Sarah Rothman | For scientists, falsifying data is the ultimate crime

In the spring of my first year of graduate school, my thesis advisor sat down our whole lab group for a meeting and announced that he had been accused of something awful. He told us he was going to fight it, and then he left the room.

My first thought was that it had something to do with his research. I wasn't working for him long enough to suspect anything unethical about his work, but I thought the worst thing you could accuse a scientist of was fabricating his work.

Turns out I was way off.

Apparently, the worst thing you can accuse that scientist of is rape.

But that's beside the point.

There is a reason my mind turned to research fraud first. It's the worst allegation you can make against a researcher and now, thanks to judicial precedent, conviction of research fraud can land you in jail in the United States.

Last June, Eric Poehlman was sentenced to jail time for fabricating huge amounts of clinical research while he was a tenured faculty member at the University of Vermont. A major investigation conducted jointly by the University of Vermont, HHS's Office of Research Integrity and the United States Department of Justice determined that fraud stretched back 10 years through Poehlman's career. Not only did he fabricate data in papers and in talks given at conferences, but he used false data to obtain grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

While it seems odd to consider fabricating data as serious as crimes like drug use or rape, recall that, in this country, research is often publicly funded. Obtaining those funds with false pilot data or using the money to obtain data that you will manipulate before reporting it constitutes theft.

The public trusts that government resources are allocated for the most carefully planned, controlled, necessary and verifiable studies. They also trust that results, particularly those related to our health, can be verified and built upon in future work.

So perhaps jail time isn't off the mark.

Aside from eroding the public's confidence in science, researchers who falsify data end their careers. Papers are retracted, tenure is revoked, apologies may be issued but, in some cases, entire countries are shamed. Consider the highly publicized case of Woo-Suk Hwang, the stem-cell researcher in South Korea who retracted two major research papers from the journal Science. For those of you unfamiliar with the research world, publishing in Science is about as prestigious as you can get. Hwang's results seemed too good to be true, and, in the end, they were. The incident caused the international science community to seriously question how Korea was regulating stem-cell research. It also called into question the peer-review process.

Peer review is what gives scientific research validity.

Data are criticized, studies are repeated and verified before publication. It's only after rigorous questioning and review that scientific manuscripts are accepted in scientific journals where they can be read, referenced and built upon. Peer review is what gives scientists authority. When researchers like Poehlman and Hwang find ways of faking data that still make it through this stringent review process, it undermines all science. And when Poehlman goes as far as obtaining coveted NIH funding under false pretenses, he is offending the many researchers whose valid work is turned down for grants and abusing his position and influence as a researcher.

Before sentencing him to prison, the judge at Poehlman's hearing offered the following insight: "When scientists use their skill and their intelligence and their sophistication and their position of trust to do something which puts people at risk, that is extraordinarily serious . in one way, this is a final lesson that you are offering."

As for my thesis advisor, his final lesson for us has yet to be determined - he pled no contest to the rape charge, and was sentenced to house arrest. Although he will be re-sentenced, it's unknown what his new sentencing will include and for now, he has yet to serve any jail time. It seems research fraud carries a heavier sentence than rape.

Poehlman's research career is essentially over. My former advisor may still find a research position, though certainly not back at Penn. He managed to find a job in Italy during his house arrest. Though he may spend time in jail, and his character has come under rigorous scrutiny, his reputation as a scientist remains intact.

Nonetheless, I chose a new advisor shortly after that lab meeting.

Sarah Rothman is a fifth-year Bioengineering Ph.D. candidate and 2002 Engineering alumna from Fayetteville, N.Y. The Sounds of Science usually appears on Mondays. Her e-mail address is rothman@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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