Experts in nanomedicine are questioning the credentials of a researcher who has portrayed himself as an expert in the fledgling field, even starting a professional society and procuring a post as editor of the journal Nanomedicine.

Indeed, an investigation of his credentials reveals that he claimed to hold a directorship of a non-existent program, co-authored only two original papers in nanomedicine (one of which, a co-author says, he contributed to only editorially), and was accused of mismanaging the professional society to the point that some board members resigned and began a new professional group.

Image: Wikimedia

"I think that this individual is a good example of a field that is poorly- or under-regulated," Summer Johnson, executive editor of The American Journal of Bioethics, told The Scientist. "Everyone trusted the fact that he appeared to have high quality credentials."

Chiming Wei, president and founder of an organization called the American Academy of Nanomedicine (AANM), has the equivalent of a PhD from a Japanese institution and is a researcher in cardiothoracic surgery, but is not currently affiliated with any university. He started the group in 2005, when he was an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. The AANM's website lists Wei as Director of the Cardiothoracic-Renal Nanomedicine Program at Johns Hopkins, but according to the university, there is no such program. The Johns Hopkins press office was "unable to find evidence that this program exists," a university spokesperson wrote in an email.

Johns Hopkins created a virtual program called the Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT) to support scientists working in nanomedicine in May 2006, but Wei "was not director of anything with INBT, [he was] just one of many faculty members" affiliated with the institute, Mary Spiro from Johns Hopkins' media relations department wrote in an email. "I have confirmed that, to the best of our knowledge, Wei did not apply for any grants through INBT nor did he conduct research with any of our other affiliated faculty members."

Wei explained that the Cardiothoracic-Renal Nanomedicine Program was a name that he gave to his research laboratory at Johns Hopkins. He agreed that "it was not a program" at the university, but did not explain why he used that title on the webpage. Wei continued to list this directorship and his affiliation with Johns Hopkins on announcements of the AANM's 2008 annual meeting in Washington, DC, despite having left the university by June, 2007. Wei conceded that this was an error, but that title still appeared on the AANM website at the time this article was posted.

There are other discrepancies in Wei's stated affiliations. In a bio on the Johns Hopkins website (which was removed after The Scientist requested clarification of Wei's affiliation with the university in mid-May), Wei listed three appointments with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minn.: postdoc, assistant professor and consultant. The Mayo Clinic had no record of Wei having been a postdoc or an assistant professor there, but confirmed he was a consultant, holding positions as a research associate and visiting clinician, between 1989 and 1996.

Wei has published some academic papers about nanomedicine and nanoscience, but among the articles on PubMed, only two are original research articles. Furthermore, some of his coauthors, including those on one of the original research papers, say he did not contribute intellectually to the research.

A PubMed search for "Wei, Chiming" retrieves 29 articles, 16 of which mention nanoscience or nanomedicine. (Wei provided The Scientist with a list of more than 150 publications in his name. Based on the titles, however, none except the 16 that also appear in PubMed are related to nanomedicine. The Scientist verified that at least 21 were conference abstracts rather than papers.) Most of the nanomedicine articles were published in Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine -- a journal that Wei proposed to Elsevier and subsequently co-edited, according to an Elsevier spokesperson. Just two of the 29 are primary research articles in nanomedicine.

Some of his coauthors charge that Wei put his name on nanomedicine articles to which he did not contribute enough to warrant a co-authorship. According to a former AANM board member who agreed to speak with The Scientist on condition of anonymity, Wei added his own name to the list of authors on a review published in Nanomedicine despite making "no intellectual contributions" to the work. "I don't even cite them any more," said the researcher, who was first author on the review, referring to that article and another which he coauthored with Wei and a third scientist. "We really don't want to be associated with his name," he added. Wei, however, denied that that he had ever put his name on a manuscript without the permission of an author.

One of the two primary research articles, on which Wei is the second of three authors, describes a nanoscale drug delivery pump. According to the study's principal investigator, T.C. Yih at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., Wei's participation in the study was "only editorial" -- Yih invited Wei to be an author after Wei provided comments on the manuscript. Wei agrees he contributed only "ideas" to the work.

An Elsevier spokesperson said the publisher never checked Wei's publication record in nanomedicine before giving him the job of editing a nanomedicine journal. "Based on the discussions we didn't feel a need to read through [Wei's] papers, as he was quite knowledgeable on the subject," the Elsevier spokesperson added.

Wei said he has worked on two nanomedicine research projects -- one at the University of Maryland and another at Johns Hopkins -- but never published his results. He wanted to start a nanomedicine journal to introduce physicians like himself to clinically relevant nanoscience, he explained. Wei acknowledged that he does not have expertise in chemistry or material sciences, but said his contribution was to help expose clinicians to the field who "don't know so many medical applications for nanomaterials."

Indeed, "expertise" in nanomedicine can be a matter of definition, according to a senior expert in nanomedicine at a US university who requested anonymity. Nanomedicine applies not only to engineers and material scientists who develop the technology, but also to clinicians who apply it, he said, adding that since there are many cancer drugs already on the market with nanoscale properties, he would consider many oncologists nanomedicine experts. Some people get annoyed at this broad definition, he said, but "I don't think [the field] should need a passport."

On review of Wei's PubMed publication record, however, he said, "I was hoping there would be some clear evidence to make me say that he was an expert. I didn't see that." Even so, he noted, there are many factors besides a publication record that might define a scientist's role or importance in a field; some researchers, for example, are more important for their organizational or administrative roles than for their primary research. "It may appear that he is not a presence in the field, but that is not sufficient to discredit him," he said.

While Wei's contribution to the field may be a matter of interpretation, he also used colleagues' names without their permission on AANM documents and printed materials and ascribed roles to them within the organization which they say they did not have. On a 2007 AANM tax return, Wei listed the name of Mauro Ferrari, who is the director of the division of nanomedicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The 2007 tax return, filed in January, 2009, lists Ferrari as one of several "directors" of the organization. "I don't know anything about this," said Ferrari. He said he had agreed to act as an honorary scientific advisor for the AANM, but never attended any board meetings. "I was not a director," he said.

In a flyer publicizing the First World Congress of the International Academy of Nanomedicine, which was organized by Wei and took place on June 12-13, 2009, in Sanya, Hainan, China, at least one researcher listed as a "co-secretary general" wasn't in fact involved in the meeting. "The name was put on the flyer without my knowledge," said Harry Sauberman, the chair of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society of IEEE, a professional society of engineers which was also listed as a co-organizer of the meeting. Sauberman said that he had talked to Wei about organizing meetings in Washington, DC, in the future, but neither he nor IEEE played any role in this year's conference.

In April, Johnson wrote a blog entry on bioethics.net, the blog of the The American Journal of Bioethics, citing accusations the AANM board made against Wei the previous September, at the group's annual meeting, held in Washington, DC. At that meeting, several members of the AANM board had confronted Wei, questioning his credentials and accusing him of failing to register the organization as a nonprofit and routing member dues to his personal bank account.

In fact, the AANM was registered as a non-profit from the year 2005, according to the Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs in Washington, DC. However, its non-profit status was revoked in September, 2008, because Wei had failed to file its two-year report, which lists the names of current officers in charge of a non-profit company. As a result, the organization's tax-exempt status with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was also revoked. Both non-profit status and tax-exempt status have since been reinstated, and Wei provided The Scientist with a letter from the IRS confirming tax exempt status starting in 2005.

Wei also denied accusations of financial irregularity. He said the organization has a separate bank account and that he had had to cover close to $55,000 in meeting expenses out of pocket. While he paid for the 2005 conference with the help of sponsorship from Elsevier and Pfizer, he explained, those funds were unavailable in 2006, and AANM membership dues were not enough to cover the expenses. (The AANM's 2007 tax return, obtained by The Scientist, claims that sum as a "loan from officers.")

The controversy over Wei's management of the organization, whether or not it was true, compelled Lajos Balogh of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, the new editor of Nanomedicine, to leave the AANM, where he was a board member. "I certainly did not want to be associated with an organization that is financially suspicious," he said.

After the 2008 confrontation, many AANM board members resigned and started a new professional group called the American Society of Nanomedicine.

Wei said that he was not given the opportunity to explain or correct the accounting problems that board members raised, having only learned about them at the September 2008 meeting. "I worked hard to try to help and develop this area of research. I never tried to hurt or make troubles in this area," said Wei in an email. "I hope every one understand this." Wei is currently the president of the American Nanomedicine Institute, a for-profit company he started in 2007 that focuses on research and development of both environmental and medical nanotechnology applications, he said.

But some members of the nanomedicine community dismiss Wei's good intentions. "He managed to establish a journal with a very respectable publisher. Many of us participated" in the journal and the Academy, said a nanomedicine expert who requested anonymity. "The major problem is that it's damaged the reputation of this field."


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