A cancer researcher once involved in a federal research integrity probe has repeatedly been denied funding and other sources of income, according to his attorney, who blamed our coverage of the case for the scientist’s continuing woes and asked us to remove a post.
[Please see an update on this post.]
Our coverage of the work of Sam W. Lee goes back to 2013. But it was our reporting in April 2019 that Lee — once a member of the Harvard faculty — was the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity that was the subject of the attorney’s letter. ORI has yet to announce a conclusion in its inquiry, which appears to have reached a finding before we posted on the matter. He has at least five retractions — including two that appeared after April 2019 — and two expressions of concern.
One of those expressions of concern was for a 2000 paper in Molecular and Cellular Biology titled “Overexpression of Kinase-Associated Phosphatase (KAP) in Breast and Prostate Cancer and Inhibition of the Transformed Phenotype by Antisense KAP Expression.”
The disposition of that article, published by the American Society for Microbiology, like the ORI inquiry, remains unclear.
In a letter dated August 12, attorney Steven Seinberg, who is based in Los Angeles, claimed that since our April 2019 post, Lee has struggled both personally and professionally:
[H]is professional endeavors are being negatively impacted to very significant degree. For example, he recently received a verbal offer to teach at the USC School of Medicine, but during the onboarding process, USC personnel discovered your article and decided to rescind their offer. Your article was also specifically named as a deciding factor in his being passed over for the Washington Cancer Scholar Award, which would have yielded him a sum of $500,000, plus numerous opportunities and no small amount of prestige within his industry. He similarly lost out on a major investment deal for his start-up company that would have brought in $3-4 million in capital. He also believes that this publicity is adversely affecting his ability to have his subsequent NIH grant applications approved.
Seinberg’s letter is not a typical cease-and-desist demand that makes vague or outright threats of a lawsuit. We get those occasionally, too. But Seinberg, on behalf of his client, does request that we remove the post — a request we denied. As Seinberg’s own letter states:
We are not asserting that you have done anything wrong in posting this content, and you have certainly done nothing of a legally actionable nature.
Indeed, the letter and request raise a few issues we think are important. The first touches on the so-called “right to be forgotten” — a principle of privacy in the internet age that is gaining momentum, at least outside of the United States. We remain committed to the belief that, in the absence of factual inaccuracies, news coverage, however unfavorable to a particular person or institution, should stay visible to the public.
We believe that removing accurate posts that someone finds inconvenient would set a dangerous precedent for Retraction Watch. We note, however, that some news organizations have implemented policies that allow for such removals in limited circumstances, for example, “People who have committed non-violent crimes who successfully petition the courts to permanently delete all records of their criminal cases.”
A post about publicly available retractions and a federal investigation into the work of a former Harvard researcher does not come close to meeting that kind of bar.
The second, somewhat related, point is that government agencies and institutions like journals and publishers should do a better job of resolving their investigations into persons and papers in a timely and transparent manner. The silence of the ORI and of the American Society for Microbiology helps no one — including Sam Lee.
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“he [Sam W. Lee] recently received a verbal offer to teach at the USC School of Medicine..”
is hearsay.
It’s a statement by Lee’s own lawyer. I expect that is what Lee said about himself to his lawyer.
still hearsay.
The Streisand effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing that information, often via the Internet.
Seriously. This example is almost too perfect. I wonder if there is a storyline we are not aware of. who in their right mind would make this request, and expect that RW would follow through with it?
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/former-newton-scientist-agrees-pay-215000-resolve-allegations-false-statements-grant
Was this covered on retraction watch?
Thank you ‘Scotus’ for uncovering the action by the Dept of Justice (DOJ), and raising (in your subsequent comment) an unresolved issue that I assume to be the animating factor of RW. . . i.e, correction of the literature.
I expect ORI still notifies the journal once they make a PHS finding (affecting a publication), but it is not clear if other agencies such as DOJ would do this (for a variety of good reasons). Nor is it clear that ‘scientific details’ underlying actions by the separate Office of Inspector General (OIG) within each agency are communicated with the journal. Finally, if HHS -OIG had taken an earlier action, would ORI (also a component of HHS) then take subsequent action?
Add into this mix a Journal’s further requirements, and you have a perfect formula for the frustrating disconnect between government legal action and corrections to the literature.
The right to be forgotten is an insidious infringement on free speech. Thank you for responding as you did.
“The silence of the ORI and of the American Society for Microbiology helps no one — including Sam Lee.”
The primary responsibility lies with the author.
Sam W. Lee either made mistakes in the presentation of the data, or failed to notice that others had made mistakes in the presentation of the data. That was his job, not the job of ORI, or the job of the American Society for Microbiology.
” has repeatedly been denied funding and other sources of income, according to his attorney, who blamed our coverage of the case for the scientist’s continuing woes…”
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/press-release/file/1422211/download
You would have to wonder if its got something to do with the above.
There are not many cases where the feds have gone after investigators for false statements in grant proposals. This may also explain why ORI have been dragging their feet on this case.
In light of the attorney letter this might be more appropriate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOp6fH2XQBc
Genius stuff. Also in later life the bassist from the Blockheads Norman Watt Roy was living in Herne Bay near where I grew up and I saw him walking his dogs on the beach once.
Lost opportunities to commit further potential fraud, I suppose.
The “right to be forgotten” might be OK, if the work in question did not have the potential to cause possible professional harm to others in the field & potentially incorrect management of cancer patients. There are real potential consequences to this investigator’s fraudulent actions. Dare I say: Lest we forget…
The “right to be forgotten” is a curious concept. Certainly some practices, such as posting arrest photos of people who may later be exonerated but their mug shot lives on forever, are easily unfairly detrimental. But “right to be forgotten” to whitewash science misdeeds committed as adult just sounds like “wish to cover up.” Even in the EU where the RTBF seems to have the most traction, there have been a lot of cases of politicians or high government officials getting caught having plagiarized their graduate theses. Should universities no longer publish theses online because a youthful indiscretion (academic cheating through plagiarism) could be detrimental when found out later in life? Drunken college party photos posted online seem like something of limited societal value that people could reasonably ask to be scrubbed. But what if the party photos showed them having sexist, racist, fascist, anti-Semitic, whateverist, thuggish drunken high jinxes? Maybe those are societally relevant decades later when the former frat boy is seeking positions of high responsibility? Don’t they have the right for the public to forget the parts they’d rather forget about themselves? Who’s to decide what stays or is scrubbed? The “reputation management” consultant hired by the well to do with dubious pasts? Golly, it’s just so hard to know how to be woke on such a slippery slope. Good job, RW.
Posted an additional concern for the MCB 2000 paper:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/E182BF54F2EB5B4A748A2494B61AEF#9