Scientific falsification
The professor of the prestigious institute was punished for falsifying the results
A biologist who worked at several prestigious American institutes and universities is deprived of the right to receive state funding for falsifying results, reports Nature News (Former MIT biologist penalized for falsifying data). In total, Luk Van Parijs submitted false data in five grant applications and ten scientific papers, seven of which were published. In addition, falsifications were revealed in unpublished works and presentations of the scientist.
Van Parijs will not be able to receive budgetary funds for his research for five years. This is a rather severe punishment: usually in the United States for such violations of scientific ethics, a person is deprived of state support for a period of one to three years.
Initially, Van Parijs specialized in immunology, but later switched to the study of the newly discovered process of RNA interference. An organization investigating cases of falsification of scientific data found out that the scientist published false results of experiments with cell cultures. In particular, he passed off the data obtained on one type of cells as data for other types.
In addition, the scientist attributed the results he talked about at scientific conferences to his graduate students. It was they who first reported Van Parijs' strange behavior to the management. During his career, the scientist worked at such well-known institutions as the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where the scientist was an associate professor. In 2005, MIT fired Van Parijs.
Several journals where Van Parijs' articles were published have already posted a message that they should be considered invalid. However, since the publication, the articles have been cited in the works of other scientists, including in one of the reviews.
Over the past year, two more high-profile scandals have occurred in the scientific world related to the publication of unconfirmed data. In March, a team of scientists, including Nobel laureate Linda Buck, announced that they were disavowing their article, since the authors could not reproduce the results given in it. (An unfortunate example: it is rather a manifestation of scientific integrity. It would be better to recall the scandal with the star of cell biology, Wu Suk Hwan – VM.) In August, Ruzi Taleyarkhan was deprived of his professorship for scientific dishonesty, who claimed that he had managed to conduct a cold fusion reaction.