etc -- have optional open-access systems in place.

And I don't know what conclusions you draw from Kundu and Chiranjeevi's cases. Kundu's 2005 paper was published in a respected, non-open-access journal (though his paper seems to be accessible from my home machine too -- perhaps JBC has country-wide access for India, as PNAS does). His 2006 paper is published in an entirely obscure non-open-access journal that epitomises everything that is wrong with closed-access (namely, very few people can read the paper -- few institutions subscribe to the journal, because of its obscurity -- so the duplication is less likely to be caught). Chiranjeevi's papers were mostly in tier 2 or tier 3 closed-access journals.

If you really want to make a point, please highlight a case of fraud that has happened in an open-access journal and then say why it couldn't happen with a closed-access journal.

Staying with the broad theme of misconduct in science, Gautam responded to the post on IGCAR's verdict on the Anna University case with the following comment, which I fully agree with (especially the second paragraph):

I think this is a reasonable, though possibly somewhat strong recommendation. (It wasn't clear, on the evidence placed in the public domain, that Mathews had actually seen the paper submitted with his name on it.) On the other hand, Selladurai, I would think, got off with what seems like a mere slap on the wrist - no enquiry committee whose findings were made public but just a prohibition on taking students. This despite the fact that the paper was submitted from his email ID and he must have acceded to the transfer of copyright.

The transparent and careful procedures of IGCAR deserve to be commended, as well as their decision to place the report in the public domain. I do hope similar high profile cases are treated with the same care and transparency by the respective institutions involved.

Moving on, an anonymous commenter responded to Feynman's views on worthwhile problems with a link to Richard Hamming's lecture titled You and Your Research. This is indeed a great talk, and Hamming does devote a section to describing what kind of problems one should try to work on. Needless to say, there's an interesting contrast:

Over on the other side of the dining hall was a chemistry table. I had worked with one of the fellows, Dave McCall; furthermore he was courting our secretary at the time. I went over and said, ``Do you mind if I join you?'' They can't say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking, ``What are the important problems of your field?'' And after a week or so, ``What important problems are you working on?'' And after some more time I came in one day and said, ``If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?'' I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with! That was in the spring.

In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the hall and said, ``Hamming, that remark of yours got underneath my skin. I thought about it all summer, i.e. what were the important problems in my field. I haven't changed my research,'' he says, ``but I think it was well worthwhile.'' And I said, ``Thank you Dave,'' and went on. I noticed a couple of months later he was made the head of the department. I noticed the other day he was a Member of the National Academy of Engineering. I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any of the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific circles. They were unable to ask themselves, ``What are the important problems in my field?''

If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work. It's perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. Let me warn you, `important problem' must be phrased carefully. The three outstanding problems in physics, in a certain sense, were never worked on while I was at Bell Labs. By important I mean guaranteed a Nobel Prize and any sum of money you want to mention. We didn't work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. They are not important problems because we do not have an attack. It's not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important. When I say that most scientists don't work on important problems, I mean it in that sense. The average scientist, so far as I can make out, spends almost all his time working on problems which he believes will not be important and he also doesn't believe that they will lead to important problems.

Finally, the post about our President's wish for an IIT exclusively for women, received the following comment from Manasi:

gender-segregated educational institutions as a rule are not a great idea, but I think it is important not to be dogmatic about this principle. Given that IITs predominantly attract mofussil, non-progressive Indian males who use it as a tool for social mobility, it would be an interesting experiment to see what effect such an institution would have on the imagination of the aspirational classes. In terms of real access, precious little will be achieved but then that is another battle. Evidence institutions such as Morehouse, Spellman, Smith, etc. that have thrived in separate but equal situations and have essentially been refuges for folks that would otherwise not have had the same opportunities.

I agree with her that "it's important not to be dogmatic about this principle." First, there is considerable evidence that women are better off studying in all women colleges; heck, there's even evidence to prove that boys do ruin schools for girls! Second, given that our IITs have a long history -- over half a century! -- of being almost exclusively male, an all women IIT is nothing to be sneered at. I found the concept 'amazing' simply because (a) our President's suggestion goes against the trend of setting up co-educational institutions, and (b) it gives preference to a single sex institution over other institutional mechanisms -- such as giving some weight to students' high school marks during the admissions process -- that would allow a greater number of women to enter our top institutions (including IITs and NITs).

The Kundu case: A new twist

I have just been alerted about this letter (pdf) in the March 10 issue of Current Science:

A greater shock awaited me when I entered a name that was discussed widely in the pages of Current Science last year, primarily as a test of the veracity of the database. Two pairs of citations were picked up. The first pair appeared to be legitimate, consisting of an original paper in one journal and a review article by the same group in another journal on the same theme. The second pair of publications was more alarming since it appeared to be a clear case of duplicate publications by the same group. The first paper ... was published in 2004 and the second3 in 2006. What was not apparent from the site without further browsing was the fact that the second paper had already been withdrawn from the journal precisely due to prior publication. The journal that published the 2006 paper had a bland erratum in fine print in 2007, stating ‘This article was withdrawn due to prior publication in an alternate publication by the authors’. It does not state who withdrew the paper, the authors or the journal. Shockingly, however, the erratum gives a link to the 2006 paper and one is able to view the full text, without any indication that the paper had been withdrawn. This information can be found only by chance. It appears that many journals also do not wish to take the responsibility for making a mistake. Incidentally, the 2004 paper2 was part of the controversy discussed at length in Current Science last year. The group was accused of misconduct and later exonerated of using part of the data in that paper to represent different sets of conclusions in another publication4 in 2005, which was subsequently withdrawn by the journal. Interestingly, the withdrawal of the 2006 paper happened when the controversy was raging in the pages of Current Science and found no mention anywhere at that time. As on 21 February 2008, the official NCCS website continues to include both withdrawn papers among its list of publications.

Wow. Just wow! This bit of smart sleuthing is by Prof. S. Mahadevan, a colleague, who goes on to echo sentiments similar to my own:

we in India have no formal mechanism to address such issues. What is to be done if we discover an unethical act? Whom do we approach? Whistle-blowers are exposed, their confidentiality violated. Independent watchdog organizations are accused of ulterior motives and maligned. Our science academies are mute spectators during most of these discussions. There appears to be a great desire for damage control rather than getting to the bottom of the issues and resolving them fairly. This is in stark contrast to what happens elsewhere, including our Asian neighbour Korea. The ability of the Indian scientific community to institute fair and transparent mechanisms to handle allegations of scientific misconduct will be a measure of its maturity. Where are the Luke Skywalkers, Princess Leias and Han Solos of Indian science?

Some of you may remember that the Kundu case was covered quite extensively in this blog. Let me link to these posts: here, here, here. The clinching evidence -- and a very good summary -- is available at Rahul's site: here.

The Goodwin case: An update.

Remember this post from a few days ago? While Kundu's paper was withdrawn (over his protest) by JBC, the journals that published the papers by Elizabeth Goodwin (who had fabricated some data, according to the investigation by her institution, the University of Wisconsin at Madison) had still not taken any action (as of last June).

We now have an update on one of the papers. In the latest issue of Science, Philip M. Iannaccone of Northwestern writes:

The authors of Lakiza et al. received a draft of a statement from the University of Wisconsin report by e-mail that suggested a possible problem with two panels out of five in Fig. 1 (one of nine figures in the paper). We identified original data for Fig. 1 and did new experiments with independent methods and reagents to verify the conclusions that the paper reached from data presented in that figure. That process is now complete, and after peer review and scrutiny commensurate with the matter, the results have appeared in Developmental Biology. They verify the original conclusions of Fig. 1 of the paper [...]

The additional validation work was undertaken with support from several labs and would not have been possible without their collective, independent help. Most noteworthy are the young scientists who worked so hard on the paper at early stages of their careers--because they are victims of this unfortunate situation and are doubly victimized if the conclusion the scientific community reaches is that this paper has no merit. Although the scientific results are the most important component of the vindication of the work, I feel strongly that we owe it to our young scientists to draw attention to the verification.

This brings me back to the Kundu case: if his coworkers and he had admitted that there was indeed a problem in their second paper, and if it was due to an error (which would imply that it was unintentional), a few additional experiments and a correction would have put a quick end to the matter. Now, having taken the line -- which I believe is no longer tenable -- that the figures in question came out of real and distinct experiments, and having dug their heels in (through their later actions including letters to SSV and Current Science), they have precluded this possibility.

What Rahul Said

Rahul Siddharthan has a must-read post on the latest twist to l'affaire Kundu. As I said in my previous post, Rahul's work played a key (and to me, definitive) part in the unraveling of Kundu's version (along with that of the committee headed by Prof. G. Padmanaban) of this story, and he makes the following point about the broader lesson in the Kundu affair:

To me, this case is not really about Kundu. It is about our complete lack of appreciation of scientific ethics, and our tendency to “close ranks” when trouble arrives. To succumb to this tendency even after an international journal has conducted its own investigation and made its own decision, and to justify it with a paltry two-page report, merely makes us a laughing-stock.

Rahul is also right to urge the Indian Academy of Sciences to look into the discredited report -- "superficial, authorless, reference-free, and partially plagiarised" -- on GM crops produced recently by it along with five other science academies of this country.

The Anna University case: Update 2

First, take a look at the posts by Rahul and Guru for some thoughtful comments.

* * *

One question that keeps cropping up is why the plagiarized paper continues to be available on the journal's website. The Swedes who wrote the original article are pissed that some of the credit for the work may go to the plagiarizers, outsiders like us don't like it, and presumably even the 'authors' of the JMS paper would rather not deal with it. So, clearly, the paper must be pulled from the website, no?

Apparently, no! As Guru has pointed out, a plagiarized paper from Sathyabama University, Chennai (which Arunn blogged about) continues to be available. Similarly, the paper from Kundu's group, which was 'withdrawn' by the Journal of Biological Chemistry, continues to be available at the website (with an obscure link -- An addition or correction has been published -- on the sidebar taking you to the withdrawal notice).

I am told that there's some legal issue that prevents articles that have been published from being taken off the publisher's website.

* * *

In some medical and biomedical journals, all the authors (a) are informed that a paper has been submitted listing them as co-authors and (b) are required to submit a disclosure form regarding any conflict of interest. In some others, (c) all the authors must sign the copyright form. Further, following recent scandals, several journals require (d) a statement from each individual author a statement about his/her specific contribution to the paper.

Clearly, JMS does not do or demand any of these. I guess this -- in particular, (a) -- is what is being used by two of the 'authors' to wiggle out of this mess (and their case may well be a valid one).

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In the hierarchy of crimes in science (or, scholarship in general), plagiarism ranks lower than fabrication and falsification of research data, and rightly so. In other countries, one loses one's job for fabrication, and at least one went to jail! But I'm not aware of anyone who has lost his/her job for plagiarism.

What about India? The results (at least, the ones that I know about) have been mixed. In the highest profile case of fabrication, the culprit -- Vishwajit Gupta of Punjab University -- never lost his job, and his career had a normal end: retirement. In the highest profile case of plagiarism, B.S. Rajput was forced to step down from the vice-chancellorship of Kumaon university (but he did not lose his job).

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Our institutions are not great when it comes to organizing a fair, impartial inquiry into allegations of misconduct, taking them to their logical conclusions, punishing those found guilty, and implementing systemic changes that could prevent similar misconduct in future. [Take a look at Sharath Rao's cynical take on this issue]. One would expect our science academies to take the lead in advocating policies and guidelines that safeguard the integrity of science practiced in India.

At the Indian Academy of Sciences website, you'll find this report on scientific values; and sure, it has a section on plagiarism:

3.1 Plagiarism

Appropriating the already published results of others without proper reference is obviously dishonest. When exposed, plagiarism generally receives the highest publicity and the authors concerned and the system they belong to are put under tremendous pressure. In most cases, the concerned authors offer some explanation in their defense. However, sometimes they disown responsibility and even the knowledge of the papers' existence, claiming that the co-authors included their names without consulting them. Such disclaimers should not be accepted at face value, but should be looked into in more detail. Nobody should communicate a joint paper without the knowledge of the other authors. There is a strong need to take punitive actions to discourage plagiarism. There is a general impression among the scientific community in India that those who indulge in this form of dishonest behaviour do not receive appropriate punishment, and escape relatively unscathed. Stronger and more consistent action would redress this situation.

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Well, I'm yet to find any official statement from the Academy about what it has done (or plans to do) with a known plagiarizer -- whose plagiarism was for a book on intellectual property (!) and who has not issued a public apology -- among its Fellows. Is this document on scientific values just empty rhetoric? Does the Academy have any moral authority when it asks universities to "take punitive actions to discourage plagiarism"?