Historical Model for Editor and Office of Research Integrity Cooperation in Handling Allegations, Investigation, and Retraction in a Contentious (Abbs) Case of Research Misconduct

Abstract

Cooperation between a journal editor and the federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in addressing investigations of research misconduct, each performing their own responsibilities while keeping each other informed of events and evidence, can be critical to the professional and regulatory resolution of a case. This paper describes the history of one of ORI’s most contentious investigations that involved falsification of research on Parkinson’s disease patients by James Abbs, Professor of Neurology, University of Wisconsin, published in the journal Neurology, which was handled cooperatively by the authors, who were the chief ORI investigator and the Editor-in-Chief of Neurology, respectively.

Keywords:

• editor
• Neurology
• Office of Research Integrity
• research misconduct
• retraction
• scientific misconduct

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The editorial assistance of Dr. Mary Scheetz is gratefully acknowledged.

Some aspects were presented by the authors in a Short Course on Publication Ethics at the Council of Science Editors’ Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, on May 19, 2012 (cited in footnote 3).

Permission was obtained from the publisher (Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins) on November 22, 2013, for use of the two copyrighted figures, originally published in Neurology in 1989 and 1996.

Notes

1. The ideas in this paragraph were borrowed from those of Jules V. Hallum, Ph.D., Director from 1989 to 1991 of the Office of Scientific Integrity, ORI’s predecessor office (e.g., Hallum and Hadley, 1990).

2. Mary Scheetz, Ph.D., developed an ORI Guidance for Editors, based on experiences from this case and many others in ORI (Office of Research Integrity, 2000).

3. The authors presented an invited summary discussion of this case at the CSE Short Course on Publication Ethics, in Seattle, Washington, on May 19, 2012.

4. UW/M was a founding member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), which took a leadership role in the mid-1980s for the major universities to address the political and public reaction to stories of misconduct in science. In 1987-1988, AAU members were developing a framework for dealing with fraud in research, which specified: “Individuals chosen to assist in the inquiry process should have no real or apparent conflicts of interest bearing on the case in question. They should be unbiased … . Those investigating the allegations should be selected in full awareness of the closeness of their professional or personal affiliation with the complainant or the respondent” (AAU, 1988).

5. Barlow continued his strong research direction at Boys Town, later moving to Indiana University, then to the University of Kansas, as Professor, Department Chairman, and Director of the Communication Neuroscience Laboratories, with a succession of NIH investigator-initiated R01 grants.

6. McCutchen’s fellow NIH intramural research “fraud-busters,” Walter Stewart, Ph.D., and Ned Feder, Ph.D., had mentioned their recommendation to NIH’s Bick that NIH investigate Barlow’s allegations against Abbs, in their public testimony in early 1988 before Representative John Dingell’s House Energy and Commerce Oversight Sub-Committee (available at http://www.gatewaycoalition.org/files/gateway_project_moshe_kam/resource/DBCre/testimonynedapr12.html).

7. McCutchen then wrote to Editor Daroff: “I thank you for publishing the exchange. After so many important people have behaved so timidly, it was wonderful to see someone with the power to do something who dared to do it … I think courage is good stuff, and I am proud to be your fellow scientist” (McCutchen retired from NIH, continuing public advocacy for integrity).

8. David Cooper, Ph.D., Engineering, Brown University; Murray Eden, Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering and Instrumentation, NIH; Richard Jones, Ph.D., Biometrics, University of Colorado; Alan Oppenheim, Ph.D., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Eric Slud, Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Maryland; and Scott Zeger, Ph.D., Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University. Their comments were summarized for NIH’s Raub by Peter Frommer, M.D., Deputy Director of the National Heart Lung Blood Institute, NIH.

9. Louis Goldberg, D.D.S., Ph.D., Professor and Chairman of Oral Biology, School of Dentistry, University of California Los Angeles, expert in orofacial motor control; Gerald Loeb, M.D., Professor of Physiology and Director of Special Projects, Biomedical Engineering Unit, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, expert in biomedical instrumentation and sensorimotor neurophysiology; W. Zev Rymer, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Director of the Biomechanics Program, Northwestern University, and Research Director, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, expert in Parkinson’s disease, neurology, and motor control; and David Alling, M.D., Ph.D., Special Assistant for Biometry in the intramural program of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, expert in biostatistics.

10. ORI Scientist-Investigator John Krueger, Ph.D., performed detailed forensic image analysis on the UW/M original evidence and on Abbs’ explanations for the figures. ORI Senior Statistician James Mosimann, Ph.D., conducted sophisticated forensic digit analysis on the data points that Abbs provided. Their analyses were central to the ORI report’s misconduct findings of falsification and fabrication of data by Abbs.

11. According to an NIH RePORT search, Abbs’ last NIH grant (for a P50 center) had already ended in 1991, and he was not a Principal Investigator on any later NIH funding, so no such supervisory plan or certification was submitted by UW/M for him in 1996–1999.

12. For unknown reasons, the ORI findings against Abbs were not published in The NIH Guide to Grants and Contracts, where almost all other ORI findings have also appeared. Other senior faculty members were debarred from federal funding by ORI/HHS for 3–10 years, but they had committed much more extensive and significant research falsifications and fabrications (see Price, 2013).

13. ORI investigators Price, Krueger, and Mosimann wrote, with ORI approval, a detailed analysis of, and rebuttal to, Abbs’ comments.

14. In Science magazine alone, there were seven news articles on his suit and case (five in 1990-1991 and two in 1996). Nature magazine had five news pieces on his suit in 1991-1992.

15. Abbs apparently remained on the UW/M faculty; LinkedIn lists him as a professor emeritus. PubMed searches in 2013 showed, after the 1996 ORI finding, he was senior author on only two papers in 1998, and an author on one in 2011 (listed tenth of fifteen coauthors on a longitudinal Parkinson’s Disease study in Madison).