Comments on Schatten

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summarizes some responses to the finding concerning Schatten by their panel. Don Kennedy, Ron Cole Turner and I all mouth off about it:

The finding by a University of Pittsburgh panel that reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten made many mistakes but did not commit scientific misconduct in his collaboration with Dr. Hwang Woo-suk struck many observers as fair.

"I think it's obvious that Schatten really was, in many ways, a victim," said Glenn McGee, founding director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College. Though Dr. Schatten may have failed to do everything he could have to uncover problems with the research, he did not participate in the fraud and was taken in by the false reassurances made by the South Korean researcher, the panel said.

Dr. Schatten acted responsibly once he realized that a fraud had been perpetrated, Dr. McGee said, breaking off his collaboration and notifying editors of the journal Science of his suspicions.

He did, however, fail to fulfill his role as an author, as charged by the Pitt panel, and his efforts to remove his name as an author after discovering the fraud were unfortunate. "When someone steps forward and says, 'I see extremely important problems here and I want to pull out,' that doesn't absolve them," Dr. McGee said.

He also praised Dr. Schatten, not only for blowing the whistle on Dr. Hwang's fabrications, but for "not playing tit for tat with the South Koreans" after the charges became public. Some Koreans accused Dr. Schatten of criminal behavior and made statements about him that could be slanderous. But Dr. Schatten stayed mum after he announced the break with Dr. Hwang and asked Science to retract the stem cell paper.

Though clearing Dr. Schatten of scientific misconduct, the Pitt panel accused him of "research misbehavior," which caused some consternation. That term is not a recognized distinction from scientific misconduct, Dr. McGee said, though in this case it could be argued it was a reasonable way to describe his limited role in the scandal.

[Update: Byron Spice revisits the story, drawing this time on the utter lack of considerable expertise of William Hurlbut and focused on whether international collaboration is the culprit]