Exclusive: Shell employee confesses to graduate student misdeeds

A former graduate student at Georgia Tech who at least until recently worked at Shell confessed last year to misconduct in three published papers.

Michael Casciato, who earned his doctorate  from Georgia Tech in 2013, wrote in a June 22, 2020 email to the editor of an American Chemical Society journal as well as the principal investigator of the lab where he completed his PhD, Martha Grover, and a co-author, Dennis Hess:

I am writing to inform you that I committed research misconduct with respect to several pieces of data in papers that I published in Industrial Engineering & Chemistry Research (IECR) while I was a graduate student.  

The email, which Retraction Watch obtained through a public records request, named the three papers and provided fulsome details about which data Casciato recalls as real and which were likely made up. He continued:

I am writing now to share this information with you, apologize for my actions, and request your guidance on how you would like to proceed with these publications.

All of my co-authors on these three papers have been informed that I am contacting you with this note, and I have copied my thesis advisors as well, who have been counseling me on how to proceed as I rectify the mistakes I have made. 

Please know that I committed these acts on my own. Nobody coerced me or suggested this action to me, and nobody else collaborated with me. None of my co-authors or thesis advisors were aware of this behavior. 

I am coming forward now of my own volition to correct the record, borne out of a desire to fix the mistakes that I made. 

I was not compelled in any way whatsoever by any other person, party, investigator or researcher, laboratory or organization, or any other body to disclose my unethical behavior. Furthermore, nobody discovered flaws, errors, or issues with the work I completed and drove me to this disclosure. 

Please accept my sincere apologies for what I did, and please advise how you would like to proceed. 

Philip Savage, the journal’s editor in chief, responded on July 8, 2020:

I appreciate the courage that is required to make that admission. Since some of the published data in the three I&EC Research articles are fabricated, I believe retraction of those articles is the appropriate path to take. For each article, I ask that you work with your co-authors to draft a retraction statement for each and then submit them individually as an Addition/Correction manuscript type in ACS Paragon Plus with all of the original co-authors appropriately listed on each submission. The retraction statement for each article should provide the reason for retraction (falsification or fabrication of data) and perhaps comment on how that data affects the main conclusions in the article. My office will review the text after it is submitted. Please try to submit the retraction statements by no later than July 31, 2020. 

All three of the IECR papers were retracted within two months of Casicato’s email and include a reference to “the voluntary admission of Michael J. Casciato that this article contained data that he had fabricated”:

• “Synthesis of Optically Active ZnS-Carbon Nanotube Nanocomposites in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide via a Single Source Diethyldithiocarbamate Precursor” (cited 19 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science)
• “Initial Experimental Design Methodology Incorporating Expert Conjecture, Prior Data, and Engineering Models for Deposition of Iridium Nanoparticles in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide” (cited 9 times)
• “Optimization of a Carbon Dioxide-Assisted Nanoparticle Deposition Process Using Sequential Experimental Design with Adaptive Design Space” (cited 20 times)

Casciato refers to a fourth IECR paper, “Capture and Recovery of Organic Iodide Species from the Product Stream of a Process for the Iodative Dehydrogenation of Ethane to Ethylene,” and to the fact that he completed it while employed by Royal Dutch Shell.

This paper does not contain any research misconduct, fabrication, or falsification, and I am fourth author on this paper.

I realize that my word does not carry value with you given the other admissions in this communication, but I did want to highlight this information to you as well for full transparency on my interactions with your journal.

If you plan to contact the co-authors on this particular paper (Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2018, 57, 42, 13932–13939), I would like to ask if you can please advise me so I can contact them first and advise on the context of this situation with both my co-authors and my managers at Shell. I have been managing this situation so far with my thesis advisors, but if you plan to contact my co-authors, I would prefer first contact be made by me.

Savage, the editor in chief, responded:

You had mentioned a fourth article in your email message. Since there are no known ethical concerns with that article, there is no need to consider it any further.

In response to a request for a copy of reports of any investigations in the case, Georgia Tech said that “records related to the scholarly misconduct inquiry and investigation are protected from disclosure” based on the U.S. Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act “as they relate to Mr. Casciato’s time as a GT student.”

Neither Casciato — who has had a total of five papers retracted, by our count — nor the Shell media office responded to requests for comment.

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