The Marmot’s Hole

A University of Pittsburgh panel has cleared scientist Gerald Schatten of scientific misconduct. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The finding by a University of Pittsburgh panel that reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten made many mistakes but did not commit scientific misconduct in his collaboration with Dr. Hwang Woo-suk struck many observers as fair.

“I think it’s obvious that Schatten really was, in many ways, a victim,” said Glenn McGee, founding director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College.

Though Dr. Schatten may have failed to do everything he could have to uncover problems with the research, he did not participate in the fraud and was taken in by the false reassurances made by the South Korean researcher, the panel said.

Glenn McGee, founding director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College, praised Schatten for blowing the whistle on Hwang and refusing to play “tit-for-tat” with the South Korean side:

He [McGee] also praised Dr. Schatten, not only for blowing the whistle on Dr. Hwang’s fabrications, but for “not playing tit for tat with the South Koreans” after the charges became public.

Some Koreans accused Dr. Schatten of criminal behavior and made statements about him that could be slanderous. But Dr. Schatten stayed mum after he announced the break with Dr. Hwang and asked Science to retract the stem cell paper.

Some of those accusations included ones that the U.S. scientist was trying to steal patents, that he leaned on Hwang for an SNU professorship, that he was a dick to the Korean press, that he demanded money from Hwang, that Schatten was on the verge of getting sacked by Pitt and that he demanded 50 percent of the patent shares and control of the World Stem Cell hub.

Schatten was not let completely off the hook, however. The panel found him guilty of “research misbehavior.” From the New York Times:

The misbehavior, in the panel’s view, lay in the fact that Dr. Schatten let himself be listed as senior co-author, even though he had performed none of the experiments, but “shirked” the responsibilities of verifying the data, “a serious failure that facilitated the publication of falsified experiments in Science..”

The paper explained:

The panel’s report, from which the university released just a summary, outlined the commingling of interests that developed after Dr. Schatten met Dr. Hwang in December 2003 at a conference in Seoul. Dr. Hwang told Dr. Schatten that he had cloned human cells, but that Science had just rejected his paper.

Dr. Schatten volunteered to help revise it, the panel said, and “lobbied hard for publication of this paper in Science, without any direct knowledge of the veracity of the data.”

The paper was published in March 2004. The two men then began planning the 2005 paper, the report said, and early in the process Dr. Hwang invited Dr. Schatten to be the senior author.

By convention, a senior co-author receives major credit for the research and carries major responsibility for the accuracy of the data. Dr. Schatten accepted Dr. Hwang’s offer, even though he had done none of the research and was not in a position to verify its accuracy.

A panel at Seoul National University has established that no human cells were cloned.

Dr. Schatten entered into the relationship with Dr. Hwang “not only to help a colleague whom he admired,” the panel said, but also to gain some “reputational enhancement.” He nominated Dr. Hwang for foreign membership in the National Academy of Sciences and a Nobel Prize.

At the same time Dr. Schatten accepted $40,000 in honorariums from Dr. Hwang and asked for a $200,000 research grant, which he hoped would be renewed every year.

And here are the money shots:

The panel, whose chairman was Dr. Jerome Rosenberg of the university’s research integrity office, noted that Dr. Schatten’s effort to distance himself from Dr. Hwang and his publications stood “in sharp contrast to the full participation of Dr. Schatten in the media spotlight following publication of the paper.”

And:

Dr. Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, said Dr. Schatten’s behavior was “a textbook example of divorcing credit for papers from responsibility and accountability.” It is acceptable to discuss a paper’s merits with an editor before submission, but not during the review, Dr. Rennie said.

Let no one forget that Korean prosecutors have asked Schatten to come to Korea to face questioning.

I expect Baduk to offer his commentary.