School of Arts and Sciences

Ethics Forum Cases

This is a suggested list of alleged and/or proven cases of less than ideal scientific or scholarly conduct. The case titles are listed at the top. Below the list of titles are descriptions of each case and links to resources to help you begin to investigate the case.

At the bottom of the list of titles will be a link to the form on which you submit your research program or department, the names of group members, the name of your faculty mentor, your faculty mentor’s e-mail address and your selection of the case your group would like to present. We suggest that you select three cases, listing them in order of preference.

You may submit a case that is not on the list. If you submit a case not on the list, please provide a short description, noting the key person or people involved and the nature of the ethical misconduct.

We will confirm group selections as they are received. We hope to have selections from all groups confirmed by Monday, June 9, so that you can begin to prepare the case you will present to your peers at the Ethics Forum on Friday, June 20.

CASE 1: Tyrone Hayes, the Herbicide Atrazine, and the Syngenta company

CASE 2: The Thalidomide Story

CASE 3: Polywater and the Role of Skepticism

CASE 4: Bubble Fusion

CASE 5: Giving Proper Credit

CASE 6: Abderhalden’s Defense Enzymes

CASE 7: The Darsee Case

CASE 8: Woo-Suk’s Stem Cell Research

CASE 9: Chandra’s Patented Multivitamins

CASE 10: Laetrile

CASE 11: Cold Fusion

CASE 12: Big trouble in the world of "Big Physics"

CASE 13: Elements 116 and 118 are Discovered

CASE 14: VIOXX

CASE 15: The Cyril Burt Affair

CASE 16: Plagiarism in Theses: The Ohio University Case

CASE 17: The Plagiarism Problem

CASE 18: The Bellesiles Case

CASE 19: What’s on Your Resume?

CASE 20: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: “Doing Bad in the Name of Good?”

CASE 21: Stanley Milgram and the Obedience to Authority Experiments

CASE 22: Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger Disaster

CASE 23: Participants in Research studies

CASE 24: Robert Gallo and the Discovery of the AIDS Virus

CASE 25: Science and Industry

Click Here for Case Study Selection Form

CASE 1: Tyrone Hayes, the Herbicide Atrazine, and the Syngenta company

“In 2001, a scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, doing research for Syngenta on its herbicide atrazine discovered that low doses (0.1 ppb) retarded the sexual development of male frogs. Syngenta blocked the scientist, Tyrone Hayes, from publishing his finding. Hayes eventually obtained funding from another source and published his results.” [Dear Colleague Letter, March 16, 2007, from John J. Baker, President, University Senate, University of Pittsburgh]

  • “The Story of Syngenta & Tyrone Hayes at UC Berkeley: The Price of Research” A Berkeley Scientist Says a Corporate Sponsor Tried to Bury his Unwelcome Findings and Then Buy His Silence , GOLDIE BLUMENSTYK, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 31 October 2003 (http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i10/10a02601.htm).
  • “[The above article]… asserts that a scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, Tyrone B. Hayes, says that a corporate sponsor tried to bury his unwelcome research findings and then buy his silence. Based on our knowledge, that is a total misrepresentation of the facts, and we wish to set the record straight.” A Letter to the Editor, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 December 2003. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i16/16b01701.htm
  • Pesticide Education Project web site: http://www.pested.org/involved/tyronehayes.html

CASE 2: The Thalidomide Story

“Thalidomide was developed by German pharmaceutical company Grünenthal. It was sold from 1957 to 1961 in almost 50 countries under at least 40 names, including Distaval, Talimol, Nibrol, Sedimide, Quietoplex, Contergan, Neurosedyn, and Softenon. Thalidomide was chiefly sold and prescribed during the late 1950s and early 1960s to pregnant women, as an antiemetic to combat morning sickness and as an aid to help them sleep. Unfortunately, inadequate tests were performed to assess the drug's safety, with catastrophic results for the children of women who had taken thalidomide during their pregnancies.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide; accessed 4 May 2004].

  • Prof. Roald Hoffmann (chemist, Nobel Prize Winner) wrote a short Chapter on Thalidomide in his book, The Same and Not the Same. Prof. Hoffmann’s chapter provides insight into what some call "shabby science" and "even shabbier sociology".

CASE 3: Polywater and the Role of Skepticism

“The case of polywater demonstrates how the desire to believe in a new phenomenon can sometimes overpower the demand for solid, well-controlled evidence. In 1966 the Soviet scientist Boris Valdimirovich Derjaguin lectured in England on a new form of water that he claimed had been discovered by another Soviet scientist, N. N. Fedyakin. Formed by heating water and letting it condense in quartz capillaries, this "anomalous water," as it was originally called, had a density higher than normal water, a viscosity 15 times that of normal water, a boiling point higher than 100 degrees Centigrade, and a freezing point lower than zero degrees.

Over the next several years, hundreds of papers appeared in the scientific literature describing the properties of what soon came to be known as polywater. Theorists developed models, supported by some experimental measurements, in which strong hydrogen bonds were causing water to polymerize. Some even warned that if polywater escaped from the laboratory, it could autocatalytically polymerize all of the world's water.

Then the case for polywater began to crumble. Because polywater could only be formed in minuscule capillaries, very little was available for analysis. When small samples were analyzed, polywater proved to be contaminated with a variety of other substances, from silicon to phospholipids. Electron microscopy revealed that polywater actually consisted of finely divided particulate matter suspended in ordinary water.

Gradually, the scientists who had described the properties of polywater admitted that it did not exist. They had been misled by poorly controlled experiments and problems with experimental procedures. As the problems were resolved and experiments gained better controls, evidence for the existence of polywater disappeared.” [The above excerpt is from On Being a Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research, 2nd edition, a report by the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, part of the National Research Council. Published by National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.,in 1995.]

CASE 4: Bubble Fusion

“Bubble fusion or sonofusion is the common name for a nuclear fusion reaction hypothesized to occur during sonoluminescence, an extreme form of acoustic cavitation; officially, this reaction is termed acoustic inertial confinement fusion (AICF) since the inertia of the collapsing bubble wall confines the energy, causing a rise in temperature. The high temperatures producible through sonoluminescence raises the possibility that it might be a means to achieve thermonuclear fusion.

Rusi P. Taleyarkhan (ORNL) and colleagues reported in the March 8, 2002, issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science, that acoustic cavitation experiments conducted with deuterated acetone (C3D6O) show measurements of tritium and neutron output that are consistent with fusion; in addition the neutron emission was claimed to be coincident with the sonoluminescence pulse.”[Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_fusion]

  • The Bursting of Bubble Fusion. Critics assail a Purdue scientist who said he had created the most exciting physics of the decade. By Erik Vance, The Chronicle of Higher Eduction, April 6, 2007. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i31/31a01601.htm

CASE 5: Giving Proper Credit

“Scientists often share research results at symposia prior to publishing them.The matter might have stopped there except that some of Córdova's colleagues in organocatalysis say his unethical behavior—often a failure to cite or cite properly the work of other scientists and thereby taking credit for new discoveries that are not his own-continues. And they claim that by not taking tougher action against him, Stockholm University is protecting Córdova and further damaging the scientific community.

Córdova's case reveals that the scientific community is often unprepared to deal with misconduct, particularly when the violations fall short of scientific fraud. Although ethical guidelines themselves seem clear, what to do about ethics violations is another matter. Most people familiar with the Córdova case who talked to C&EN could not specify what they think should happen to him as a result of his actions.

Researchers who have been directly affected by Córdova's actions say his misdeeds are, in any case, very serious and go beyond simply failing to cite properly. They say Córdova steals research ideas at conferences and then presents the ideas as his own by publishing the results of hasty and often poorly executed parallel experiments. [… and much more…]” Linda Wang, Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN), March 12, 2007 Volume 85, Number 12 pp. 35-38.

CASE 6: Abderhalden’s Defense Enzymes

Emil Abderhalden, a Swiss biochemist and physiologist, is known for a blood test for pregnancy, a test for cystine in urine, and for explaining the Abderhalden-Kaufmann-Lignac syndrome, a recessive genetic condition. He did extensive work in the analysis of proteins, polypeptides, and enzymes. However, much of his work was much later revealed to be based on an erroneous theory and even fraudulent.

CASE 7: The Darsee Case

Dr. John Darsee was regarded a brilliant student and medical researcher at the University of Notre Dame (1966-70), Indiana University (1970-74), Emory University (1974-9), and Harvard University (1979-1981). He was regarded by faculty at all four institutions as a potential "all-star" with a great research future ahead of him. At Harvard he reportedly often worked more than 90 hours a week as a Research Fellow in the Cardiac Research Laboratory headed by Dr. Eugene Braunwald. In less than two years at Harvard he was first author of seven publications in very good scientific journals. His special area of research concerned the testing of heart drugs on dogs.

All of this came to a sudden halt in May 1981, when three colleagues in the Cardiac Research Laboratory observed Darsee labeling data recordings 24 seconds, 72 hours, one week, and two weeks. In reality, only minutes had transpired. Confronted by his mentor Braunwald, Darsee admitted the fabrication; but he insisted that this was the only time he had done this, and that he had been under intense pressure to complete the study quickly. Shocked, Braunwald and Darsee's immediate supervisor, Dr. Robert Kroner, spent the next several months checking other research conducted by Darsee in their lab. Darsee's research fellowships were terminated, and an offer of a faculty position was withdrawn.

CASE 8: Woo-Suk’s stem cell research

Hwang Woo-Suk was accused of fraudulent behavior with regard to his research.

Close scrutiny revealed that several of the photos of purportedly different cells were in fact photos of the same cell. Hwang responded that these additional photos were accidentally included and that there was no such duplication in the original submission to Science.

In the midst of national confusion, Hwang disappeared from public sight, to be hospitalized days later for alleged stress-related fatigue, while public opinion gradually began to turn against Hwang with even the major Korean companies who pulled their support from "PD Su-Cheop" reportedly now less than pleased with Hwang. Days later, Hwang started going to his laboratory while requesting Seoul National University to officially conduct a probe to the allegations surrounding him.

CASE 9: Chandra’s Patented Multivitamins

Dr. Ranjit Kumar Chandra, OC, MD, is a world-renowned expert in the field of nutrition and immunology who has been accused of committing scientific fraud by the British Medical Journal. His alleged fraud was also the subject of a 2006 documentary by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

In the summer of 2002, Dr. Chandra retired from Memorial University of Newfoundland under a cloud of suspicion. He had published a study in the September 2001 edition of Nutrition claiming his patented multivitamin formula could reverse memory problems in people over the age of 65. However, the same study had been previously submitted to the British Medical Journal in 2000 and rejected after a review by a statistical expert, who stated that the study had "all the hallmarks of having been completely invented".

CASE 10: Laetrile

“Amygdalin was originally isolated in 1830 by two French chemists. In the presence of certain enzymes, amygdalin breaks down into glucose, benzaldehyde, and hydrogen cyanide (which is poisonous). It was tried as an anticancer agent in Germany in 1892, but was discarded as ineffective and too toxic for that purpose. During the early 1950s, Ernst T. Krebs, Sr., M.D., and his son Ernst, Jr., began using a "purified" form of amygdalin to treat cancer patients. Since that time scientists have tested substances called "Laetrile" in more than 20 animal tumor models as well as in humans and found no benefit either alone or together with other substances. Along the way its proponents have varied their claims about Laetrile's origin, chemical structure, mechanism of action, and therapeutic effects [1,2]. Its place in history is assured, however, as a focus of political activities intended to abolish the laws protecting Americans from quackery.’ [see: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/laetrile.html for a complete treatise on laetrile.]

  • http://www.1cure4cancer.com. (a web site promoting the use of laetrile?) “Cure or Prevent Cancer naturally with Vitamin B17 ~ Amygdalin ~ Laetrile ~ Apricot seeds and more. Read about the politics of cancer, learn the truth about the cover-up for the cure for cancer, see the scientific facts that have never been told by the secular media and why, and learn what you can do to cure or prevent cancer yourself.”

CASE 11: Cold Fusion

“The central claim of cold fusion adherents is that a nuclear reaction (fusion of deuterium) can be initiated and maintained in an electrochemical apparatus not much different from the setup used to demonstrate the breakdown of water into hydrogen and oxygen in a high school chemistry lab. If this claim could be successfully verified, it promised nothing less than a total solution to the world's energy supply problems. The claim first appeared in the press in March of 1989, and provoked considerable public and scientific interest. It was put forward by respectable scientists (Fleishmann and Pons of the University of Utah) and was supported by reports from other respectable scientists that they had been able to replicate those findings. These initial claims, however, were soon met by counterclaims from equally respectable labs and investigators, to the effect that the initial findings could not be replicated.” Cold Fusion Research, November 1989,

A Report of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy

Washington, DC 20585 [http://www.ncas.org/erab/intro.htm]

  • http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/12/3/8
  • Cold Fusion Makes Its Case In Chicago, ACS Meeting News: After 18 years on the fringe, the field is still trying to gain respect. Steve Ritter. “IN A MEETING ROOM tucked away in a far corner of Chicago's mammoth McCormick Place Convention Center, a small band of faithful cold fusion researchers and advocates gathered on March 29, 2007, the final day of the American Chemical Society national meeting, for a symposium to showcase evidence in support of the original cold fusion findings that were announced at a press conference 18 years ago. [http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/85/i17/html/8517sci2.html?emFrom=emLogin]

CASE 12: Big trouble in the world of "Big Physics"

September 16, 2002. Six months ago, Jan Hendrik Schon seemed like a slam dunk nominee for a Nobel prize. Then some of his colleagues started to take a closer look at his research.

“…Then the wunderkind fell to earth. In April, a small group of researchers at Bell Labs contacted Princeton physics professor Lydia Sohn and whispered that all was not right with Schön's (Schoen) data. Sohn recalls that she and Cornell University's Paul McEuen stayed up late one night and found some disturbing coincidences in Schön's results: The same graphs were being used to illustrate the outcomes of completely different experiments. "You would expect differences," she said, "but the figures were identical. It was a smoking gun."

Once tipped off, McEuen started looking closely at a range of Schön's work, enlarging the graphs and playing a game of mix-and-match. He found many duplicate graphs in different papers on different subjects. Schön was apparently using the same sets of pictures to tell lots of different stories….” [http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/09/16/physics/index.html]

CASE 13: ELEMENTS 116 AND 118 ARE DISCOVERED

Physics News 797, October 16, 2006

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 797 October 16, 2006 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and Davide Castelvecchi www.aip.org/pnu [http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.797.html]

CASE 14: VIOXX

“Merck yanked Vioxx on Sept. 30, 2004 because a new study had found a higher rate of heart attacks and strokes in patients taking the drug than in those on a placebo. The move was a stunning denouement for a blockbuster drug that had been marketed in more than 80 countries with worldwide sales totaling $2.5 billion in 2003. Vioxx, hawked by the likes of Olympic gold medalists Dorothy Hamill and Bruce Jenner, had been sold in the USA for more than five years.

But the new Vioxx study was not the first to raise concerns about heart attack and stroke risk. "We have been concerned and aware of the potential for cardiovascular effects for the last few years," Steven Galson, acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said the day Merck announced the withdrawal. "This is not a total surprise."” [Above appears in the USA Today, 10/12/2004: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-10-12-vioxx-cover_x.htm]

Journal Corrects Vioxx Article to Reflect Short-Term Heart Risk (press release)
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 by: NewsTarget
The New England Journal of Medicine on Monday issued a rare correction on a influential 2005 study on the now-withdrawn painkiller Vioxx.

The correction involves a crucial point that was first reported a month ago: That cardiovascular risks linked to the controversial cox-2 inhibitor kick in at 4 months to 6 months of use, not after 18 months as was previously asserted in last year's article.

"This correction retracts the claim that there is an 18-month delay before patients experience an increased risk while taking Vioxx," said Dr. Steven Nissen, interim chairman of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, and the author of a related letter, also released Monday by the journal.

"What it says now is there is no delay in the risk," Nissen added.

[http://www.newstarget.com/020231.html]

CASE 15: The Cyril Burt Affair

“Until his death in 1971, the British educational psychologist Sir Cyril Burt was viewed as one of the most significant and influential educational psychologists of his time. Within a year of his death, however, the legitimacy of his research was being questioned. The questions began to turn into accusations, and by 1976 he was officially accused of fabricating data to prove that intelligence was inherited. The publication of Burt's official biography by Leslie Hearnshaw in 1979 seemed to seal Burt's fate by concluding that the charges of fraud were merited. However, the recent work of two independent researchers, Robert Joynson and Ronald Fletcher, has reopened the issue and raised doubts about the accusations of fraud.” [http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/burtaffair.shtml]

CASE 16: Plagiarism in Theses: The Ohio University Case

“ In a conference room in Ohio University's Vernon R. Alden Library, Thomas A. Matrka takes just 15 minutes to hit pay dirt.

Scattered before him on a table are 16 chemical-engineering master's theses on "multiphase flow." He examines them in pairs. With a hand on each manuscript, eyes darting back and forth, he quickly scans the pages.

Identical diagrams in two theses from 1997 and 1998 strike him as suspicious. Turning a few more pages, he confirms what he suspected.

"This one needs to be turned in," he says, pointing to an introductory chapter that not only mirrors the structure and content of the earlier one, but also includes whole paragraphs that are virtually identical. "This guy didn't do a literature review," he says. "His literature review was opening this guy's and copying it." “[The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 August 2006: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i49/49a00801.htm]

  • “Ohio University has revoked the master's degree of a former mechanical-engineering student who was accused of plagiarizing his thesis.

    Announced last week, the action is, to date, the harshest penalty issued to any of the engineering graduates implicated in the university's continuing investigation into plagiarism that is said to have taken place over the past 20 years at its Russ College of Engineering and Technology.” [The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 April 2007, http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i31/31a01503.htm]
  • “Ohio University Investigates Academic Cheating Allegations
    by Fred Kight

    Morning Edition, March 13, 2006 · Ohio University officials are investigating more than three-dozen possible cases of plagiarism by current and former engineering graduate students. Thomas Natrka, who got his master's degree at Ohio University last year, charges that professors at the school have fostered a culture of cheating. Fred Kight of member station WOUB reports.” An NPR Audio report [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5259274]
  • An Honest Look at Academic Dishonesty at Ohio University, http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~mb128405/final%20report.pdf

CASE 17: The Plagiarism Problem

The following cases involved allegations of plagiarism committed by historians and scholars. The second link includes multiple links for each of the individuals listed below.

Stephen Ambrose, historian and author

Brian VanDeMark, professor- US Naval Academy, author of Pandora’s Keepers: Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb

Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian, author of The Kennedys and The Fitzgeralds

Louis W. Roberts, professor—State University of New York at Albany

Laurence Tribe, professor—Harvard University

Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., professor—Harvard University

CASE 18: The Bellesiles Case

Michael Bellesiles (pronounced ‘buh-leel’) was a professor at Emory University, who won Columbia University’s Bancroft Prize for his book, Arming America: The origins of a national gun culture, published in 2000 by Knopf. Bellesiles maintained that there were not as many guns in colonial America as was thought and that militias were not very effective during that period. Historians, the National Rifle Association and others interested in the 2nd Amendment, claimed that there were errors of scholarship and that sources for his book were either misinterpreted, mis-quoted or fabricated.

CASE 19: What’s on Your Resume?

The Jones Case

As MIT’s Dean of Admissions for the past 9 years, Marilee Jones had stated her concern about students padding their resumes for admission to college. She had been on the MIT staff for a total of 28 years before resigning on Monday, April 23, 2007, after admitting that she falsified information on her resume—essentially claiming to have received degrees from a number of institutions.

CASE 20: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: “Doing Bad in the Name of Good?*”

In this historic case, the US Public Health Service worked with the Tuskegee Institute on what was called “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The study, which began in 1932 continued for 40 years until an Associated Press reporter wrote a news story in 1972 exposing the fact that participants had died un treated. In the study, the African-American men who participated were told that they were being treated for conditions under the title of “bad blood,” but were in fact not receiving any treatment.

* Title of the 1994 Symposium at the University of Virginia to consider the implications and legacy of the Tuskegee study.

CASE 21: Stanley Milgram and the Obedience to Authority Experiments

Dr. Stanley Milgram was a social psychologist at Yale University in the early 1960s. At the start of the Nuremburg trials in the post World War II environment, he was interested in how everyday people made decisions—particularly decisions, which harmed innocent people and were later explained as “just following orders.” His interest led to a series of controversial experiments.

CASE 22: Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger Disaster

Roger Boisjoly was an engineer at Morton Thiokol, the company that produced the O-rings for NASA’s space shuttles. He and other engineers tried, but failed to stop the launch of the Challenger on January 28, 1986. He then testified in the investigation into the Challenger disaster.

CASE 23: Participants in Research Studies

Diaz vs. Hillsborough County Hospital Authority

Sixteen-year-old Flora Diaz was pregnant and going into premature labor when she entered the Tampa General Hospital. As she was being admitted and after receiving drugs to stop her labor, she was asked to sign a document to authorize treatment and told that if she did not sign, “your baby will die.” A hospital employee noticed that other women like Diaz were participating in a study of respiratory distress syndrome as a result of fetal lung immaturity and did some investigation. This case explores the rights of patients to be informed if they are going to be a part of medical research.

Jesse Gelsinger and the Gene Therapy Study

Eighteen year old Jesse Gelsinger, suffered from a rare liver disorder. In 1999, as a participant in an experiment at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Gelsinger was injected with special viruses designed to carry healthy copies of a gene into his body. His family had been told that the worst that could happen as a result of the injections would be possible flu-like symptoms. Other patients had been injected with few ill side effects. Jesse Gelsinger died within several days of his injections.

CASE 24: Robert Gallo and the Discovery of the AIDS Virus

Biomedical researcher at the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Robert Gallo studied the origins of the AIDS virus. In 1984, he published his results claiming to have isolated the virus and to have created a blood test to detect it. His claims were challenged by Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute of France, whose lab had shared strains of the virus with Dr. Gallo in 1983. The Pasteur Institute sued the US Government in 1985.

CASE 25: Science and Industry

Dr. Tseng and Spectra Pharmaceutical

In the 1980s. as an ophthalmology fellow at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital, Dr. Scheffer Tseng administered an eye ointment not yet approved for human use. He and Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Research at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Kenneth R. Kenyon, organized a company to manufacture and market the ointment, Spectra Pharmaceutical, in which both then owned a large number of shares worth over 30 million dollars.

Dioxin Health Studies

Among other uses, Dioxin, the popular name for TCDD, was an ingredient in Agent Orange, which was used in the 1960s and early 70s by the US Armed Forces for defoliation in Viet Nam. Monsanto Corporation, a producer of Dioxin, was later charged with falsifying its health studies on the effects of Dioxin that it submitted to the EPA.

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