Berkeley lab found research fabricated

[Susan L Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Berkeley lab found research fabricated - Scientist accused of misconduct

fired 

     Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer

     Saturday, July 13, 2002 

     ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle. 



     URL:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/07/13/MN242131.DTL 



Berkeley -- Officials at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have

concluded that a sensational but false claim about the discovery of two

new elements was based on fraudulent research, the second case of

scientific misconduct revealed by the federal energy lab in three years. 



     Originally hailed as a "stunning discovery" into the structure of

the atomic nucleus, the finding was retracted by Lawrence Berkeley lab

last year after independent scientists were unable to duplicate the

results. Lab officials then undertook an investigation. 



     Lab Director Charles V. Shank acknowledged in a speech to employees

last month that the false claim was "a result of fabricated research

data and scientific misconduct by one individual," according to a

summary of his remarks in a lab newsletter. 



     "There is nothing more important for a laboratory than scientific

integrity, " Shank reportedly told employees. "Only with such integrity

will the public, which funds our work, have confidence in us." In this

case, he said, "the most elementary checks and data archiving were not

done." 



     Although lab spokesman Ron Kolb declined to identify the

individual, citing personnel rules, The Chronicle has learned that lab

investigators identified Victor Ninov, a respected expert on the physics

of heavy elements, as the scientist behind the fraudulent data. 



     SCIENTIST FILED GRIEVANCE



     The lab suspended Ninov in November and terminated his employment

after the misconduct finding. Ninov, who has filed a grievance against

the lab, could not be reached for comment Friday. 



     In 1999, the federal Office of Research Integrity found that

Lawrence Berkeley lab scientist Robert P. Liburdy had committed

"scientific misconduct" by "intentionally falsifying and fabricating"

his data to support assertions of cellular effects from electric and

magnetic fields. Liburdy resigned from the lab after the lab yanked his

financing. 



     The Ninov case is more dramatic because it supposedly involved a

discovery of great importance to our understanding of the periodic table

of elements, a copy of which hangs on the wall of every high school

chemistry teacher's classroom. 



     The world of physics was thrilled in May 1998, when laboratory

officials announced their researchers had discovered the heaviest known

element, the "superheavy" element dubbed 118, and its decay product 116.

(The numbers refer to the elements' location on the periodic table of

elements.) 



     They managed to generate "118," they claimed, by using the lab's

88-inch cyclotron, a particle accelerator, to fire a beam of krypton

atoms onto lead. 



     The research team was led by Ninov, a native of Bulgaria who had

come to the lab several years earlier. The team reported its findings in

the journal Physical Review Letters in an article titled, "Observation

of superheavy nuclei produced in the reaction of Krypton-86 with

Lead-208." 



     Then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson called it "a stunning

discovery which opens the door to further insights into the structure of

the atomic nucleus." 



     Ninov was the first of 15 authors listed for the Physical Review

article. The second author, lab scientist Kenneth Gregorich, declined to

comment Friday. 



     None of the other authors is suspected of participating in the

fraud. 



     COLLEAGUES RETRACTED CLAIM



     In follow-up experiments, outside labs were unable to replicate the

earlier results. Some members of the Berkeley team submitted a follow-up

report to Physical Review Letters that retracted the original claim. 



     At that time, Gregorich told Physics Today that he and his

colleagues were trying to figure out what had gone wrong. "There's been

quite a bit of experimental and theoretical work based on our 1999 data,

so that we felt we needed to get the word (of subsequent failure) out,"

he said. 



     On Friday, lab spokesman Kolb stressed that some personnel were

suspicious of the reported findings early on. 



     "The one thing we want to emphasize more than anything is that we

had ferreted this out on our own," Kolb said. "Nobody externally came to

us and told us, 'This (scientific finding) looks crazy, you ought to

check it out.'" 



     In his speech disclosing the fraud to employees, lab director Shank

ended with a sobering message on scientific integrity. 



     "Emphasizing that the lab will vigorously pursue all issues

involving scientific integrity, Shank said many lessons have been

learned from the Element 118 experience, including one 'that all

co-authors have a responsibility before a paper is published to verify

the data,' " the lab's newsletter said. 



     'COMMITMENT TO INTEGRITY'



     But Shank told employees: "I am proud of the intensity and

professionalism of the (internal) review to get to the bottom of this,

and of the commitment of the laboratory to the highest level of

scientific integrity." 



     Asked why the lab did not announce the fraud publicly, Kolb

explained that lab Director Shank felt "he had to balance the importance

of getting a very strong statement to the lab community about the

importance of integrity and, at the same time, not to jeopardize the

personnel (grievance) actions that are continuing." 



     Reported cases of scientific fraud are rare but hardly unknown. One

of the most tragic occurred in the 1920s, when a respected Austrian

scientist was suspected of injecting ink into laboratory frogs in order

to prove one of his pet theories. After being accused of fraud, he

committed suicide. 



     In recent decades, historians of science have debated whether some

of the most famous scientists in history faked or "fudged" their

results, including the great ancient astronomer Ptolemy and the famed

20th century British psychologist Cyril Burt. 



     The Berkeley laboratory, named in honor of Nobel Prize-winning

physicist Ernest Lawrence, was founded in 1931 under the name Radiation

Laboratory. It has 4,000 employees and does no military or classified

research, Kolb said. 



     E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com. 



     ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.   Page A - 1 

-- 

.....................................................

Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director

Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee

102 Robertsville Road, Suite B, Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Toll free 888-770-3073 ~ www.local-oversight.org

.....................................................

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