Scientists should be familiar with the ethics of research and are expected to behave responsibly. Therefore, the Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) suggested compulsory courses of ethics for all university students of science and engineering. Plagiarism, improper collection of data, fabrication of data, multiple submissions, and publications of similar data, the gift of authorship and conflict of interest are the most common scientific misconducts.
This article presents a case study on the dishonesty and falsification of data of a Ph.D. student. Sezen Began, a graduate student of Dr. Dalibor Sames Research group at the Columbia University in the City of New York published six research papers in C–H activation as a first author while she was doing her Ph.D. Several researchers who are interested in C-H activation could not reproduce Sezen’s work, therefore, informed Dr. Sames about the issue.1
Dr. Sames assigned two of his graduate students to reproduce Sezen’s reaction. However, the students were unable to reproduce the reaction and ultimately were fired by Dr. Sames from his research group due to their experimental shortcomings. Dr. Sames assigned one of his most intelligent students to reproduce the reaction again. The newly appointed student consulted Sezen’s handbooks that she left in the laboratory, nevertheless, found no important information about her research. In fact, he found that the last date recorded in her notebook was June 9, 2003, although she worked there till 2005. Additionally, he found that Sezen altered NMR spectra and the same NMR spectra were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
After an initial inquiry, Dr. Sames found that Sezen Began never had an account in the NMR instrument logbook. Furthermore, the laboratory manager informed him that Sezen never ordered any elemental analysis of her synthesized compound. Soon after, Dr. Sames realized that Sezen falsified the data. Due to the importance of Sezen’s findings in pharmaceuticals and fuel industries, Dr. Sames took steps to correct the science.
He launched a complaint against Sezen on November 7, 2005. In 2006, Dr. Sames retracted three articles from the Journal of the American Chemical Society.2 The Office of Research Integrity of the Department of Health and Human Services reported 21 counts of scientific misconduct, including data fabrication, plagiarism, and falsification and finally declared that Sezen Began was not eligible for receiving any federal funding for a period of five year.2 Additionally, Columbia University revoked her Ph.D. degree. This story imparts the importance of data integrity, the honesty of coauthors and the mentor-student relationship in the research community.
References:
- The Sezen Files – Part II: Unraveling the Fabrication. (Unfortunately, they have removed the post recently)
- Findings of Misconduct in Science. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2010/11/29/2010-29867/findings-of-misconduct-in-science#citation-1-p73084 (accessed Nov 27, 2020)