[Fwd: What's New for Jul 19, 2002]

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

Robert Park takes no prisoners....



-------- Original Message --------

Subject: What's New for Jul 19, 2002

Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 16:31:39 -0400 (EDT)

From: "What's New" <whatsnew@aps.org>

To: loc@icx.net



WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 19 Jul 02   Washington, DC



1. MISCONDUCT: MAYBE THE DISEASE IS BEING SPREAD BY MOSQUITOS.  

Following a year-long internal investigation, Lawrence Berkeley

National Laboratory has fired a physicist, Victor Ninov, for

fabricating data in the 1999 "discovery" of elements 118 and 116

and formally retracted the Physical Review Letter that announced

the discovery (V. Ninov et al. PRL 83, 1104; 1999).  The physics

community was already in shock over the investigation of Jan

Schoen at Bell Labs, who had seemed to be a rising star, for

allegedly fabricating results (WN 24 May 02).  In both cases,

questions are now being raised about other work (WN 24 May 02).

This raises serious questions for the physics community and the

APS in particular.  If instances of misconduct now turn up in

other work published by the two, the boast that "the system

worked" won't fly.  The responsibility of coauthors also needs to

be clarified.  While Ninov and Schoen were first authors on the

papers in question, they had as many as 15 coauthors.  Does being

an "et al." mean you have certified a paper's validity?



2. MASSAGING: SOMETIMES A MASSAGE MAKES YOU A DIFFERENT PERSON.

According to the New York Times, Lee Schroeder, an LBNL official,

characterized Ninov's misconduct as "some data had been

massaged."  It's not the first time this soft word has been used

at LBNL to describe fabrication of data.  A biophysicist named

Robert Liburdy who had played a prominent role in the debate over

whether power lines are linked to cancer, was the only scientist

who could find direct evidence that EMF has any effect on living

cells.  In 1995, however, the APS "Statement on Power Line Fields

and Public Health," http://aps.org/statements/95.2.html , pointed

out there simply was no plausible interaction mechanism.  After

the APS issued its statement, LBNL initiated an investigation of

the Liburdy claim.  Finally, in 1999, Robert Liburdy was fired

for "massaging" data.  Liburdy acknowledged that he had omitted

some data for "illustration purposes," but in one case

investigators found he had omitted 93 percent of the data that

did not agree with his hypothesis.  To call that a "massage" is

like calling Michael Jackson's cosmetic alterations a "nose job."



3. MEDDLING: NCI CAVES IN TO CONGRESSIONAL ABORTION OPPONENTS.  A

key weapon of abortion opponents is that abortions are linked to 

an increase in breast cancer.  But Science reports this week that

NCI revised its Fact Sheet in March, pointing out that current

scientific evidence finds no increased risk for women who have

had an abortion.  However, 28 abortion opponents in Congress, led

by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), sent a letter to HHS Secretary Tommy

Thompson saying that in their scientific opinion the scientists

at NCI had it just backwards.  WN obtained a copy of the letter.

Barbara Cubin was the only one with a science degree (BS Chem). 



Christy Fernandez assisted with this week's What's New.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND and THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY

Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the

University or the American Physical Society, but they should be.

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