← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

After covering scads of research misconduct stories over the long life of this blog, UD’s gotta say that this article about a disgraced Ohio State cancer scientist really…

stinks. Something in here really stinks.

First, he’s one of the biggest bigshots at Ohio State, and he’s been faking important – and at times clinically implemented! – cancer research for twenty years.

Ching-Shih Chen, a former professor in the College of Pharmacy and the Lucius A. Wing Chair of Cancer Research and Therapy, [and 2010 winner of OSU’s innovator of the year award,] was found to have committed research fraud beginning in 2001 throughout his almost 20-year career at Ohio State.

Of course he tried blaming everything on his research assistants (virtually all research fraudsters try that as their opening gambit), but a look at his laptop cleared that up.

According to the investigation, Chen often blamed any issues with the data on postdoctoral researchers or other lab workers, but the findings proved Chen was solely responsible for research misconduct relating to the manipulation of 14 different studies

So – how do you remain a very highly compensated superstar OSU researcher while lying and stealing and making false accusations and putting patients at serious risk for twenty years??

***************

OSU would really rather not talk about it. They would really rather not talk about it. As in: The guy resigned last year, but we’re only now getting a peep about any of this. So that’s a scandal on top of a scandal.

***************

As to why you might want to keep your trap shut about Chen: Well, say you’re president of the United States and you had Russian prostitutes pee on each other in front of you in a Moscow hotel room. You’d want to keep it quiet because it’s embarrassing. The OSU thing is kind of like that.

Another possibility: Chen had friends in high places. People who might have had their doubts about the dude, but he was a buddy, and he was a big grant-getter. Let him be.

Margaret Soltan, April 16, 2018 1:32PM
Posted in: march of science

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=57880

4 Responses to “After covering scads of research misconduct stories over the long life of this blog, UD’s gotta say that this article about a disgraced Ohio State cancer scientist really…”

  1. charlie Says:

    Think what you will about catholic school, but the nuns had zero tolerance for cheating. “Show all your work, and it must be yours, or I’m throwing you out of my classroom.” All these STEM frauds wouldn’t want to tangle with Sister Catherine Mary. She had more integrity than most uni admins….

  2. dmf Says:

    https://charlespence.net/blog/2018/to-belgium/
    “To be frank, however, I simply am not certain that a state university in a right-wing state offers a long-term career path for an academic in the current political climate. I am hopeful that Louisiana will turn things around, and discover how to salvage one of its finest assets – what was once a truly exceptional system of state higher education. But I am not optimistic that will happen, and I can’t bet my future on it.”

  3. charlie Says:

    @dmf, thanks so much for your link. But I would say that if cutting state public education budgets, including those for state unis, is a right wing artifact, then just about all states have become right wing….

  4. dmf Says:

    hey charlie, to some degree but really is a case where differences of degrees come awfully close to differences of kind, tho in the end they are all going to get chopped up like companies under the Bain of capitalism…

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories