H. Gilbert Welch, a leading researcher in the field of health policy, has resigned from his faculty post at Dartmouth College after the institution concluded that he had plagiarized from a colleague in a 2016 paper.
As we reported in STAT earlier this summer, a Dartmouth committee found that Welch had misused a figure from a colleague, Samir Soneji, who had provided him the data after a 2015 presentation. At the time, Soneji had requested that he be part of any paper that would include the data — but Welch said he had no intention of publishing it. However, the information appeared in a 2016 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which has declined to retract or even correct the paper.
Welch claims Dartmouth stripped him of teaching duties and ordered him to ask NEJM to make Soneji a co-author of the disputed article. Evidently he found both sanctions intolerable. Read more at our new story done in partnership with STAT.
“has resigned from his faculty post at Dartmouth College after the institution concluded that he had plagiarized …”
What is discipline for plagiarism, which is professional misconduct?
He just “resigned”!! wow!
I don’t know if the university could do more than fire him, and he just quit, so….
I read his explanation and this account seems incomplete. Both the NEJM and the ORI disagreed with Dartmouth about the plagiarism and Dr. Welch eloquently describes his defense. I don’t know him, but have admired his work for years. You should consider doing a more in depth story instead of this.
Thanks for the commment. This post was just a pointer to our more in-depth story in STAT, which was just one of four pieces we wrote for STAT, starting nearly a month ago:
https://www.statnews.com/2018/08/20/dartmouth-health-policy-researcher-plagiarized/
https://www.statnews.com/2018/08/24/dartmouth-misconduct-case-highlights-mistreatment-of-junior-scientists/
https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/13/gilbert-welch-resigns-from-dartmouth-over-plagiarism-dispute/
https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/14/nejm-refuse-retract-gilbert-welch-dartmouth/
Are the attachments from the October 2016 email from Soneji to Wybourne available anywhere that show the original Soneji slide and emails back and forth? I think I clicked on all the links in all of the articles and didn’t see them.
Thank you!
We’ve made available what we can. You can ask Samir for those if you’d like. Email us [email protected] if you need his email. Thanks.