Immunity to Observation

Immunity to Observation * Note: This article is from the book (Traitors of Truth: Cheating and Deception in the Halls of Science) for more please check out the book. One morning in March 1979, an unusual letter arrived at the strict offices of Robert Berliner, dean of Yale Medical School, accusing two members of his faculty of massive scientific crime; plagiarism. However, the general behavior of many actors in events is strongly, if not completely, represented by how many scientists conduct their daily research. In tracking the actions and attitudes of those who are caught up in the event, it is useful to keep in mind the ideals that scientists say guide their behavior: impartial commitment to the truth, judgment of people, and argument. This letter, which fell on Perlner's desk, came from a young researcher at the National Institutes of Health. The researcher accused Yale researchers of stealing dozens of passages from an unpublished manuscript and including them in a research paper of their own. She questioned the "reliability" of their data, hinting that Yale's study had crystallized from nothing, and closed the letter with a request for an investigation. Soman’s chief scientist and co-author of the study under investigation, Philip Felig, was a distinguished researcher who published more than 200 papers, received 15 medals and awards, and received an honorary degree from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, a Nobel Prize donor. He held a distinguished position, serving as vice president of Yale Medical School and head of the Endocrine Research Unit. The papers told of the experiences of six women with anorexia nervosa (pathological aversion to food). Equipped with enough information, Perlner wrote to a young NIH researcher that there was no doubt that the study had been done, and that Suman had been reprimanded, writing to her, “I wish the matter would be considered finished.” But she didn't. For the next year and a half, she took Helena Wachslicht-Rodbard to send letters and make phone calls threatening to convict both Suman and Flegg at national meetings and threatening to quit her job. She knew the plagiarism was completely between her. She wanted to investigate the study as a whole, arguing that it was full of seemingly better-than-required data. ... The withdrawal took place after a year and a half of Soman's fraud. By the end of May, Yale's pages had been sent to pull nearly 12 papers. A little more than two months later, at the beginning of August, a faculty committee at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons forced Fleg to resign for failing in part to tell the full story from the start. Following one of the most serious tremors in the history of biomedical research, the directors continued, albeit in sometimes unknown ways. Nothing about Suman’s life in India was known to the scientific community. Flegg was rehired after his case was reviewed by Yale Medical School for more than three months. In addition, he is no longer an associate editor of the American Journal of Medicine. Since he has not been convicted of any personal liability for any fraudulent act by a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Health, a large grant has been renewed for him. He hasn’t given up on the research team, but more than a decade later, researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm wrote about a project that could yield three or four papers. In addition, he was still working on five team projects in Yale, though he said he had become more cautious about signing a paper in which one of his subordinates developed a new style. “When the senior scientist is not fully informed, he or she should be more careful in reviewing the original data of the junior scientist, otherwise his or her name should not be included in the paper. I think it would be advisable for him or her to seek advice from outside experts before allowing the material to be published in the name of the senior scientist.” Helena Rudbard finished her residency in internal medicine and began her own practice. As she told her friends, the research work no longer retains the same standing as it once did. Of course, some experiments are based on fabricated data: but Suman’s fraud was a mechanism that highlighted the actual patterns of behavior and trends of a segment of the scientific community. The researchers are officially committed to the search for truth, but the day-to-day management of their activities is not that abstract ideal. It is the race to reject competitors and colleagues that motivates them. When the New England Journal of Medicine asked Fleg to review the manuscript of Rodbard, he could see the cards in Rodbard’s hand without seeing what he had in his hand. The elitism that permeates the world of research ensures that the glories of science celebrities and their agents will be more widely noted than the equivalent works of lesser-known researchers. Philosophers and sociologists assert that skepticism keeps science pure by rooting out any bad or falsified research. Sources: 1. William J. Broad, "Imbroglio at Yale (I): Emergence of a Fraud," Science, 210, 38-41, 1980; "Imbroglio at Yale (II): A Top Job Lost," Science, 210, 171173, CI 1980, American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2. Helena Wachslicht-Rodbard et al., "Increased Insulin Binding to Erythrocytes in Anorexia Nervosa," New England Journal of Medicine, 300, 882-887, 1979. 3. Helena Wachslicht-Rodbard, letter to Robert W. Berliner, Dean, Yale University School of Medicine, March 27, 1979, p. 2. 4. Fraud in Biomedical Research. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-Seventh Congress, March 31—April 1, 1981 (U.S. Government Printing Office, No. 77-661, Washington, 1981), p. 103. 5. Philip Felig, handwritten memo to Robert W. Berliner, Dean, Yale University School of Medicine, April 9, 1979. 6. Vijay R. Soman and Philip Felig, "Insulin Binding to Monocytes and Insulin Sensitivity in Anorexia Nervosa," American Journal of Medicine, 68, 66-72, 1980. William Broad - Neoclass Wade — Source: Brahin Center website - Published on 2018-10-13 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/articles/science-scientism/حصانة-ضد-المراقبة