Medical Writing, Editing & Grantsmanship

As foreshadowed by a news piece and letter in Science previously reported here … note the passage of time since this case came to light as well …

Notice is hereby given that ORI and the Assistant Secretary for Health have taken final action in the following case:

Based on the report of an investigation conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and additional analysis conducted by ORI in its oversight review, the US PHS found that Elizabeth Goodwin, PhD, former associate professor of genetics and medical genetics engaged in scientific misconduct while her research was supported by grants R01GM051836 and R01GM073183.

PHS found that in grant application 2R01GM051836-13, Respondent knowingly and intentionally:

• Falsified Figures 5A and 5B by reusing figures from two of her earlier published papers and falsely labeling them to claim results that had not been achieved in her laboratory.
• Falsified Figure 7B by reusing a figure from one of her published papers and both relabeling it to claim she had detected the STAR-2 protein rather than the TRA-l protein actually detected and modifying the image in the application to disguise its origin.
• Falsified Figure 8C by using a figure produced by one of her students and relabeled it to show that RNAi treatment of C. elegans led to increased expression of the TRA-2 protein when this result had not been obtained by the student.
• Falsified the table on Page 20 of the application showing phenotypic frequencies of worms expressing star-2 (ok483) mutants by significantly overstating the level of aberrant phenotypes and fabricating certain categories of phenotypes not seen by the student conducting the research.

PHS finds that in grant application 1R01GM073183-01, Dr. Goodwin knowingly and intentionally:

• Falsified Figure 5 because she used the same two lanes in both Figure 5 and Figure 7, although they were flipped horizontally in one of the figures to disguise their reuse. In Figure 7, the lanes illustrated an effect on laf-1 during developmental stages of C. elegans, and in Figure 5, the same lanes purportedly illustrated an effect on laf-1 noncoding RNA. A witness testified that the result in Figure 5 had not been observed, while that in Figure 7 had, indicating that the claims for Figure 5 were falsified.
• Falsified Figure 8 by reusing photographs prepared by a student that identified the location of rRas-l expression in adult worms and claiming instead that the images illustrated the location of laf-1 mRNA. The images had been enlarged and cropped to disguise their location.

Dr. Goodwin has voluntarily agreed, for a period of 3 years, beginning on July 22, 2010:

(1) To exclude herself from any contracting or subcontracting with any agency of the U.S. Government and from eligibility for, or involvement in, nonprocurement programs of the U.S. Government referred to as “covered transactions’ pursuant to the HHS Implementation of OMB Guidelines to Agencies on Governmentwide Debarment and Suspension at 2 CFR 376, et seq.; and

(2) To exclude herself from serving in any advisory capacity to PHS, including but not limited to service on any PHS advisory committee, board, and/or peer review committee, or as a consultant.

Update: Hauser has resigned from Harvard to to pursue “some exciting opportunities in the private sector” and some “extremely interesting and rewarding work focusing on the educational needs of at-risk teenagers” but may return to teaching and research “in the years to come.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education today reports on an internal Harvard document (a statement by a former research assistant given in 2007) as part of the obscure Marc Hauser case that describes

how research assistants became convinced that the professor was reporting bogus data and how he aggressively pushed back against those who questioned his findings or asked for verification.

The former research assistant described the motivation for coming forward as a concern to “make it clear that it was solely Mr. Hauser who was responsible for the problems he observed … [and to] help other researchers make sense of the allegations.”

So what happened?

The experiment tested the ability of rhesus monkeys to recognize sound patterns. … If a monkey looked at the speaker, this was taken as an indication that a difference was noticed. … the experiment in question was coded by Mr. Hauser and a research assistant in his laboratory. … [the research assistant] found that the monkeys didn’t seem to notice the change in pattern. … [Hauser] found that the monkeys did notice the change in pattern—and, according to his numbers, the results were statistically significant.”

Okay – big discrepancy as to who saw what and how they interpreted what they saw. Solution? Have a third researcher analyze the tapes, which is what a research assistant assigned to analyze the two sets of data (Hauser’s and the RA who did not see the monkeys recognize any changes) suggested. A graduate student agreed. Hauser did not.

“I don’t feel comfortable analyzing results/publishing data with that kind of skew until we can verify that with a third coder,” [wrote the research assistant assigned to analyze the data] …

“i am getting a bit pissed here,” Mr. Hauser wrote in an e-mail to one research assistant. “there were no inconsistencies! let me repeat what happened. i coded everything. then [a research assistant] coded all the trials highlighted in yellow. we only had one trial that didn’t agree. i then mistakenly told [another research assistant] to look at column B when he should have looked at column D. … we need to resolve this because i am not sure why we are going in circles.”

Given earlier studies whose findings were questioned when independent scientists reviewed Hauser’s videotapes, this is not surprising. The research assistant and graduate student took the initiative to get to the bottom of the discrepancies themselves:

The research assistant who analyzed the data and the graduate student decided to review the tapes themselves, without Mr. Hauser’s permission, the document says. They each coded the results independently. Their findings concurred with the conclusion that the experiment had failed: The monkeys didn’t appear to react to the change in patterns.

They then reviewed Mr. Hauser’s coding and, according to the research assistant’s statement, discovered that what he had written down bore little relation to what they had actually observed on the videotapes. He would, for instance, mark that a monkey had turned its head when the monkey didn’t so much as flinch. It wasn’t simply a case of differing interpretations, they believed: His data were just completely wrong.

So, complete fabrication in this experiment. Perhaps much of Hauser’s career.

As word of the problem with the experiment spread, several other lab members revealed they had had similar run-ins with Mr. Hauser, the former research assistant says. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. There was, several researchers in the lab believed, a pattern in which Mr. Hauser reported false data and then insisted that it be used.

Recall, too, that the original Globe report noted that “Colleagues of Hauser’s at Harvard and other universities have been aware for some time that questions had been raised about some of his research …”

After three years of investigating, Harvard took steps to have the scientific record corrected (retractions) but did not acknowledge, despite apparently knowing, the type of misconduct that led to these errors or what the errors were, leaving this to ORI – which will take additional time, perhaps years, to complete and report its investigation.

In the meantime, perhaps the scientific community can begin to sort out how to reassess the state of the field, and at least Hauser won’t be engaging in his special sort of mentorship, as described by the whistle-blowing research assistant: “The most disconcerting part of the whole experience to me was the feeling that Marc was using his position of authority to force us to accept sloppy (at best) science.”

this time at Harvard, which has put Marc Hauser on leave for “misconduct” following 3 years of investigation (Duke watchers take note). At least one and possibly a passel of papers are likely to be retracted, but no one is quite sure why.

According to the Boston Globe, the editor of one of the journals does not know the nature of the misconduct:

The editor of Cognition, Gerry Altmann, said in an interview that he had not been told what specific errors had been made in the paper, which is unusual.

[from the retraction: “An internal examination at Harvard University . . . found that the data do not support the reported findings. We therefore are retracting this article." and "MH accepts responsibility for the error."]

Neither does at least one co-author:

Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University and one of the co-authors of the paper, said he drafted the introduction and conclusions of the paper, based on data that Hauser collected and analyzed. … “I never actually saw the raw data, just his summaries, so I can’t speak to the exact nature of what went wrong.’’

However, everyone seems to have been “troubled”:

Colleagues of Hauser’s at Harvard and other universities have been aware for some time that questions had been raised about some of his research, and they say they are troubled by the investigation and forthcoming retraction in Cognition.

Two other papers co-authored by Hauser, one in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and one in Science, are also under review.

The work had been funded by the NIH, the NSF, and Harvard’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior program, so perhaps a future ORI report will be more enlightening.

The Globe article goes on to summarize a prior incident:

In 1995, he was the lead author of a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looked at whether cotton-top tamarins are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. Self-recognition was something that set humans and other primates, such as chimpanzees and orangutans, apart from other animals, and no one had shown that monkeys had this ability.

Gordon G. Gallup Jr., a professor of psychology at State University of New York at Albany, questioned the results and requested videotapes that Hauser had made of the experiment.

“When I played the videotapes, there was not a thread of compelling evidence — scientific or otherwise — that any of the tamarins had learned to correctly decipher mirrored information about themselves,’’ Gallup said in an interview.

In 1997, he co-authored a critique of the original paper, and Hauser and a co-author responded with a defense of the work.

In 2001, in a study in the American Journal of Primatology, Hauser and colleagues reported that they had failed to replicate the results of the previous study. The original paper has never been retracted or corrected.

Well, now everyone will be watching to see what PNAS does.

A quote by Michael Tomasello toward the end of an article sums up why this (and other reports of misconduct) are important:

“If scientists can’t trust published papers, the whole process breaks down.’’

Author of the “Moral Mind”, Hauser is apparently currently working on another book entitled, “Evilicious: Explaining Our Evolved Taste for Being Bad.’’

Indeed.

Update: I just learned of even better blog coverage of this strange tale, including links to all the articles in question, with plenty of other items of interest to keep your eyeballs on that page.