“Uh… Canada?” said Mr. UD as he gazed at a hazy August morning at the beach.
“Try Bogus Hormonal Receptor Paper,” said UD.
The University of Manitoba has sanctioned a former researcher after an internal investigation concluded he faked data and made up experiments that led to a seemingly groundbreaking study published in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals.
The news that disgraced U of M plant science researcher Fawzi Razem committed the biggest sin in science comes eight months after the journal Nature retracted what was once considered a breakthrough study.
Razem, working in the lab of Prof. Robert Hill, claimed to have discovered a receptor for the major hormone linked to a plant’s response to environmental stress. The receptor that has eluded scientists for two decades was identified in an article and featured in the editor’s summary in the January 2006 edition of Nature, one of the world’s most renowned international science journals.
The receptor was long sought after, as it could help plants better adapt to cold or drought.
Concerns about the research emerged last summer when a team of researchers from New Zealand couldn’t replicate Razem’s work — a red flag that there could be serious problems with the original findings…
Winnipeg Free Press
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Toward the end of the article, a UM ethics professor says,”universities should rely on government, not corporations, to fund independent research.” That is, this sort of thing – not just (sometimes related) conflict of interest, a big story here in the States – will happen when you have professors competing for corporate dollars…
August 4th, 2009 at 8:47AM
The source of the funding is not material here. Prestige and further funding alone is more than enough incentive; see, for example, the famous case of HF Schon in physics :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n
But in any event, if you really want to know these things, the acknowledgments are given in the retracted paper:
We thank C. Dean and G. Simpson for clones and advice;
M. Galka for an ABA affinity column; and K. Baron for help with microscopy.
The financial support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada
(to R.D.H.) and Genome Canada (to R.D.H. and S.R.A.) is gratefully
acknowledged.
NSECC is the NSF of Canada, government funding. Genome Canada is a not-for-profit organization with a government mandate.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:15AM
Good points, Shane. And I quoted the ethics professor not because I necessarily agree with him. As you say, motives transcend the corporate/government thing; and in any case NIH support – since it lacks, as far I can tell can tell, much oversight – ain’t pure as the driven snow either.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:46AM
Unfortunately, I have to agree. Senator Grassley’s staff will have years of work when their light shines on NIH/NSF/DOE research. Which is why universities have started to take COI so seriously, I believe. I was on a faculty Senate committee looking over drafts of new policies here at Alabama.
But if you don’t mean to agree with the quoted ethicist, what is your larger point? I’m afraid that it appears you consider this retraction (and there are others of this type) as a kind of bug in the system. I disagree with that view. It is a feature. Peer-review science is self-correcting, as this case makes plainly clear.
Now, a thought-experiment: consider the liberal arts analog. Think of the best, most respected, highest impact peer review journal in an associated field. Has a paper ever been retracted because it is false, unsupported by the evidence, or because the author is tainted by a funding source, or other source of prestige?
Or take it to an extreme. If a Nobel prize winner in the sciences was found to be a fraud–of any stripe–he or she would be stripped of the prize and derided by colleagues down the ages. There is significant evidence that Rigoberta Menchu is a fraud, but the "my truth is…" defense is enough to allow her to keep her Nobel Peace prize. Is one a greater sin than the other? What is the consequence of holding science and scientists to a higher standard of truth?
Just asking.
August 4th, 2009 at 10:17AM
I don’t agree with the blanket statement that corporate involvement in academic science produces a lot of corruption. I do believe that this involvement creates all kinds of very lucrative perverse incentives — the government doesn’t make you rich — that involve not merely the legitimacy of research results (as you point out, science, unlike the humanities, is largely self-correcting) but the whole ghost-writing, CME, pharma-salesman-masquerading-as-university-professor mess.
August 4th, 2009 at 10:59AM
Hmmm…
There are many sub-cultures at play in the sandbox here. So generalization is difficult.
Many of us have students who look forward to finding, ah, jobs. Most of these are in industry. Some of us have worked in industry and even teach our students a little about how research is done in industry vis-a-vis the academic approach.
I believe that the medical school situation is unique. Most docs do not end up working in industry but go to work in private practice, HMOs or universities. Thus the attitude seems to be to squeeze every last nickel out of industry, rather than trying to establish good working relationships to help in the placement of students. (Fifty bucks for a five minute phone call, say.) A 3M consultant who operated this way would not have lasted very long.
ALSO,
having worked at 3M for about ten years-
I would say unequivocally that the general ethical standards at 3M were far higher than those at my university.
Bill Gleason