Opinion: Erase science's blacklist

and point well taken...
Suresh Radhakrishnan.

I agree that the goal of your article should not be to plead or to prove your innocence.

However, whether you wanted to or not, whether you realised it or not, the first half and more is largely devoted, directly or indirectly, to stating your innocence. Even if that's true, as I guess I have tried to make clear, that can't be decided in this forum...

...and you provided an open invitation for others to do what you say you didn't want them to do - discuss the specific merits of your case and decide on your guilt or innocence, sometimes with zealous fervour. All very distracting.

Maybe if you'd started the article by saying something like: I'm not going to talk about my own guilt/innocence but what does/could/should happen to those found guilty of scientific misconduct...the distractions could have been minimised.

Of course, many respondents did focus on the 'real' topic, often providing illuminating and thought-provoking comment. Touche to them.

Happy new year.

With all due respect to Dr. Hunt, and the most recent "annonymous" posting's poster, the goal of the published article is neither to plead nor to prove my innocence. It shall be absolutely naive on my part to assume that this is an appropriate forum. The ONLY purpose of this article is to generate productive discussion, and, to that extent, it shall served its purpose. Sincere thanks to all contributors in this regard.
Suresh Radhakrishnan.

You still seem determined to prove somehow that this matter can be appropriately arbitrated in this forum. It can't be.

Besides why bother? The whole episode has been examined and Radhakrishnan was found guilty. Do you really believe any bleating by him about his innocence in these pages is likely to influence people's thinking or change their minds, especially those in authority who oversee such cases? Personally, I doubt it in the extreme.

Honestly...you just need to let this go.

I apologize for my error in presuming you were an attorney. I am not a legal expert, although I have successfully conducted my own legal case once.

But I do know more than sufficient immunology and I am more than sufficiently an expert at antibody production as well as having more than enough molecular biology experience to not apologize for my critique of Suresh.

Science needs exposure of rubbish when it is presented. And in Suresh, it is basic, just blindingly obvious.

Science does not need more liars, cheats and charlatans. Suresh has no place in science.

1. So you did nothing yourself to acquire the IgM. It was just a simple prep of concentrated IgM you were given. IgM concentration without regard to antigen is easy enough to do. This material was from a patient or patients whom you don't know. This makes your claim to have done molecular biology even more laughable!

2: You write as if I said that nobody had done molecular biology of IgM when I definitely did not. Of course IgM recombinant molecular biology has been done and I am well aware of it. That has nothing to do with my criticism. My criticism was that obviously YOU had not done so with YOUR IgM isolate. You could not have done so because you had no genetic material to work with. And so your claim that you had done it is impossible. And your claim reveals a rather astonishing depth of ignorance.

3: "With regard to the shelf life, I mentioned the overall detoriation of the stored vials of the antibody in its entireity over the period of time."

Really? You said that repeated freeze-thaw had been the problem. Again, you just say something non-responsive that does not refute my criticism at all. The whole purpose of aliquots is that only part is subjected to freeze-thaw at a time. Now you seem to be implying that they magically degraded at -80 without freeze-thaw? Or were you so incompetent that you defeated the purpose of aliquots by thawing them all together when you only needed part of one of them?


4: "My repeated attempts to appreciate the glorious career of one of the fastest person to graduate-Dr. Hunt-remains futile"
And so it shall remain young miscreant.
Be gone and bother us no more.

It shall only be appropriate to start this response by mentioning a small part of the magnificient piece of remark that Dr. Hunt was able to mount to this opinion article YET AGAIN, "..your snow jobs work on people with poor grasp of immunology, antibody....for someone who knows the area, your prose is farcical, akin to a childing explanations for why the..."!
Points to ponder:
1. Serum from Waldenstorm's macroglobulinemia patients, (apart from other globulins, clotting proteins)the gamma globulin fraction in particular is dominant with IgM isotype antibody. Therefore, it was fairly easy to enrich, and it was done at many laboratories across the globe including Mayo Clinic, INSERM. In this specific case, it was isolated prior to my arrival and many manuscripts have been published in this regard. It is a shame that as proficient in Immunology that Dr. Hunt is,it missed her radar. Antigen specific antibody isolation from serum was not carried out as the specificity of the antibody was not known at that time.
2: Recombinant version of the serum Isolated antibody has been made ( of several IgM antibody species of different specificities) successfully by molecular biology proficient laboratory people and was documented elsewhere. Alas, this publication also seem to have missed the attention of Dr. Hunt.
3: With regard to the shelf life, I mentioned the overall detoriation of the stored vials of the antibody in its entireity over the period of time. Therefore, Dr. Hunt's criticism stays invalid.

4: My repeated attempts to appreciate the glorious career of one of the fastest person to graduate-Dr. Hunt-remains futile, as a cursory search in Pubmed failed to reveal obvious publications linking Dr. Hunt. It is possible in its entireity that I am not doing an obivous thing. If so, it is primarily due to my ignorance. Your help, Dr. Hunt, in this regard shall be highly appreciated.
Sincere thanks for your time!
Suresh Radhakrishnan.

Thanks for your comment!
Here is the article that was published in Blood earlier that describes the accumulation of mutations in antibodies derived from Waldenstrom's patient serum.

Blood. 2001 Jan 1;97(1):321-3.

Clonal evolution in Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia highlights functional role of B-cell receptor.

I made a comment on this story previously to the effect that this article and the blog-space that follows is not the appropriate environment to conduct a ?trial? of Suresh Radhakrishnan. The matter has been dealt with, presumably in forensic detail, by various regulatory bodies and a decision has been made.

It seems rather inappropriate of Suresh Radhakrishnan to mount a defence of his actions in this forum. It is equally misplaced to mount a case for the prosecution, and to boot, act as judge, jury and executioner. I made the comment that some of my legal colleagues would find this article and Ellen Hunt's first (and indeed subsequent) replies 'instructive' as student teaching material ? in the sense that they could be used to show how trials are not and should not be conducted.

Indeed, a good example of this, with attendant heavy irony, has now arisen: On the basis of the ?evidence? I have presented as an anonymous poster, Ellen Hunt has concluded that I am an attorney. She goes on to say ?You see, "anonymous" it is a well established principle that a person with expert knowledge in an area can tell the world that someone is obviously fabricating. I am such an expert. You are not.?

Oh dear?it is very dangerous to make all these assumptions on this ?evidence? ? which is of course exactly my point.

I was one of those people who finished my doctorate in a bit under 3 years. For this, I was on the receiving end of a great deal of jealousy. that included nasty stories about what I must have done to accomplish that. So I know first hand what that is like, and I must truthfully ascribe it to happenstance. I fell over something unexpected while wandering in a dark closet and walked out with it. Science is like that. What I did was realize I had something strange going on. I remember at the time doing a lot of swearing because things were just not working - AT ALL!

I honestly remember that time as really unpleasant. But it did teach me something. It taught me that when I feel like I am lost at sea, THAT is the scientific moment. When I don't understand what on EARTH is going on, or why - THAT is it! Something is near - perhaps. Might be something silly, but discovery is out there in the dark, feeling around and getting bitten.

The fastest doctorate I have read about was Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD. He started as an undergraduate in 1926, finished undergrad in 1929. He finished his doctorate in 1930 for his work on chitin.

A serious criticism I have of grad school today is that far too many students are anti-mentored. I see this a lot. A professor uses students for hands, and does not help them. Instead they are worked like mules, and their spirits are systematically broken by abuse. I see this far too often. And I think it is rising.

The other side of that, however, is students that stay in grad school who should not be there. They persist just to finish, and damage themselves in the process. Many who are accepted into grad school are just not investigators. Many are, instead, either human encyclopedias or simply not interested in what they are doing. Professors who are unpleasant, unkind, or even vicious don't help, but there are also too many students who just don't belong there and should do something else.

After watching the movie, 'the Informant', the first thing that crossed my mind was that Mark Wisacre had probably fudged all of his dissertation work to get in and out so quickly. Yeah, cheaters have great things to offer science, since many ideas are most certainly correct and few actually change paradigms, you can get science to go real quickly by having the cheats work, especially for pharmaceutical companies where the only loss is human life.

The studies are MEDICAL related. Forgiveness ? Go be a nurse somewhere in India. Imho.

If you have been working for 9 years at the Mayo clinic you might expect that your collegue's know you in person, and know how to judge you. Thing is that they are affraid of their job and don't speak up. This is the employer to blaim for. Things can go wrong, especially when time progresses, and techniques evolve. I don't know what resources you had; probably not the right ones. I believe that the person did not fraud; this can be proved by doing statistics over the data, and with a truth detector. You can also blaim the supervisor as well; maybe more controls should have been built in, maybe more progress criteria should have been built in to avoid that you keep on following the wrong track. Everybody deserves a second chance to prove himself and improve himself
starting in a function with less responsibilities for instance.

I'm sure that the data in many published papers is faked to some extent. There are probably two more pressing issues, however. The first is misinterpretation of the results, including unwarranted speculation and hype (spin). The second is selection of data to support results, and the "dropping" of negative results from reporting. If science journals move to open-access posting of publications, linked to critical post-publication commentary and review from interested individuals, these problems can be addressed properly. In the rush to publish, there are far too few attempts to replicate results (virtually none in many areas), and perhaps too much "professional courtesy" instead of the criticism so valuable to science. Perhaps a rating system (1-5 stars) by reviewers would work better than the current process. Also, all papers should be versioned, so that authors can correct or even retract previous work, and readers need only access the most recent version. Outright dishonesty is obviously something that we do not like, but there are other pervasive forms of misinformation at work as well.

I hope that you include this and my second response to Suresh, together with his explanation.

You see, "anonymous" it is a well established principle that a person with expert knowledge in an area can tell the world that someone is obviously fabricating. I am such an expert. You are not.

It is obvious to me, as an expert, that Suresh has such a poor grasp of immunology, molecular biology, and other aspects of his field that he is not even equipped to be a half-decent fake.

An equivalent situation in the law would be a person selling "legal services" who told you that they had gotten the district attorney to press charges on your tort claim. You pay them a fee for this. Later, when you cannot find any record of the tort, you are told, "Oh, really? The prosecutor must have left it in the rain and it disintegrated."

You, as an attorney, would laugh at such a story if a friend told you about it in a bar. The rubbish doesn't even start to hold together. It's transparent to you, because you are an expert.

So "The Scientist" has seen fit to give this rubbish a platform again I see.

Suresh's modus operandi is overwhelmingly visible. His responses consist of flattery and snow jobs. He even tried his ingratiating flattery game on me. No, this is not a "cultural issue." Claiming so is an insult to the many Indian grad students, post docs and scientists I have worked with who do not play games.

Suresh, your "explanation" you offered to me is flatly ridiculous. It gets an "F" as a lie. It isn't necessary to go past the beginning where you say: "One is serum derived purified IgM version, while the second is the recombinant (molecular biology derived) stable clone of the same IgM antibody."

Suresh, IgM from serum is mixed. (I said this already.) Serum is a mixed mess of everything. There is no known way to purify IgM for a single antigen except with an antigen column. The yield is very low. Granted, you might, just possibly, have done so. However, IF you had done so, then it would be impossible that nobody could purify the same material again using the same antigen column. THAT could have been replicated. Period. End. Stop. Find that animal, and you would have gotten more.

But then you follow this up by claiming that you made a stable clone by molecular biology. Excuse me? First, you said that your IgM was serum derived! So that means you had no genetic material to work with! Without the B cells to start from you could never, ever have tried to start cloning an IgM gene's mu and kappa chains by molecular biology! As a practical matter, is not plausible that you tried to do so without a fusion clone producing your IgM of interest. So that is clearly rubbish.

Second, IgM is a multi-chain protein. Acquiring antibody chain nucleic acid sequences using PCR is a difficult task. It has been done, but it is not easy, and the resulting plasmids are large. If you had managed to do so, and then transfected a cell line with your product, you would, again have had a stable and fully reproducible source of your IgM of interest. You would have had the plasmids frozen. You would have had the transfected E. coli freezer stocks. And, you would have had the transfected cell line.

So, your story, Suresh, is impossible.

1.) You claim freezer degradation of your IgM over 12 months. You say that you aliquoted them, and that many freeze thaw cycles damaged them. But if you had aliquoted them, then you would not have unfrozen them all.

2.) You claim that you got your IgM from serum. But after doing so, you had no antigen column nor ability to make one. You would have needed this column to get purified IgM from serum.

3.) You claim, regardless of the problem described in (2) above that you made a stable clone by molecular biology. And yet, by your words you could not have had the genetic material required for doing so. And if you had the productive IgM fusion clone, that would, itself, have been a stable source of your IgM of interest.

4.) You claim that your IgM was lost.

All those things together are impossible Suresh. They cannot exist at the same time. They are, collectively, mutually exclusive things.

Your snow jobs work on people with a poor grasp of immunology, antibody methods, and lab procedure for molecular biology. For someone who knows the area, your prose is farcical, akin to a childish explanations for why the cookies are gone.

Interesting! I hope that everyone had a great weekend and I hope that they had a Merry Chritmas!

Dr. Radhakrishnan:

Could you provide references for "IgM antibodies constantly evolve by accumulating mutations".

Thanks

When I indicated the university procedures might not be fully forthwright and transparent I meant to hold open the possibility that such procedures could be purposefully manipulated for the university's agenda. I know it is hard to believe but often the truth is secondary in such procedings and even in courts of law. Not just that policies and procedures might not be followed properly/adequately/competently.

Also, regarding the rape reporting procedure analogy. I would like to note that the person raped does NOT necessarily have the option of going to the local police. University police hold jurisdiction and as such crimes are investigated and prosecuted only if the university police choose to do so (local city courts and prosecuters may handle those cases but they mostly have to rely on university police for evidence/statement/etc.). As a university entity, campus police are therefore at the mercy of the university powers that be. Until the Clery act, universities did not want to report crimes on campus because they didn't want the university to look bad so most rape allegations weren't made criminal cases and were referred instead to Dean's office for "investigation". Ironically now, in order to get around the Clery act, universities will try and push jurisdiction for these cases onto city police departments so that the case isn't associated with the university and thus their campus crime numbers can still "look" better than they are (but at least the case is automatically a criminal/legal one then)- although it means the university doesn't have to comply with Clery or Title IX requirements in this situation, not that they would be enforced anyway [see NPR article at bottom]. With universities playing politics with something as criminal and personal as rape, there is every reason to guard against "handling" of misconduct cases in such a manner as to protect the institution at the expense of the truth. Like maybe putting everything on one RA so as to protect the PI bringing in the grant money...

LINK

Points well made and points well taken...

Suresh Radhakrishnan

Regarding the mis conduct in science by Suresh Radhakrisnan at Mayo clinic Rochester, it is most surprising how the tem leader P.I have never verified the result and accepted all the credits along with team members for quality publications. I dont find any reason to blame only Radhakrisnan and fire him.

Regarding an anonymous post: "we can at least consider the very real possibility the institution's findings were, to be polite, less than fully "forthwright" and "accurate".

I certainly don't disagree with this statement, and I don't claim that the system is in any way perfect and beyond reproach. Although there are some flaws in your analogy of a female university student who claims she was raped. First, it is an example of a situation where a complaint is effectively ignored by the institution. A better analogy would be if the accused individual were expelled from the university based on little or no evidence. Second, she has another option besides reporting the offense to the university, since she can report it directly to the police. Of course there are no guarantees of justice even when dealing with the police and the courts, but it's certainly a more transparent process with no conflict of interest on the part of those who are conducting the investigation.

In cases of scientific misconduct, there is virtually no other option than to report the misconduct to the institution, unless there is some clear-cut criminal activity such as violating informed consent, medical negligence, etc. An institutional investigation is certainly not transparent, because institutional investigations of misconduct are to be kept confidential until a conclusion is reached. This is generally required by law, as it is considered part of the individual's confidential employment record. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing for the person accused. It means that the proceedings are closed to the public, so if the institution fails to follow its own policies or otherwise mis-handles the investigation, they are virtually immune to an open and public scrutiny of their behavior.

On the other hand, if a person is found innocent of any misconduct, all of the proceedings are to be kept confidential. In these cases the public should (theoretically) never become aware of the charges of misconduct, and the institution is prohibited from taking any negative action against someone found innocent of misconduct. Some cases are still referred to ORI and may ultimately become part of the public record (but I'm not sure what criteria decides that), but the institution is still bound by confidentiality. As such, there are many cases that we will never be aware of where the accused person was found innocent of any misconduct. I would be very curious to find out what percentage of cases actually end in a finding of misconduct, but the confidentiality issues would likely make this impossible (or maybe ORI could have collected this data).

As a side note, let's stipulate that we are all well aware that just because something is required by law (or by an institution's internal policies) this doesn't guarantee it will be done properly. I thought this went without saying, but perhaps that was a poor assumption on my part.

Regarding Alan Price's comment, "Many other graduate students and postdocs in similar ORI cases that I handled had to get a new PhD mentor, even starting over on their doctoral research and losing years of work. Some dropped out of science in frustration, which was particularly sad. They are the real victims."

In my situation, I did have to start over in a new lab, with a completely new project, after 5 years in my original lab (which was eventually shut down). As one might expect, I debated whether to even stay in grad school. But to put it bluntly, ultimately it was the "screw you" factor that kept me going -- as in "screw you, I'm still going to get my PhD even though you're a big lying liar and I wasted 5 freakin' years in your lab!" But not everyone makes this decision, and I certainly can't blame them for leaving science altogether. My only hope is that they eventually end up doing something that makes them happy -- the reality is that you don't have to stay in academia to be a relatively happy scientist. And you certainly don't have to stay in science to be a relatively happy person.

Formatting the CV is definitely a challenge. In my case I have left out anything with the PI's name, but still listed the technical experience and general area of research that I had worked on initially. I also list all the conferences where I presented abstracts (not including the titles), my travel awards, etc., and other indicators of productivity whenever possible.

But it's still pretty frustrating to have to navigate all of this. After talking with several others for feedback, I decided to simply state that "it became necessary to start a new project in a different lab due to the departure of my PI from the University." It's a bit vague, and could still be mis-interpreted (negatively), but overall I've found that keeping it simple is better - at least in the beginning. If someone wants more detail I will provide it, but I still try to keep it brief and shift the focus onto the work I did in the new lab. In a situation like an interview, where time is limited, I hate to waste it all on a lengthy discussion about the actions of someone who already wasted enough of my time. But this is still no guarantee that potential employers won't wonder what I was doing for 5 years with no papers to show for it.

I'm not trying to hide anything, and in more casual situations (as opposed to things like interviews), if people want to know all the details I don't mind sharing them. The more this sort of thing gets discussed, hopefully it creates a greater awareness of the reality that people do get caught and do face consequences, and perhaps this might serve as a deterrent to some people (although it probably wouldn't deter the worst offenders). I also hope this encourages people to become more familiar with their institutions' (and ORI's) policies and procedures for handling misconduct cases.

I've tried to point this out but it seems the conversation still centers on PI/lab member misconduct ipso facto. If you think administrations and the institution's "investigators" of the alleged misconduct can't/won't/couldn't/wouldn't commit misconduct/lie/cover up/falsify or otherwise manipulate the information (or at the very least misinterpret the information), then you are naive indeed. Thus the other side of the coin is how to address that? This applies to everyone, not just the accused and "found guilty". There is no legal redress for such procedings except wrongful termination, but just try and pull that rabit out of that hat when facing the full resources (possibly tainted) of the institution and their "investigation". Just ask any female university student who claims she was raped only to have the case "handled" by the sham that is the university justice system. I mean when rape claims are only now being forced to be declared and prosecuted by actual law enforcement in many states, how can this type of occurrance hope to receive an actual fair "investigation"?

I don't know if Suresh is guilty or not, but as another poster indicated, we can't make that judgement here. On the other hand, we can at least consider the very real possibility the institution's findings were, to be polite, less than fully "forthwright" and "accurate".

with due appreciation to Betsy and Alan...
suresh radhakrishnan.

I agree with Betsy Rogers, who commented on a case where the PI falsified and fabricated data, was found guilty of research misconduct by the institution and ORI, debarred from federal funding by ORI -- but she noted: "Unfortunately, in cases like this many people fail to consider the numerous victims of this sort of offense... the reputations of all his collaborators have been tarnished . After the papers were retracted, many of these collaborators suddenly experienced significant difficulties in receiving funding and having their papers accepted for publication." The most serious victims of research misconduct are the coauthors and collaborators who get "tarred" with a retracted publication.

When I was Associate Director of ORI, another young scientist called and asked my advice on how to handle such retracted papers: (1) should she remove them from her CV and NIH biographical sketch since they were retracted? (2) If she removes them and a potential employer or grantor sees the paper online in PubMed, then does it appear she is trying to cover up those papers? (3) Or if she lists the retracted papers in her CV and biosketch, should she add an explanation about how the PI falsified the data and was sanctioned for it? Whatever she did, she could not avoid the negative implication of having a retracted paper.

Many other graduate students and postdocs in simiilar ORI cases that I handled had to get a new PhD mentor, even starting over on their doctoral research and losing years of work. Some dropped out of science in frustration, which was particularly sad. They are the real victims.

Someone made a comment that when these cases are brought to trial there is no legal requirement for a jury. Are you sure about that? You might be right -- to be honest I'm not familiar with rules for jury-trial vs. judge-only trials. If the penalty could involve any jail time (as with cases of Federal tax evasion, for example), doesn't this require a jury? I am aware that many judges are now voluntarily seeking classification as "resource judges" and have received specialized training in particular technical/scientific fields. This type of judge would be ideal for such a case, but this training is not mandatory and there may not be a "resource judge" in every federal court district.

Perhaps I should clarify the reasons why I am strongly in favor of criminal charges against serious offenders (and at the very least an appropriate degree of disbarment from receiving grant funding and being allowed to publish in journals, along with termination of employment). I am a former member of a lab where the PI was found guilty of serious misconduct. This PI personally committed multiple instances of data falsification, data fabrication, tampering with experiments, publishing falsified/fabricated data, and submitting falsified/fabricated data on federal grant applications. The misconduct was committed over the course of at least 8 years, and the investigation resulted in the retraction of numerous papers, including two papers in "Science". He was of course terminated from employment and ORI disbarred him from federal funding. His place on the "blacklist" is well-deserved and entirely appropriate.

Unfortunately, in cases like this many people fail to consider the numerous victims of this sort of offense. None of my former PI's collaborators, grad students, postdocs, or technicians were participants in the misconduct. Nevertheless, the reputations of all his collaborators have been tarnished . After the papers were retracted, many of these collaborators suddenly experienced significant difficulties in receiving funding and having their papers accepted for publication. Despite their complete lack of involvement in the misconduct, these collaborators have effectively been "blacklisted" by association.

To all of you out there applying for grants, consider the fact that the aforementioned PI may have beaten you out for grant approval, in which case you he effectively "stole" your grant. This PI received millions of dollars in grant money over the course of the many years while he was fabricating and falsifying data. And how many legitimate discoveries were delayed or prevented due to this misappropriation of research money? All of this money was simply wasted on projects that were based on "imaginary" discoveries.

And what about all the investigators who followed up on that PI's published "findings"? It is impossible to know for sure how much time and money was wasted with follow-up studies by other labs. As one might expect, no lab was ever able to replicate his particular experiments, but for years no one could prove he was doing anything unethical. In fact, for many years no one really suspected him of anything because his experimental methods were very specialized and "tricky" (conveniently).

Of course, there are varying degrees in the seriousness of the misconduct that can be committed by researchers. Criminal prosecution should be reserved for the more egregious offenses. And most certainly a fair amount of misconduct goes undetected and/or unreported, but this is the case with any type of unethical or illegal behavior in society.

When a non-PI member of the lab commits the fraud, I completely agree that PI should share a portion of the responsibility for failing to ensure the integrity of data coming out of the lab. I also agree that some aspects of the grant-approval and peer-review system are flawed, often creating a dis-incentive to conduct truly good science. But I fail to understand the "knee-jerk" reaction that scientists are somehow above reproach and should not suffer serious consequences for intentional professional and ethical misconduct.

In some ways it's encouraging that some scientists out there simply can't imagine how another scientist could intentionally deceive the scientific community and the general public. It reflects well on their integrity that they have trouble imagining. But those who continue to assume that all scientists have good intentions and are interested in the greater good are simply out of touch with reality. In some ways this sort of denial may actually contribute to the problem.

Bottom line - some people are just dishonest and don't belong in a profession that relies so heavily on a mutual expectation of honesty. If someone is not prepared to deal with the challenges (and some inevitable disappointments) involved in conducting good and thorough science, they should seriously ask themselves if they'd be happier in another profession. If they choose to deceive the scientific community and steal grant money from honest researchers, then they should be aware of and prepared to accept the consequences.

thought provoking comments are always welcome....
Suresh Radhakrishnan.

In any situation, the buck stops here (PI) or starts here (PI). You are completely right> What happened to the PI? Nothing!

It is interesting to note that this article has received several comments. As most people think it is up to Dr. Suresh to establish the facts since he is the only person who knows the truth. Either he needs to accept his mistakes (if any) or fight for the justice (like Mahatma Gandhi) if he believes he is made a scapegoat. Apart from this I think he and his former mentor should think if it is possible to generate or isolate another antibody with similar properties. It is hard to believe that it will be impossible to find another one if the published results are correct. I believe the laboratory has established the binding specificity of the antibody and they know the target. I think they can amplify TCR gene from the clone (the original stock) and try to generate a new clone or humanized antibodies from this genetic information. Although I am not familiar with these techniques, I think it may be possible. This or other approaches should provide an opportunity to clear the cloud and re-establish their credential. I believe the work that has been published from this group is important considering the impact factor of the journals. Dr. Suresh may want to consider offering his talent and time (free of cost) to work in his former mentor to achieve this (if they are still in good terms). Best wishes.

In general, I am uncomfortable with the criminalization of scientific error, but the point in question (blacklisting) is moot. If you publish 15 high profile papers that cannot be reproduced by anyone else, you're probably going to get a reputation for bad science that will follow you around for a long time. That's actually how science is supposed to work.

A note to Anonymous Reader [:)] -- I post anonymously, not because I don't want to own my opinions, but because I don't want my colleagues to know I waste my time reading The Scientist on line!

With due appreciation..

If the results in Suresh's papers cannot be repeated, it is Suresh's responsibility. End of argument.

Regardless of the mutational lesions in IgM's and regardless of their thermal stability, somebody ought to be able to follow Suresh's protocol and get a similar result. If this does not happen then this work should not have been published.

Fraud or not, there are plenty of scientists out there (good and bad) that do not have this cloud hanging over them and thus have a higher chance of getting hired.

Science needs to be slow, careful and rigorous...this is the only lesson here for scientists and especially for funding agencies.

Trials for research misconduct would only provide analyses of culpability, suggestions to journal editors for retraction of articles, and bans on future receipt of federal funds. No constitutional guarantee of a jury exists for such proceedings. Many technical arenas, require judges with special training. Attorneys with the requisite skills would soon be garnered from among the many persons who leave the field of science, having, for example, lost their funding. The SEC adjudicates highly technical matters: LINK

If a "piggyback" can be made understandable to a judge, scientific misconduct can be as well.

The writer is still not being honest and open. There is a huge motivation for trying to create high impact results in terms of career progression so the fraud in question is quite logical for a dishonest scientist!

....And despite my strong belief in scientific research as man's best tool for advancing beyond the current system of creating unnecessary products to keep people employed and thereby tolerating the damage many cause to the earth....I find myself agreeing with him.

I agree that scientific fraud must be penalized heavily. Scientists must know there will be severe consequences for dishonesty, especially when it involves research that has the potential to save lives. But we (scientists) are not the authoritarian types who see rules as weapons in a battle between good and evil people. Leave that kind of knee-jerk behavior for all the frightened and angry conservatives out there who cannot conceive of how a law or penalty could actually make things worse despite it's good intentions. And the implementation of this penalty here is a good example of a poorly thought out, knee-jerk reaction.

We must take into account and then balance the fact that his knowledge can - and should - still be put to use. This can be done while at the same time keeping him in a position where fraudulent activity will be obvious or inconsequential to the project's bigger aim. Or how about restricting involvement to areas where there's nothing to be gained by tampering with the research? These latter circumstances apply to virtually every other person in the lab besides the research leader him/her-self, so use what he has as a way of paying back for the damage he caused previously. Criminal courts themselves do it and the penal system isn't exactly a bastion of enlightenment. So why are we engaging in over-simplified, "the laws the law!, once a criminal, always a criminal", 'one size fits all' behavior?

In short, by refusing to use the many skills the person has, it's science and the research community itself that will now lose even more than it has already, despite the best intentions of the punishment. It's irrational, illogical, and therefore deeply unscientific.

I agree with Fred Schaufele's comment 2010-07-15- "there is a risk here. . . I'd watch them closely" regarding those found to have committed research misconduct. There are recidivists among them.

As Fred noted, the common Federal (ORI and NSF OIG) administrative action for falsification and fabrication of research is debarment from receiving any Federal funding for 3 years -- but sometimes 5 or 10 years, and in three Office of Research Integrity cases for lifetime (see notices in the Federal Register. which I assume the poster is referring to as the permanent "blacklist"):

Poehlman at UVM, LINK
Kornak at Stratton VAMC,
LINK
Sudbo in Norway,
LINK

ORI debarred from Federal funding two other, junior scientists twice, when one continued to commit research misconduct elsewhere, and another got the mentor to ignore the debarment order and pay him from her Federal grant (she later had to repay it herself).

In my 20 years of experience in ORI and as a private consultant, it is clear that a substantial fraction of the serior persons found gulity of research misconduct are charged for a few infractions, but there were many more other instances in which they did or were likely to have falsified or fabricated research, but it was difficult or impossible to pursue them all (the records were incomplete or destroyed, they fought to settle the cases with legal agreements that had limitations, or the committees were just exhausted after years of work).

The author starts one of his sentences with, "Without harping too much on the details." Sorry, but the "details" are what science (and the law) is all about.

There's absolutely no way that the readers here can reach a conclusion about these misconduct allegations. We are not able to see all the evidence and hear all the testimony from the involved parties. As scientists, we should know better than to draw any conclusions here, due to the lack of complete data on the situation. The author has many legal options if he truly feels the finding of misconduct was unwarranted. I'm not sure what he hopes to accomplish in a discussion like this, except to ask if there is still a place in science for those found guilty of misconduct.

Is there a place for these people in the field of scientific research? No. Plain and simple. A trust has been broken that can never be un-broken. Case closed. Furthermore, if someone has published falsified or fabricated data in a federal grant application, this is a Federal offense that is punishable by law. Most offenders aren't charged with a crime in these cases, not because they haven't committed a serious crime, but because these cases are very difficult to argue in court. A fededal official once told me that since most of the allegations involve very complicated technical and scientific principles, the average juror (or even a judge) would have trouble fully understanding the charges, which makes a jury trial very impractical.

Someone asked why "The Scientist" published this article? I am asking myself the same question. Is this supposed to be journalism? Why not have an objective journalist collect a variety of opinions from various people on both sides of the issue. That might have actually sparked some interesting discussion. But in this case the author is a non-objective party with too much personal involvement in the situation. Again, disappointingly non-scientific.

Q: Why are many of the replies to this post is anonymous? Who are you afraid of? That answers many questions being asked and replied to in this post.

Anonymous Reader [:)]

Impossible without reviewing all evidence is determining this man's culpability. Appropriate punishment depends on the nature of the fraud. Were a physician to falsify results of a clinical trial leading to approval of a drug, he or she should lose his or her license. Were persons to die, the physician should face manslaughter charges.

Assume, in a hypothetical case, a politically powerful or large grant producing principle investigator knew or should have known of the misconduct. To avoid interdepartmental havoc or funding loss, the institution may entirely blame an underling it deems a rogue.

Such sanction is akin to loss of a physician's license. Academics are not trained to discern such things as subtle equivocation. An attorney independent of the institution should investigate the matter. A trial with a judge and attorneys is vital to ensure fairness and completeness.

Because of few bad elements that falsify their data, many other suffer. This often happens when new researchers extends the research work, or when someone in another part of the world, tries to reproduce the work.

It hampers the new researchers life and career. It takes a hell amount of time to convince PI that the other person did misconduct in research, which raises a question on the new researcher in first place. Who would be held responsible for the time lost in the meanwhile? The only two options available to new researcher is to convince or to quit.

Willfully wrong doing makes life of a specific race, ethnicity severely affected. PIs must not discriminate a person because of someone else wrong doing who belongs to same race/ethnicity. Well, the fact is all fingers get pointed to visible minorities as it is easy to do so. I have seen that people borrow shoulder of visible minority and aliens to fire their misconduct. It's easy .. it is that simple as it is.

And, to be honest, how many articles are true contributions to science. The peer-review process is responsible to make sure that no similar article exists at least in past 10 years, with different title, etc. I know it is a hectic task but that's a responsibility to make sure the publication score is genuine.

Publication score, some facts:
Many researchers change title and content (writing part) of their research paper, present here and there to increase their publication score, or use their influence to get it published as an invited article, etc. ... Such people get lots of scholarships, funding and rise to a higher position very rapidly.

Researchers who want to contribute something new, something different, and something novel, are poorly funded, suppressed because of low publication score, or have little influential position. No one bothers to look their contribution to science. There exists many examples in the history.

How do you suppress young minds? Take a look on the fact.

More often many competing researchers suppress others young researcher by rejecting a true contribution in science for no good reasons.

Even if the authors have presented their work in the conference way ahead of the competitors, no one cites to their work because then competitors work becomes questionable. A sufferer would be the one who later decides to publish his work, and it won't be accepted.

A plea to all researchers and reviewers. Please note, science is a platform to help build a better earth, not to compete. All problem arises because of the competition from one another. In order to win this race, people start looking different means to achieve success.

Please contribute to science with your true self. Although, it is a multi-dimension heavily biased game and there is no word called unbiased in the field of science.

Several things bother me about this attempt to get a blacklist removed.

1. There seems to be an assumption that the investigative committee did not look into all the facts. Since we don't have them all, it is pointless to argue the specific merits of this particular decision. People are assumed innocent until proved guilty. The offender was proved guilty, so don't rush to judgment and assume the investigators are guilty of misconduct without evidence.

2. There is an amazing hubris in the idea that the science that might be done by the offender cannot be done by anyone else. If there is one lesson from the history of science it is that when the facts are in, many people come up with the next advance almost simultaneously.

3. Science as a profession depends upon being able to trust the results published. Reinstating plagiarists or fabricators is a sure way to increase both activities and lower the trust that the rest of the community has in the validity of published material.

4. These offenders have shown a lack of ethics. While not in any way equating the two situations, this same "ignore the ethics" argument could have been made about the Nazi doctors from the concentration camps. I am sure that they could have discovered something after the war, or even made a competent family physician, but their ethical crimes justified society saying "No way". If you don't draw a bright line, then you have to take the indefensible moral position that some wrongdoing is OK.

Although I do not know the details, it seems that there may be an evidentiary issue and there may be a case for reconsidering what the appropriate actions might be. Is there any direct evidence of falisification of data or is it the case that guilt was assessed without direct evidence? Certainly if there is a lack of or inadequate documentation i.e. notebooks, instrument readout raw data and electronic data, this would sound more like a sound case for sloppy science for which the PI and all involved are responsible. However, without direct proof of falsification blacklisting may an inappropriate response. Perhaps, there should be criminal or civil penalties for proven falsification which would require court proceedings before a judge with formal presentation of evidence to provide a uniform standard of proof or as much as can be expected. I was in a lab where another graduate student was dismissed for falisifaction of data proven with direct evidence. It's not pretty and not everyone wanted to believe the accusations until proven beyond a doubt.

In my opinion, the PI too should face consequences since the PI should have ultimate accountability for maintaining standards (ethical and professional) in the lab environment.

However, if the PI has a sound reputation, brings in lots of US fund dollars, then the institute (and especially the dark and mysterious confines of the Dean's Office) must and shall do anything in its power to protect the funding potential and reputation of the PI. Who cares about post-docs and junior faculty anyway - the host institute and medical school doesn't !! Of course I am being facetious, but you get my drift.

Sound feed-backs indeed!
Suresh Radhakrishnan.

Well Suresh look at the bright side of all this. If you were the CEO of a major public Pharma company, say the former Schering-Plough, you could have failed to update SOPs in clinical operations and manufacturing, fudged the records a bit, caused 2 or 3 10% corporate world wide workforce reductions then taken a $50 million golden parachute (on top of your stock options and $16 million annual salary) then go on to sit on the Board of directors for Colgate Palmolive while your head henchman would go on to sit on the board of directors for The New York Times (and direct the liberal media?s opinion of similar corporate thieves). Heck, you only fudged the data (allegedly).

Someone who tampers with a co-workers experiemnt is simply beyond imagination.

Wow, are there people really that illogical working in science. Basing conclusions on limited evidence (and I'm being kind). Using the "it has been this way for me for years and therefore MUST be that way for everyone and everything for all eternity" argument. Really?

Someone should have flunked her science exams if they can't think of any instance where aggregation of receptor, NOT simply binding them, is necessary to activate a pathway. Someone should have flunked her science exams and be bounced from faculty (if she insists on using this article as an example of defined guilt) if she can't even understand why IgG is different than IgM.

Take exception to Suresh's arguments but at least be competent yourself before you declare absolute total guilt of the judged.

By the way, ask an antibody producer if their monoclonal producing cell line has ever mutated (stopped making the antibody, lost binding activity, etc.). HA! Extending shelf life stability of an IgG used for flow cytometry to meaning ALL antibodies are completely stable for decades for any use you care to put them to...now that is laughable and really shows who the fraud is...Give me a break Helen...

Oh, and the tampering comments. Don't know what evidence they really had but boy is it easy to think someone is messing with your experiments in these situations. A fellow grad student was bounced from a lab I was working in. Up to that point I had NEVER had a problem with a particular cell line that we shared. Next thing I know, every flask is contaminated. Did I suspect my own ineptitude? Nope, that disgruntled grad student was messing with my cultures...duh...

It is indeed wonderful to hear your opinions-this way or that way!

Blacklists serve the purpose of acting as a deterrant to others. It is similar to the criminal justice system, as they say, "don't do the crime, if you can't do the time". If you take that away, what will stop anyone for committing fraud openly. In this age of thousands of journals and hundreds of thousands of labs, and everything linked to publications, there is so much incentive to commit fraud for publishing one's work.

Suresh: I have the following two options for you, sorry for being blunt:

1. If you seriously feel that you were wronged by the institute, go after them. Tolerating wrong is as bad is doing it. It appears that you have some credible explanation for your experiments, that your supervisor and ex-labmates were out to screw you, and that your institute did not conduct a fair and transparent investigation. I don't know if you are just lame or not smart to realize it. How can you say such nice things about your supervisor after all this is beyond me. You got nothing to loose now. Sue Mayo and the entire lab-team for wrongful termination. There are quite a few employment lawyers who would salivate over this case, after all Mayo is big fish. In any case, they have done all they can, what you got to loose now?

2. If the case against you stands or if you know that you might have indeed committed fraud, then your career in science is and should be over. No one will want to risk the prestige of their lab or projects by associating your name with it, no matter how small your role. Its tough on you to find a new line of work, but you are a PhD, apparantly smart enough to do many things, so find another line of work.

I am writing this because it seems you are still hoping that someone would have mercy on you and give you a break.. sorry not gonna happen.

Stop wasting your time on forums writing to annonymous crowds, and pick an option to run with. Will save you a lot of pain..

We don't know what exactly happed with Dr. Suresh but few facts are certain:

1. PI is not punished side by side, this single fact is very disturbing. What is Pi's job then? as many have written it is CEO shwo is responsible for major fault in the company, here it is only the question of small lab and few scientist and few experiments, if PI has little interest he/she can find out within no time the facts just by visiting the lab and seeing the critical step this was not done by PI and he blame's it to the Post-doc! I want to tell PI that he is f**king a** ho** himself I will certainly kick his **s if I happen to meet him personally then god bless him! (this is my early emotions actually I don't do this!)

2. Science is full of the people who has come to science because of any other reason then actual scientific curiosity, this is evident with falling quality research, and the science manager is forced to evaluate the scientist on the basis of the impact factor etc etc which is not so meaning full, a genuine scientist who is curiosity driven researcher may or may not stumble upon the workable idea so what?

3. There is no democracy in research -if the Post-doc is not getting Positive results then Pi only have to see him with sad face and tell "how I am going to get the new grant and maintain him (post-doc) so that is signal for the post doc to start "creating" results. this is very true for if the post-doc is from the country like India or china as he has then to leave the country if grant is not renewed that is a big trauma so that is the way it goes.

4. Now the question is will Suresh will get the scientific Job? my answer is NO as no scientist today will link his name with Suresh although they may be right now doing the fraud!!!

5. My suggestion to all this problem is start the many global research labs (outsourcing the research) and then the PI has only to give his idea and money to the lab, the central lab then process the ideas and give the results to the PI this will ensure the third party verification.
NO professor will like this as most are "guilty" some where or other I am cent percent sure!!!!!

6. if I had the funding I would certainly taken Suresh in my lab as -if he can fool the lab Pi for 8 long years then he must me genius!

I am with you Suresh.

God bless Science.

I must emphasize, based on my experinece, that neither Dr. Pease, including his laboratory members, nor the Mayo Clinic practice discrimination-racially or otherwise-in any form or fashion and that is a fact.
The idea behind this write-up is to identify objective view points from intellects of a wide background and importantly to find the ways and means to establish a third party data validation system when it is at its infancy.

I don't agree that just because it is a "big" lab or because it is "time-consuming" to verify work done by your personnel, a lab chief can get away with anything they do. If that was the case, no executive in the World would be accused of any wrong doing by their company. It is ironic that people are very eager to accuse the CEO of a company for wrongs-done by any of their hundreds or thousands of employees but when it comes to labs, lab chiefs can get away with this kind of gross negligence. It was going on for 8 years, there were more than 15 papers published. The supervisor does not have a prayer. I guess the people who are justifying his actions are the ones who are themselves lab chiefs and want to stay away from accountability. And this is very relevant. In the light of above, any allegation the lab makes, such as "tempering" with repeat experiments is unreliable as they would say anything to make their case and destroy this researcher.

It is only is science that an executive decision maker of a lab or organization can escape by scape-goating a subordinate.. I wish BP's CEO or President Bush managed a lab..(ok agreed Bush running a lab is funny but the point is valid)..

Misconduct comes in flavors - accidental oversights to deliberate fudges. Mix in the flavors of motivation and one has a potent cocktail. Question is, while science to a good extent is self-policed and 'honor' driven, when things go wrong who should be the judge, jury and executioner? It is in this last selection that objectivity goes out the door and bias creeps in. In an ideal world, a committee comprising third party subject matter (not necessarily content) experts, convened before the fraud is publicly mentioned whould look just at anonymized data, consider any other evidence, pronounce its verdict and the matter would then be publicly reported. The accuser and the accused should be out of the loop and provide answers via an appointed intermediary. But, we live in the real world with all its biases, colors and motivations, and hence involved parties (and institutions) have their vested interests (and reputations)to protect. The process is neither transparent, nor fair, and inevitably in a situation like this Mayo case, there is a hovering smell of a fall guy being blamed but everyone else involved, including the eager PI who puts his name on all publications without cursory checks paint an "aggrieved, we-were-done-wrong" picture. Even criminals are rehabilitated, so there is nothing wrong in Dr. Radhakrishnan calling out for a "fraud allegation clearing-house" to make the process more objective and minimize collateral damage. I was also amused at Ellen Hunts poor choice of words and personal attacks on Dr. Radhakrishnan. She appears to be scientifically trained, so at the very least her approach should be scientific - focused on issues and not personalities. Mayo thought Dr. Radhakrishnan worthy of hiring based on his track record and intellectual abilities. One sure hopes she did better.

Big labs often have many people doing independent work. If you have to stop what you are doing to reproduce a colleagues work because you want to 'trust but verify', this is not a recipie for a productive lab.

Many journals have taken steps to make sure that images are not manipulated, duplicated from other sources, or that the text is not plagarized. The peer review process can focus on the quality of the results and the conclusions drawn. It is not within their power to investigate if the data has been faked, and in the case of many of these assays it would be impossible.

But this is NOT ths story of Suresh Radhakrishnan. Not only was his data questionable, and unrepeatable, but as his lab stopped everything they were doing to try and recreate his work, he was found to be TAMPERING with their experiments, clearly trying to cover his tracks.

Why in the world should he be allowed back into a research lab?

It is very hard to get someone on science-fraud these days --- VERY little accountability. Science is for sale to the point that where I live there is no independent medical review or science-data available for toxic-waste that was burned for profit here over ten years. It was kept secret - and even though the EPA/DOJ proof was finally released - the secret is still being kept.
So I don't agree with this man's argument. Examples need to be set and he was caught. I am hardly sympathetic with his blacklisting because regular citizens experience blackballing and blacklisting all the time trying to get scientific TRUTH revealed (I am one of them). So why should people like me suffering economic collapse for doing the right thing have pity for a scientist who was convicted by his peers for falsifying data?

There were more than 15 papers published with this "allegedly' fraudulent work over almost 8 years (since 2002) in very high profile journals like J. Exp Med, J. Immunol, and PNAS. What the f*** was the lab chief doing all this time? This smells of extremely bad supervision and total lack of checks and balances in the lab. As a former post-doc, in my lab as a ground rule, every "surprise/astonishing" finding was put through an independent analysis by others. Many a times, we went through this time-consuming but peer-review validation of work before my supervisor would agree to send the paper in for publication. That lead to fewer but extremely high-quality publications. In this case, Dr. Peese was apprantly very happy with the results till he started on an expensive clinical trial, presumably privately funded, where the background research would need to be tested vigorously. When he realized that there was some issues with the results, he quickly decided to frame a foreign post-doc in his lab. How is it possible that 15 papers were published and no one, not even a tech, in that lab knew anything about this supposed fraud? How come only one person was accused? How did it go on for 8 years in the same lab? Why did the institute conduct its own investigation but did not care to get an independent outside investigation team to find "all' involved parties? I guess it would be a much bigger PR disaster if you find that one of our so-called greats was actually sloppy, careless and irresponsible at the least. It is far easier to blame a post-doc for everything. I guess Mayo is the one trying to cloud the issue.

Regarding Hunt's comments about flattery... lets not try to color someone's cultural courtesy into brackets. It is cultural issue where Indian students/post-docs do the suprvisor-worship. We might not understand or agree with it, but that kind of terminology has no place in this forum. Suresh still has nice things to say for his suprvisor who clearly screwed his entire life. Suresh even said good things to Hunt, is that flattery too!!!

As someone who travels across the world auditing research for frauds, someone who is trained in due-diligence for industrial projects, and someone who has been a lab-researcher himself not so long ago, I can guarantee that this is case of face-saving by Mayo. If indepedently investigated, it would lead to black-listing the lead investigator and some others in his lab, and possibly closing the lab. It would also lead to findings of ethics violations by the insititute that targeted one individual while turning a blind eye to all others. If this investigator was not a foreign post-doc, presumably on a study or research visa, he would be suing the institute for wrong-full termination..

Sometimes you need to pay for the sins of others.

I fully sympathize with Dr Radhakrishnan. What the hell were peer reviewers of the journals concerned were doing ? I have badly suffered due to a similar incidence with the fact that the student concerned clearly admitted her fault to the journal concerned as well as to the original author. In spite of this University of Pune put the entire blame on me using the student's cofession letters/faxes as the raw material for framing charges. Most importantly , the University never bothered to summon the student for the enquiry process but instead assured that if she cooperated she will be benefitted. Unfortunately , in our country , the judiciary is blind about the entire research process and did not bother to understand the entire event. I am fighting a lone battle against this gross injustice caused to me amd my entire family since 1994. Can somebody help in raising my voice louder ? Dr Radhakrishnan may please remember that everybody will be happy till he brings glory to the institution and will dump him as soon as the newspaper headlines begin to appear. I am willing to deliberate on this issue. Thanks.

Dr Vinay Rale

As previous posters have already mentioned, the issue behind the retraction was not only the repeated experiments using blinded protocols which failed to show any previously reported activity, but also the tampering of these repeat experiments. This has been clearly stated in a previous article in The Scientist. The retraction for one of the papers is as follows:


"An investigation by the Mayo Clinic has determined that one of the researchers in Professor Pease's laboratory at the Mayo Clinic, ****Dr. Suresh Radhakrishnan, tampered with another investigator's experiment with the intent to mislead toward the conclusion that the B7-DCXAb reagent has cell activating properties.*** (emphasis my own) Using blinded protocols, experiments were done to see if the results based on this reagent could be replicated. Specifically, the repeat experiments examined the activation of dendritic cells, activation of cytotoxic T cells, induction of tumor immunity, modulation of allergic responses, breaking tolerance in the RIP-OVA diabetes model, and the reprogramming of Th2 and T regulatory cells. In no case did these repeat studies reveal any evidence that the B7-DCXAb reagent had the previously reported activity. The authors of this paper therefore wish to retract this paper because of the inability to reproduce key aspects of the studies and hence the results in them cannot be considered reliable."

I am sending this article and Ellen Hunt's reply to two of my colleagues who teach law. I think they will find the article itself and the reply 'instructive' and may use it as teaching material.

The purpose of narration was not to seek forgivence and acceptance as a researcher.The aim of this piece was to generate a debate with regard to the fate of this group of people in science and education. The ultimate goal is to identify effective means of establishing-at least in theory-a third party data verification system which shall completely eliminate formation of a "cloud" on any data emanating from any laboratory located at any place in this world.
with much appreciation...
Suresh Radhakrishnan.

What I mean to say is that further down the ladder those who generate and report the data my be forced to sycophantically appease their superior?s (or fall on their own sword's). And rather than the PI reinventing the wheel they simply "trust" the report without scrutinizing the data in full detail.

What's really important; beating the other lab(s) to the scoop; getting with the colleagues for a biz discussion over a brew; or answering the necessary questions to the peer reviews? Sometimes "good science" should mean "no politics".

Anyway the VP or director level will simply put all those that could be a problem (whatever that means) out to pasture. The lucky ones will get noticed the rest of us will simply get left behind.

It really isn't. Commenting directly on the issue of this researchers misconduct had the lab used due dilligance in it's attempts to recreate the prior experiments data it would be quite clear if the IgM in question had degraded or was a 'mutant' variety. Though in that case it would be more appropriate to lable the functional IgM as a mutant, as presumably the data was beyond replication. I can only assume that all due dilligance was used in this verification as it would seem the work had been considered important and to scrap a clinical trial is a bit much. Unless of course the author is accusing them of misconduct as well?

Which leads me to my comments with regards the blacklisted scientists. There are reasons to give a 'blacklisted' person in any feild a second chance. For example blacklisting can occur as a result of differences/arguments with people who are very influential (within an area or field). Or can occur due to circumstances unrelated to a persons work. But in the case of fabricated/falsified data or other forms of scientific misconduct I can't imagine not being suspect of those who have been accused or convicted of it. Even for menial work, the potential always exists as a posibility. And for participation in blinded studies the potential also exists, though not perhaps for the same reasons, and perhaps not with the same results. Data is easy to fudge and it would seem all too many people are glad to do it, from cleaning up a gel picture with photoshop to reducing the error present in a study.

It is at the discretion of an institution/company if they want to take a chance on someone who has been blacklisted. And though you may be able to get someone with a higher level of education/experience for a lower financial price. What is the cost if the offence is repeated? What is the cost of always having to double check results or use advanced auditing trails (though audit trails are wonderful, I use them to tell me who broke what and how) just to make sure your lab is misconduct free? Erasing the 'blacklist' so to speak, beyond your own personal efforts to convince people of your integrity puts the institutions at risk.

If indeed no misconduct was done by you, then there was misconduct or at least failure of dilligance by those attempting to reproduce your work. Which, while not an overt statement by you, is really the option available to you. If you ever get an opportunity and can prove your misconduct charge was false, more power to you. If you can't the unfortunate truth is that the ball is in your court, not that of the scientific community at large to clear your name.

(From blogs.nature.com)
LINK

"According to Robert Nellis, a Mayo Clinic spokesperson, researchers in Pease?s lab began to get different findings in working with the antibody than those the group had previously reported in published work. They tried unsuccessfully to replicate those experiments.

Pease then turned to the Mayo Clinic authorities, accusing Suresh Radhakrishnan, a researcher in the group, of tampering with their attempts to validate the past work.

An investigation launched by the institution found Radhakrishnan guilty of scientific misconduct. The institution fired Radhakrishnan, and the lab decided to retract all of the published work containing data that could not be verified, Nellis says. "

I am thankful to Ms. Hunt for her comments.
I apologize for not being clear about the source of the antibody. There are two versions of the antibody. One is serum derived purified IgM version, while the second is the recombinant (molecular biology derived) stable clone of the same IgM antibody. The then proposed mechanism of action in activating T cells is an indirect or in trans, wherein the antibody stimulates a master T cell activating cell, the dendritic cells. Assuming that all the withdrawn manuscripts were intact, the antibody molecule does not cause direct activation of T cells, as measured within the sensitivity of all the experiments. The reason for the need for intact pentamer for activation was that the ten binding sites on the petamer would gather multiple signaling molecules, while the monomeric form in itself is in-competent in performing this function.
There are numerous reports that have demonstrate that serum derived IgM antibodies from Waldenstroms patients do contain variants (mutants) of the otherwise predominant clone. Moreover, the purified antibody-both the serum derived and recombinant origin that were aliquoted and stored in -80, when subjected to repeated freeze-thaw have shown to accumulate degraded versions ( verified by SDS-PAGE). This along with the presence of mutants in combination can perhaps dilute the agonistic version of the antibody, while also containing antagonistic versions of the mutants may cause an inhibitory effect-directly by binding to dendritic cells and inducing a negative signal or indirectly by preventing the agonistic version of the antibody species to bind the right receptor or both-is within the realm of a biological possibility.
As rightly underscored by Ms. Hunt, IgG antibodies are very stable proteins, and, because of the high affinity of the IgG antibodies ( AID induced somatic hyper mutation, class-switching mediated by cytokines-both of T cell origin and due to TLR engagement- as a result of a productive T-B interaction resulting in germinal center formation leading to affinity maturation due to antigen presentation by follicular dendritic cells-which has the unique ability to present intact B cell epitopes, unlike other antigen presenting cells, culminating in the generation of plasma cell- of both long lived and short lived- that have down regulated the B cell receptor-while expressing Syndecan-I molecule- which is dependent on the expression of the transcription factor, Blimp-1, leaving behind a high affinity B cell receptor bearing memory B cells in the spleen of mice or bone marrow of humans to mount an anamnestic response later in life. Because this process of generating a new version of the antibody with high affinity occurs in the absence of demonstrable negative selection-a process to eliminate self reactive antibody formation- other mechanisms including receptor editing has been proposed as a mechanism to prevent autoimmunity) the amount of IgG needed to a) to bind and b) to activate is significantly lower than the IgMs. However, this low affinity of the IgM antibodies is compensated by the high avidity- more binding sites-and this could also be a plausible reason for the need of an intact pentamer molecule. I once again extend my deepest appreciation to Ms. Hunt for her comments, without which I would have omitted the detail of the antibodies used in the experiments. The background information provided is based on some ground breaking studies from as early as Tonegawa?s lab ( nobel prize with David Baltimore) to Fred Alt?s lab at MIT to Tasuko Honjo?s lab(AID) at RIIKEN, Japan, to Jason Cyster at UCSF ( Spingosine receptors and B cell migration) to Chris Goodnow, Australia ( B cell tolerance) to David Nemazee ( National Jewish) and Tomihiro Kurosaki ( Japan) (B cell signaling) to Calame?s lab ( Blimp-1 ) , New York. Special thanks to Dr. Pease for impeccable guidance during this project.

Suresh Radhakrishnan.

Google the author's name and 'misconduct' and you'll see that he's responded with a long-winded screed to any blog post relating to this incident.

It's really disappointing that The Scientist gave him this platform.

Yes, IgM antibodies are notoriously unstable. But what he omitted from his 'editorial' here is buried in one of the retractions - as the members of the lab were attempting to recreate his work, he tampered with their efforts. It is that misconduct which ultimately sealed his fate.

LINK

Not fully representing this whole story, and not offering a comment from someone involved in the investigation, seems like a particularly poor editorial choice.

Sometimes, it's good to look at the facts (and of the many comments here, only Hunt's seem to do that). I am not an immunologist, but I was quite astounded by some of the statements Suresh offered in his defense (antibodies unstable????)

I know that strange things happen in science, often for reasons that are unclear or come out later (e.g., many years ago a major animal supplier mishandling inbred mouse strains). On the other hand, it is unfortunate that carelessness and lack of integrity are the more prevalent cause. Some years ago, I asked a scientist at a meeting about his recent Nature paper reporting an exciting result for an experiment we also had done but didn't publish because there was no difference. He said "Oh, you're right -- we can't repeat it either." Don't go looking for the retraction.......

The question in the posting is framed as 'should those found to have participated in scientific misconduct be allowed back into the scientific work force'. In the United States, I believe that the standard penalty is something like a disbarment from an ability to receive federal research grant support for five years.

I personally consider scientific misconduct to be worthy of a longer penalty than that. So I view the current penalty as being extremely favorable to those found 'guilty'. After (and even during) that time period, the decision about whether to hire such an investigator is a personnel decision made by the prospective employer. Many of those (including me) will say 'There's a risk here'. I'd be prudent to hire somebody else with similar capabilities, if available. I still would consider the candidate, pending convincing mea culpas. After that, I'd watch them very closely.

The article does bring up the issue of due process for those found to have participated in misconduct. This person has had an independent institutional review. That process has not believed his claims of happenstance. We know that institutions make such decisions very carefully. We also are aware that the decision sometimes, but seldomly, could be in error. Thus, those found guilty also have the option to appeal those decisions, although the finding stands unless shown otherwise.

An investigator could appeal to the Office of Research Integrity or may even sue through civil court. Until shown otherwise, I will not be persuaded sufficiently by the investigator's claims that the independent insitutional investigation was in error. That is why it is so important for him to use other mechanisms to convince me. Posting an appeal on The Scientist is not convincing.

Back to the beginning of my rant, when faced with a hiring decision involving someone found guilty of misconduct, I certainly will not entertain the hiring of somebody who persists in saying 'I did nothing wrong'. In this case, the outcome was deemed sufficiently clear for the instituion to take some pretty drastic measures. He either clears that finding by appeal or he convinces me that he knows right from wrong and will never do that ever again.

Since nature is ever changing, therefore the findings of today may not be equally accurate forever. I therefore suggest, that on these bases a scientist must not be blacklisted. However, he should be given more chances to reevaluate the findings. This will be in the greater interest of the science and society. Blacklisting a scientist is really a kind of terrorism against intellect.

I don't know the details of this case. All I can go by is the article, and discuss things said in it based on my knowledge. Strictly based on what Suresh has written, I am certain of his guilt, and more than that, his incompetence as a scientist in his field. I will take it point by point with bullets.

- A specific IgM's activation of T-cells.
Since antibodies can exist that bind to virtually anything, of course a T-cell activator could occur. IgM seems a strange choice though. Why use a pentamer when the effect would be from the epitope binding site? That is weird. Yes, it could work, and I have no doubt an IgM could be found, but you would need a stable clone to produce it. And for clinical use you would probably want to do the molecular biology on that clone to be able to preserve the binding site for posterity. If someone came to me with this, I'd say, "Fine. But how are we going to take this anywhere?" This also points to the PI, whom I suspect decided to use it to get money, and perhaps trusted Suresh too much. (Yes, virginia, PIs can trust postdocs too much.) Inconclusive.

- Potency of purified antibody experiment gone awry.
There are many things that cause activation. They all amount to stimulating the appropriate receptors and cytokine cascades that interact with genes. An experiment could accidentally be screwed up, or it would be the easiest thing in the world to do it deliberately. I'd have to look at it more closely to see if there was any other evidence. Inconclusive.

- It does not make logical sense to falsify data.
This argument doesn't stand up. The logic of all criminal activity depends on valuing the short time horizon over the long term one. All crime is logical, the question is what is valued. Postdocs fake results because they want to please. Postdocs fake results because they are desperate to get something published to move on. They usually think that they won't get caught. Most often, they are correct. It all depends on judicious choice of what to fake. Anything going to clinical trial is a bad choice. This item is also inconclusive, but it is a semantic null.

- IgM evolves accumulating mutations.
Ah, Suresh, here you reveal yourself to be trying for a snow job in your article here. This is a very suspicious statement. Yes, Ig is subject to somatic hypermutation in vivo. But it is a specific process. It requires an intact organism stimulated by antigen. If not, then antibody production companies would dispense with immunizations of animals, don't you think?
A producing clone is stable, and does not undergo this process. If you harvested from a producing clone, that clone will stay stable, period. Believe me, if this wasn't true, a fairly large industry producing antibodies would be in serious trouble.
But later, Suresh, you refer to frozen antibody. Ah, Suresh, this is a conflict in your exposition. No antibody that has been produced EVER mutates. It can't, because it is a protein product.

- The alternative suggestion of expiration of shelf life.
While I have not used pentamer IgM's that are old, I have used quite a few ancient IgGs. I have used antibody that was over 10 years old without problems. I have used Ab's over a decade old that had been stored at 4 C for that matter. Ab's are VERY stable proteins. They don't "degrade" without serious mishandling or action of bacteria. For you to suggest that your IgM had problems with a 1 year shelf life? Ahem!
I also find it curious, Suresh, that you would suggest, implicitly, that ALL of of your precious antibody went through too many freeze-thaw cycles. A bench scientist who hasn't heard of aliquots is a fool who doesn't deserve an appointment anywhere, least of all the Mayo Clinic. (And please note again the glaringly obvious conflict between this explanation and the previous claim of mutations.)

- Suresh goes on to say that data to address this doesn't exist.
Sadly, Suresh, you seem to have flunked basic immunology prior to entering your postdoc at Mayo. You see, Suresh, the data exists in basic immunology books. How you managed to obtain your position at Mayo and still be unable to make such a fool of yourself in public as you did in this article with these glaring errors is a good question. It speaks volumes about the lack of real interviewing by your PI. Perhaps your PI was overly trusting? Perhaps you are good at flattery and socially manipulative, and like many scientists your PI was new to that.
Your article's content starts with flattery, moves on to providing obviously ridiculous explanations to those versed in the field, and closes with an emotional appeal. That leads me to suspect the latter reason as how you got your appointment - flattery and manipulation. You're good at it. It worked on many who posted here who don't know the field well enough.


- The glaringly obvious "Dog that didn't bark in the night."
Suresh, you never mention the frozen clone you would have needed. If you didn't have one, why? How could you ever dream of moving through to clinical trial without one? That, Suresh, is incompetence.
And you refer to serum, not supernatant. Why? Was this IgM of yours merely a chance component purified out of whole serum? If so, that's ridiculous to move forward with. It is of no significance whatsoever unless you were able to complete the onerous task of sequencing the entire protein.

Frankly, an undergrad who couldn't see through the incompetent snow job in this article after completing an immunology course would get an "F" from me. I am keeping your article Suresh. I plan to use it as an example. So I thank you for providing such a clear example to throw at undergrads to test them. I encourage immunology professors everywhere to use this article by Suresh as the excellent teaching example it is. Let us immortalize Suresh for posterity this way.

Not only am I quite certain that Suresh is guilty as charged now, I am even more certain that he is an incompetent scientist. The chutzpah! Suresh, you haven't got the competence to do anything but blow smoke in an obvious snow job on the community of scientists who have been beleaguered by cheating undergrads for years? You sure take the cake. You really do.

Off with you! You deserve all the opprobrium you have gotten! Go to do something you are fit for! Bother us no more.

faithful in little faithful in much.....unfaithful in least unfaithful in much said Jesus. Yet He works with people...

mercy, justice, and trust.

it's an imperfect world


if you get booted off the boat swim.

The results of an investigation of scientific misconduct should only be made public if the proceedings of the investigation itself are public. Even then, institutional investigations of research are intended to protect the institution, not to protect "science". They are inevitably self-serving, and unrelated to the good of the scientific community as a whole. The findings of secret investigations are no more credible than the scientific misconduct that they are alledged to have "found".

Public blacklisting recalls the witch hunts of the McCarthy era, and de facto blacklisting is an unfair labor practice. Until the scientific community, as a whole, establishes a fair, public and lawful method of discerning scientific misconduct, the results of institutional internal investigations should remain suspect, since there is no established method of appeal to an impartial body.

Scientists who trust published results of research which cannot be reproduced are not very good scientists. Those who judge such results as misconduct based only on institutional investigations and resulting "convictions", are yeilding power over science to those who probably did not ask for it, or earn it, or even want it!

The practice of withdrawing published articles is merely to protect the publisher's reputation, not to protect "science". It is NOT an impartial judgement worthy of any recognition other than to say that it occurred. Unless there is a court issued document of a public fraud conviction, the withdrawal of publication should be done "without prejudice" toward the authors. Any scientist or institution who judges an author based merely on the fact of publication withdrawal, or based on implied misconduct, is being patently unfair and unethical, not to mention unscientific.

All this said, the current situation in the scientific community is the result of a system of aristocracy, not democracy. Fear of losing one's reputation is the guiding factor, as it was in the days of other hierarchical "honor-based" systems. The hierarchy of education is called merit based, but those who decide merit are those in power, not representatives of the public or the scientific community. Even the NAS and NSF are highly politicized, though they tend to be more democratic in nature.

In the past, the free exchange of ideas in science has been throttled by publishers, special interests, powerful institutions, self-aggrandizing parties, and the most dangerous of all, nationalism. Changes in this system, due to the public nature of the internet, may have both good and bad effects, but the changes WILL democratize this system eventually; have no doubt about that.

In the meantime, those who have been wrongly convicted of scientific misconduct can only hope for a champion, perhaps an ombudsman in the NAS, to bring out the facts for public scrutiny and exonerate the innocent. The case of David Baltimore comes to mind.

The article reads exceedingly lame to say the least. Second chance? Sure, please go somewhere else where integrity isn't as important.

The current check-and-balance system is already very lax. If someone is caught red handed, I'd say, GUILTY!! (Whether of fraudulent activities, poor judgement, under-performance, or simply lack of high-quality intelligence) In either case, rigorous science is not the best place for such a person.

It is interesting to me that so many statements like 'every criminal in history is not guilty' can be parsed in more than one way, often giving rise to nearly diametrically opposed alternate meanings. FWI, nut jobs or not, the innocence project has proved with DNA evidence that many people are in jail for crimes they didn't commit.
I don't have much sympathy for people who engage in systematic fraud driven by payoffs (e.g., by drug companies) or desire for publicity (e.g, animal clone frauds), but this always comes out in the end. The idea that all errors are due to fraud or inexcusably sloppy science sets the bar for mistake free practice so high that many of the greatest scientists in history would have had to resign in disgrace if it were applied to them. I am reminded of Linus Pauling retracting his erroneous DNA structure. Maybe you think that Dr. Pauling was so sloppy that he should have been drummed out of science for that, but I am wiling to cut Linus a break for old times sake, and because I know that I am not god-like and sometimes screw up myself. If people get so scared that they are afraid to publish their work, the pace of progress will slow down to a crawl. I want to see a pattern of 'mistakes' or some hard evidence before I'm willing to label anyone as any worse than mistaken. I have no idea from this article whether the author is guilty or innocent, but the idea that anyone convicted by any tribunal must have been guilty is in itself a demonstrable error at best.

The links in this essay are must reading, for they provide much more information about the matter. While some 15 papers were retracted as a result of the alleged misconduct, there was also a claim that the fraudulent papers had not made any impact on their field of research. The obvious question is why the papers were published in the first place if their impact was so minimal--with or without the misconduct? Perhaps the investigation should have been expanded to determine why the PIs invested so much time and money in research having no impact, even if no fraud had occurred.

Forrest M. Mims III
www.forrestmims.org

In my research, my results were always better than when other people in the lab and at other institutions tried to duplicate my results (within the same time course). The blind testing, looking over the shoulder while conducting the experiments and the looks from both my colleagues and P.I. (in my lab and others), while I understood why, were extremely hard on me both physically and mentally. I was suspected of falsifying data. While I was able to prove that in my hands the experiment just gave better results (to this day I do not know why), I still carry with me the stigma and I am not allowed to forget for one minute that every where that I go, (extremely hard to get a job) people do not forget. I am gray-listed. I have been forced to take jobs that I am not interested in the subject matter and my colleagues treat me with disdain but at least I can continue conducting research (which I love).
Everyone is "not guilty" even people who are on death row. Everyone deserves a second chance or a least a chance to be heard. To keep prejudice (politics as usual) out of the accusation, it should be conducted by a third party. Period. This way it has more semblance of impartiality.
One question - What is this crack about moving to Jamaica? How can someone be so insensitive.

Scientists acting in good faith should not be "blacklisted". It is encumbent upon the scientific community to reproduce findings and to highlight those instances when data cannot be reproduced. The reason for this is the nature of science. Science is investigational, we cannot be 100% sure that anything we observe is correct, reproducible yes, but not necessarily "true". Some data will almost undoubtedly be a "false positive", with a cause that cannot be immediately (or perhaps ever) discerned by the investigators. Worse yet, the result could be true but the necessary conditions may have changed such that the result now appears to be a "false positive" (A good fictional example occurs in "Medicine Man" with Sean Connery).

For these reasons, if a finding cannot be verified, the appropriate course of action is to call the finding into question, not necessarily the scientist with the finding. Yes, there are those in the profession who might seek to deceive and gain a bad reputation. But it is upto the scientific community as a whole to act on those reputations. Institutions shouldn't make public pronouncements of misconduct. Institutions certainly have a right to dismiss such investigators, but instituitional proceedings are not infallible either and may not provide incontrovertable proof that misconduct has occurred.

As a community we should excercise the greatest care (and perhaps restraint) in accusing other scientists. Standards of evidence should be appropriate to the difficulties of science, not the opinions of a small group.

Think! Imagine that results that took you years to gather, that have always be reproducible in your hands, that you have sweated over and truly worked hard to verify and substaniate, have been called into question by another lab or group that can't make it work. What should they do first?

While the presentation by this person seeks to cast doubt on the findings of misconduct in this specific case, I believe that in general a finding of serious misconduct, such as falsification of data, should result in permanent banishment from science. Science is not a job, it is a calling that demands the highest ethics. How many of us ever read a paper with the degree of skepticism that the results might be faked? Of course they could be, but generally we trust what is reported. If that trust is ever lost, then the entire system is at risk. Therefore when it is proven that a scientist lacks the ethical structure to make appropriate decisions, then this person has demonstrated to me that he or she has no place in science. As for the field losing a valuable resource, hogwash. Scientific writing has until very recently been in passive voice for a very good reason. We accept that we are just the discoverers of the secrets of nature, and if not we, then someone else would have made the same discovery. It is the height of egotism to claim that we need people who cheat. Even though these people actually theoretically have a second chance, usually being banned from receiving an NIH grant for 5 years, I cannot imagine why I would ever hire a person who has proved he or she lacks integrity. Integrity is something that one either has or does not have.

In this case, it seems that the experimenters were guilty of extremely poor science at the very least, if not fraud. The "explanation" of a shorter half life than expected is nonsense. Positive controls are included in experiments for precisely this reason. Not to have included them is grossly negligent. Every scientist has experienced irreproducible results, which is why positive controls are included.

Retracted Articles and deception

In grad school, we performed an experiment infecting cells with viral DNA. We followed the experiment perfectly, and continued to get negative results.

Then we watched the professor do the same experiment and he did it exactly according to the procedure. Viola, it worked.

Just because an experiment cannot be reproduced does not imply dishonesty.

It happens all the time. So, cut some slack. The second most dangerous word in human language is the verb, ?To Assume?. And that is what the critic are doing, assuming? And assumptions have no place in science.

In fact, a very large number of scientific articles make this assumption, and these assumptions are often accepted as ?truths?. This is especially true in the biological/medical science where our test object has a very broad biological variability.

The first most dangerous word, by the way, is ?Hubris?.

Ron Hansing, MD 7.15.10

If indeed there was NO misconduct the only way this situation could be overturned is via a separate independent investigation.

Unfortunately I see nothing in this missive that says what the author should have done differently to improve the quality of their research and to have avoided any implications of improper conduct. Unfortunately also, both the work and the researcher will always be suspect for either having a lack of scientific integrity, or at best having done very poor, unsubstantiated, research.

A scientist found guilty of misconduct and whose guilt has been made public, if allowed to continue investigating will probably become one of the most reliable researchers! Simply provide oversight to insure that a cloud of unreliability will not hang over his/her work. To throw out such an individual from the research field is a waste of society's economic investment in his education.

Everybody deserves a second chance... How many big shots have published papers, that have been proven to be complete artefacts? Loads!

To me, the question is not whether we should give a scientist who committed fraud a second chance - I don't think we should. But maybe we should give those convicted of fraud a second chance because they might not be guilty.

It would seem that the whole story is not being included here, perhaps they are part of the details that are not being harped about. If indeed there were good possible explanations for why the discrepancies could have arisen, and if these possibilites had been investigated and were deemed valid then the conclusion of misconduct should be unfounded.
If the other possibilities were not investigated or ruled out before the person was fired, then it speaks to a failure of the system to prove misconduct. I think everyone would agree that all possible explanations need to be considered before taking the steps of blacklisting anyone.
Don't know the whole story here, but would hope that the appropriate investigations are done before accusations of deliberate misconduct are levelled.

The innocence project is apparently full of nut cases for thinking at least some criminals are NOT guilty of the crime for which they were imprisoned- despite having proven exactly that.

Judah Folkman came quite close to being ostracized and many in fact found him guilty of "irreproducible" results early on. Only his big name status kept him from getting bounced before he could be demonstrated correct. Many now believe he should have been awarded a nobel.

Irreproducible results doesn't seem sufficient to produce a finding of misconduct. As a rotating grad student I mixed up a couple primers that ultimately cost a senior grad student about 6 months of work when his studies yielded irreproducible results (fortunately caught relatively early).

So yes, I would be inclined to cut some folks a little slack in certain circumstances. That said, it is a bit naive to think that cases like this don't have other motivations (political, monetary, personality, etc.). Such determinations should be predicated on having all the information available. This isn't generally possible since the instition likely wouldn't release all the information that went into the finding.

A scientist is like a judge of the Supreme court. If he commits a major offence in the line of his profession or calling, he cannot be allowed to continue in that profession or calling. A bad egg is a bad egg, and you cannot honestly say "parts of it are excellent!"
If the offence is not related to his profession or calling, and if it is not a major crime, leniency can be shown.
The use of the ancient word "peer" in relation to scientists is also in conformity with the above thought.
Two important findings in most investigations of fraud in science (that I am familiar with) have been (1) that the erring scientist had been held in high esteem till the discovery of the fraud; and (2) that ?cheating? is never limited to single instances, but has pervaded the entire careers of the guilty persons; ("Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus"). The inference is that none of the research work of the involved individual can be trusted. In fact, it is even more serious than that, because all the culprit's associates, students, and so on will also come under a shadow of suspicion.

I am sure the researcher is aware every criminal in history is "not guilty".
He should be able to find another job in Jamaica for instance.
He 'may' be capable of destroying years of hard work and he will not be accepted by anyone in any research department.
He is now 'tainted' and will have to accept that fact .
Imho ..

It could be true that some researchers might have been implicated in wrongdoing erroneously. However, when others are struggling to find positions in research, I wonder how people with some stigma (real or false) will be considered.