a post about massive research misconduct
by anonymous poster

[Comment posted 2008-12-18 01:39:15]


Read this message, and you might be able to better understand the situation of scientific misconduct.


My name is Lei Guo, a former PKD research scientist in Harvard Medical School. I am writing to you to ask for assistance in fighting with massive and egregious PKD research misconduct and to uncover truth in PKD (Polycystic Kidney Diseases) research. I think the PKD community/families might be one of the groups who would be greatly concerned with massive falsification and fabrication in PKD research and might provide moral support to a whistle blower of PKD research misconduct.
I was a biomedical scientist who complained about massive and egregious research misconduct in PKD research in Harvard Medical School (HMS) and was thus retaliated against for my whistle blowing by the institute. Harvard Medical School was still on a track to try to cover up the egregious research misconduct and retaliation case.
I am a biologist originally from China. I was a research fellow in Dr. Jing Zhou's PKD laboratory in Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. As one of my major contributions, I identified and cloned multiple novel PKD gene homologues and created and characterized multiple novel PKD gene knockout models.
In recent years, a major research "breakthrough" had been published in PKD field. That is, almost all PKD proteins were immunolocalized on primary cilia of kidney epithelial cells. In Human, mutation in either one of two PKD genes (PKD1 or PKD2) causes Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD). Both PKD1 and PKD2 proteins had been immunolocalized on primary cilia of the kidney epithelial cells. The first paper that claimed PKD2 immunolocalization on primary cilia was published in 2002 in Current Biology Journal. In 2003, a paper from Dr. Jing Zhou's lab published in Nature Genetics. This paper "confirmed" both Pkd1 and Pkd2 proteins are localized on primary cilia and further develop the story by provided data showing ADPKD proteins function as mechanical sensor of fluid flow on primary cilia. The published data showed that, the deficiency of the function of PKD1 and/or PKD2 protein on the primary cilia would lead to the deficiency of mechanical sensation of primary cilia in kidney epithelia, eventually the epithelia of the kidney tubule start to grow and cysts is generated.
As a research fellow working on PKD, I was asked by my principle investigator, Dr. Jing Zhou, to do PKD research on this direction of PKD research. In early 2006, after repetitive experiments, I started to see more and more evidences showing that immunolocalization of polycystin-1 and polycystin-2 on primary cilia on kidney cells might be false or fake. I first found the evidences showing that the polycystin-2 immunostaining on primary cilium of kidney epithelial cells might be caused by nonspecific binding of the primary antibodies and thus could be false. These results explained why many fellows experienced the difficulty in repeating the immunolocalization of polycystin-1 or -2 on the primary cilia of kidney cells. I reported the results in the laboratory several times since those irreproducible data severely hindered the progress of my research. I also made complaints that nonspecific binding of antibody caused artifact results several times to Dr. Jing Zhou. But Dr. Jing Zhou seemed not very concerned about my complaints. She cannot explain what I saw in the scientific experiments and ignored my complaint and pushed me to do research on the ciliary PKD story. According to my findings, I suspected that Drs. Li, Nauli and Zhou might be involved in fabrication or falsification by omitting these critical negative data or results. I felt it was not right to do that since falsification of scientific data about polycystic kidney diseases would directly and indirectly endanger the interests and safety of the PKD patients. During the daily interaction with my colleagues, I also found evidences that they were falsifying and fabricating scientific data. Also, it was also scientifically obvious that, in some published papers, the cilia stories were flawed. For example, in one of the papers, the authors stated that in PKD knockout cells, the calcium wave response to fluid flow was abolished. However, according to my observation and findings, the truth is, calcium wave response was intact in either PKD1 or PKD2 knockout cells. In the papers, the authors obviously chose a portion of negative result to represent the PKD1/PKD2 knockout cells. This kind of research conduct, if done intentionally, was definitely scientific misconduct.
In May and June, 2006, I started to report to Dr. Joseph Bonventre, the director of renal division that there might be egregious research misconduct occurred in the lab. Soon after that, I was threatened by Dr. Jing Zhou several times that I would lose my position if I still stick to my scientific opinion. Dr. Bonventre seemed reluctant to pursue the scientific misconduct and just tell Dr. Jing Zhou. He was one of the principle investigators in an NIH-funded grant lead by Dr. Jing Zhou.
Afterwards, as I continued working on the projects, I found more evidences that previous publications in the field might contain false or even falsified or fabricated data. On March 27, 2007, I sent an email to Dr. Margaret L. Dale, the officer of research integrity of Harvard Medical School raising the issues of research misconducts and authorship argument in the laboratory. I also sent an email to Dr. Bonventre stating the same issues. On April 12, 2007, I met with Dr. Dale and Partners attorney Chris Clark to raise the issues of falsifications and/or fabrications in the laboratory and the related authorship issues. I didn't receive any following-up message until May 8, I sent an email to Dr. Dale to inquire the consequence of their investigation. On the same day, Dr. Dale replied to me saying that she was still contacting with Dr. Bonventre to set up a time to talk about this issue.
On May 14, 2007, I received an email from Dr. Jing Zhou asking me leave my position. The email was also sent to Dr. Bonventre. I immediately responded to her email to say her email was not right and not appropriate. I felt I was under retaliatory action. I wrote emails to Dr. Dale to make the allegation that I was retaliated against by Dr. Jing Zhou because of my reporting of research misconduct of her laboratory.
On June 21, 2007, Dr. Bonventre, Dr. Dale and I met in Dr. Bonventre's office. I was told by Dr. Bonventre that I had to leave on a designated date. I said I still felt that forcing me leave on a designated date was retaliatory action to my reporting of research misconducts in the laboratory. To obtain more time to protect my visa status and to accomplish more research, I had to agree to sign the letter.
I then had to write to Dr. Dale to ask for immediate protection from the retaliatory action taken against me after I complained about the research misconduct. Dr. Dale replied to me that it was not retaliation because my complaint on April 12, 2007 was not formal allegation. I was shocked by her words. I suffered severe emotional distress in those days. But I still stuck to my scientific opinion that PKD cilia connection was false. I continue making research misconduct complaints to numerous officials in the institute.
On Oct 17th, Dr. Jing Zhou came to me and asked me to go to her office. She threatened me by saying that everything going upper level would come back to her. I had to leave her office in order not to hear more threats from her.
As arranged, on Oct 26, Dr. Handin, the vice chair of department of Medicine of BWH, Dr Zhou, and I met in his office. Dr. Handin first said that he thought there was no research misconduct and there was no retaliation against me and I had to leave in Feb, 2008. During the meeting, He kept persuading me to drop my allegations by saying that "Can you put this in your CV even if you can prove there is research misconduct?" and threatened me by saying "How will you pay bills after March 1st, 2008", etc. He also said to me with scornful tone, "You told so many people, nobody thought there was falsification or fabrication (in Dr Zhou's research). Are you crazy?" I thought the meeting was not fair to me and refused to withdraw the allegations.
On Nov 14, 2007, I reported the research misconduct and the retaliation against me to office of research integrity (ORI) at Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), USA. However, ORI, knowing that I was complaining to be retaliated against by Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital, just request HMS/BWH to conduct self investigation.
On Jan 5, 2008, the vice president of BWH sent me a mail. In the mail, she said that they would start to investigate the research misconduct and retaliation issues. Before investigation, Dr. Bierer, vice president of BWH, asserted the research misconduct and the retaliation were two separate things thus should be investigated separately. I raised the concerns about the fairness of the inside panels and the procedure of the investigations. She also threatened me that I would have to leave my position before any investigation started.
On Feb 11, 2008, due to the tremendous pressure from the officials from BWH/HMS, I suffered from severe illness, so I sent Dr. Bierer an email to tell her that I was ill. After knowing my illness, Dr. Bierer pressed me again by sending me an email to say that my administrative leave date would be moved up. Since then, I had to see doctors for several times to prevent my illness worsening. I received the inside panel's investigation report on June 27, 2008. The report contained some false statements, ignored some important facts. It is an extremely unfair, unjust and biased report.
The facts I discovered that the PKD proteins on primary cilia were false were of significant interests to PKD and field and patients. In recent years, National Institutes of Health had invested millions of money in the research along the direction of PKD and cilia connection. PKD foundation also invested tens of thousands of US dollar in this direction. Everyone (including patients and scientists) was expecting breakthrough on pathogenesis and therapy of PKD by pursuing this direction. Many thought this could be the right direction to cure the PKD, provided the PKD and cilia connection were true. However, if the allegation I made be confirmed, the event might be one of the most egregious, notorious and massive research misconduct that involving multiple previously very prestigious institutions.
However, as the whistle blower in PKD field, I had been fighting with extreme difficulties. From what they had acted, it was easy to tell that they knew clearly there was egregious and mass research misconduct in the PKD field as I reported. But Harvard Medical School chose to cover up the massive research misconduct, ignoring all of the normal procedure in protecting the whistle blower's legal right. Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital also got involved in imposing severe retaliation and threats against a good-faith whistle blower. I reported the research misconduct to Harvard Medical School on April 2007. I had seen Harvard Medical School was slow in trying to investigate the research misconduct. On the contrary, Harvard Medical School was extremely speedy in retaliation against a whistle blower. Officials in Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital started to seek to terminate me in a matter of days after I made the misconduct complaints with the internal officer of research integrity, Dr. Dale on April 12, 2007. The investigation panel to research misconduct had their first meeting on June, 2008, 4 months later after the job of whistle blower was terminated by Dr. Bierer, the vice president of BWH. After my job was terminated, they started to investigate into the research misconduct allegation I raised, asking me providing related information which would be only available to me when I was at work. Obviously, the inside panel was intentionally set up to cover up this egregious and massive research misconduct and retaliation case.
To help yourself understand the essence of this PKD research misconduct, you should also consult your doctors, or other scientists/professors in the biomedical field.
As a foreign and jobless scientist in this country, my situation is extremely difficult. What you can do to help is to consult any person/party you think he/she can provide me any support in pursuing the justice. The parties include government authorities, scientists, lawyers, organizations, companies, press groups like newspapers, journalists or senators. Any information and/or support provided by you will be highly appreciated.
Thank you and Best wishes to you.