In April 2019, Daejung Kim, then a Ph.D. student at the University of Melbourne in Australia, found a draft manuscript on the desk of a postdoc in the same laboratory. The manuscript included the experimental results on metal alloys he had spent months collecting. Kim hadn’t been told about the paper, nor had anyone asked his permission to use the data. The findings were central to Kim’s Ph.D. thesis and publishing them would mean the data were no longer original.
“I was shaking in the lab,” he recalled recently. “When I saw it, I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t know what to do.”
Kim took his concerns to his supervisor, Kenong Xia, a materials scientist and head of the lab, asking for his help to resolve the issue. He wanted to be credited as a coauthor on any papers using his results. He also emailed the postdoc, Ahmad Zafari, asking to see a draft of the paper.
But when these efforts to resolve the dispute were unsuccessful, Kim filed a formal complaint with the University of Melbourne’s research integrity office. Six months later, in January 2020, the university launched an investigation, and meanwhile, Xia and Zafari published two papers containing Kim’s results. The articles acknowledge Kim, but not as a coauthor.
For Kim, the investigation was just the start of a long effort to reclaim ownership of his work.
Documents reviewed by Retraction Watch show an investigation panel engaged by the university found a “cultural problem” inside Xia’s lab and research violations of Australia’s code of integrity related to the use of the grad student’s work. But it also found that Kim didn’t qualify for authorship on the manuscript.
Xia and Zafari were barred from receiving grants from the Australian Research Council for two years. Since the early 2000s, Xia has received more than AU$900,000 (US$593,000) from the ARC, among other grants, including for defense-related research. Xia remains at the University of Melbourne despite the panel’s findings of research misconduct that is “wilful and representative of an ongoing pattern.”
A subsequent review by the Australian Research Integrity Committee found flaws in how the university handled the case — including not protecting Kim’s interests, withholding the report, and not investigating additional allegations. Forced to change labs, Kim lost a scholarship and a job offer, and had to repay about AU$90,000 (US$58,400) to his sponsor in South Korea. The university has since offered Kim AU$15,000 (US$9,750) after he sought compensation for the financial losses and time spent doing the experimental work — although without admitting culpability.
Kim declined the funds, continuing to push for his data and his name to be removed from the published papers, and compensation for what he lost, which includes his intellectual property, a job opportunity, and the time he lost to changing his research topic to start his Ph.D. project over again. “I lost almost two years of my life,” he told us. “I feel that they don’t want to waste their time on my case.”
Kim’s efforts to correct the papers containing his work has led to their retraction.
One paper, published in Materials Science & Engineering: A in May 2020, was retracted in November 2024, three years after Kim asked the editor to remove his data and name from the acknowledgements. Before the retraction, Mark Hargreaves, the University of Melbourne’s then-deputy vice-chancellor for research, urged Kim to provide retrospective permission instead, saying a retraction would “represent another sanction of Xia and Zafari … and have implications for the other authors,” he wrote in correspondence we have seen. The editors eventually pulled the article for using data without the copyright owner’s approval. Neither Xia, Zafari nor the other authors agreed with the retraction.
For the other article, published in Scripta Materialia in August 2019, Kim requested in 2022 and again in 2024 his data and name be removed. But the editor cited the university’s investigation, saying it didn’t recommend a retraction, only a correction.
That stance has changed. After we asked the journal on October 14 about their decision not to retract, Kim received an update on October 16 from Scripta Materialia telling him that following an ethics review, the journal decided to retract the article for using Kim’s data without permission, a decision Kim called “overdue and incomplete.” The retraction did not address his concerns about the accuracy and repeatability of some of the results, he pointed out. According to the notice, both Xia and Zafari have agreed to the retraction.
In Kim’s complaint to the University of Melbourne’s research integrity office in July 2019, he reported that Xia and Zafari had breached the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. His first allegation was that they had used his experimental work without appropriate attribution. According to a copy of the panel’s report we have seen, investigators agreed Kim’s data had been used in both papers, which “clearly cut across future opportunities” for Kim to publish data from his Ph.D. But they found he didn’t technically qualify for authorship because he hadn’t contributed “beyond provision of primary data,” the documents state.
Melbourne’s investigation found Xia and Zafari had repeatedly breached Australia’s research integrity code by excluding Kim from discussions about the papers, using his data without consent, and misrepresenting parts of the methodology.
The investigators also described a “broader cultural problem” inside Xia’s lab, where Xia and Zafari portrayed Kim as an “intellectual bystander” on the project. According to the report, Kim was “denied the opportunity” to contribute, even though the panel considered him capable of doing so. This culture meant the panel didn’t believe Kim ultimately qualified for authorship. Xia told the panel that “[Kim] wouldn’t understand the paper,” which the panel described as a “deliberate and intentional” exclusion, and evidence of a culture where “students are not considered major contributors early in their studies.”
In both papers, Kim’s name was listed in the acknowledgements without his consent, which the panel said breached the code’s fairness principle and authorship guide. Xia told investigators, “My understanding is that you do not need permission to thank people.”
The Australian Research Council barred Xia and Zafari from receiving grants for two years, and the university recommended a lab culture review and additional training.
The investigation also found that Kim’s Ph.D. project overlapped with the collaboration between Xia and Zafari. Kim’s formal milestone documents identified the alloy experiments as part of his Ph.D., giving him a “reasonable expectation” that the project was his to develop. Xia told the panel that “it was never the intention that this was [Kim’s] project,” even though he had approved Kim’s milestone review.
The investigation found that Xia’s actions constituted “wilful ignorance or wilful deviation from the code.” They were “particularly disturbed” by Xia’s attempts to justify his behavior as standard practice, warning it could lead to more serious misconduct. Zafari’s breaches were deemed comparatively minor but still “crossed the boundary of accepted practice.”
Xia remains in his position at the University of Melbourne. Zafari is listed as a researcher on the University of Twente’s website, in the Netherlands.
Xia has not responded to requests for comment about these findings. Zafari’s legal representatives said: “Dr Zafari is a highly regarded researcher who has not been found by any university or comparable institution to have engaged in research misconduct.”
In a letter summarizing the findings, Hargreaves told Kim that, based on the panel’s findings and “on the balance of probabilities,” Xia “committed research misconduct,” and Zafari “committed serious breaches of the Code.”
The panel also determined that there were inaccuracies in the methodology of the Scripta Materialia paper. The authors misrepresented the magnifications of some figures, and didn’t report the experimental conditions accurately. Zafari admitted to using “artistic licence” when preparing some figures, but the panel found this was done for convenience rather than to mislead.
Overall, they recommended an “urgent review of student supervisory practices” as well as additional training in Xia’s group, corrections to the methodological issues, and amendments to the acknowledgements to specify Kim’s contributions.
Because Kim was only given a summary letter of the findings, despite multiple requests, Kim said he couldn’t understand how the panel reached their conclusions and he believed their process was biased. So in March 2021, a few weeks after receiving the summary, Kim appealed the outcome.
He later took the matter to the Australian Research Integrity Committee (ARIC), which reviews how institutions handle breaches of the code. In its September 2023 report ARIC described “significant difficulty” obtaining information from the university and found Kim was “significantly disadvantaged” by the publication of papers containing his work — especially since, when he first raised his concerns, none of the papers had yet been published. The university’s six-month delay in launching the investigation after the complaint meant the data became increasingly accessible online.
ARIC determined that the university “did not do enough to protect the interests of Dr Kim” and said pausing publication of the papers could have avoided some of the breaches.
It recommended the university to review its policy of withholding full reports and issue a formal apology to Kim for “the disadvantage he suffered as a result of Code breaches and poor research practice in the laboratory.” In December 2023, Hargreaves wrote to Kim apologizing for “any distress caused during the investigation.”
ARIC declined to comment on whether it has since received any updates from the university about steps taken to address the systemic problems identified in its own investigation.
Kim says the fallout from the case had consequences on his career. He lost a scholarship and associated job offer with a company in Korea after the delays to his Ph.D. and culture of the lab forced him to move to another lab. He was also required to repay two years’ worth of the scholarship back to the sponsor — amounting to about AU$90,000 (US$58,400).
At the start of this year, Kim wrote to the University of Melbourne requesting compensation for the lost opportunity and the time he spent working on generating data he was ultimately unable to claim as his own. In a response we’ve reviewed, Ben Rubinstein, the deputy dean of research in the faculty of engineering and information technology, said there was no finding in the investigation that Kim should have been paid for the work, and there was no employment relationship between Kim and the university. Rubinstein stated the university couldn’t be held solely responsible for the termination of Kim’s job offer and scholarship contract.
However, the university offered $15,000 ($9,750) as an ex gratia payment — made out of a moral obligation rather than a legal requirement — without “any admission of liability” and “in full and final settlement of all claims” against the university, Rubinstein wrote. Accepting the payment would also require Kim to agree to confidentiality and non-disparagement terms, as well as releasing the university from any current or future claims related to his time as a Ph.D. student.
Kim, now working as an engineer in South Korea, says he rejected the offer. “The university didn’t consider my request at all,” he told us. “I feel that my concerns haven’t been resolved at all.”
In a statement to Retraction Watch, a spokesperson for the University of Melbourne wrote: “The investigation identified that breaches of the Code occurred, and corrective actions were required of the respondent researchers. The University has taken responsive action. The graduate researcher was also provided with additional support.
“The University of Melbourne considers this matter concluded and will be making no further comment.”
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While this sounds like gross misconduct on Xia’s part, Xia was right about one thing: that “you do not need permission to thank people.”
Honestly this should be required leading in every PhD orientation. Students should know their rights and understand that Universities will protect themselves first.
A piece by Dyani Lewis in Nature (24 August 2023) “Australia grapples with how to investigate scientific misconduct” says “…some leaders at Australian universities maintain that in-house integrity units are adequate for rooting out cases of scientific misconduct, and that an over-arching integrity body would be wasteful.”
She cites new University of Melbourne VC Emma Johnston as holding this view.
University leaders in Australia (including Hargreaves and Johnston) need to realise that self-regulation with internal pay-offs, non-disclosure, and conflicts of interest will continue to harm the reputations of Australian universities.
I am amazed at how light the punishment is for this outrageous behavior. The prof should have been at least suspended without pay for multiple years, and while only the obviously unwilling University of Melbourne could do that, the research council could at least ban them forever rather than an almost symbolic two years.
I’m pleasantly surprised that the ARC did anything at all. They’re normally perfectly fine with prominent academics breaching their rules.
That’s the first I’ve heard of having to pay back scholarships for failing to achieve degree requirements on schedule. That’s severe. Is that a S Korean thing?
You need permission to thank someone in academic papers because you implicate someone for something.
Yes, I agree with this. Clearly Kim wasn’t happy seeing his data being used for the paper, which also means the acknowledgment is at least deceptive.
Clearly Melbourne University invesigation system is flawed. They should have stopped all publications proactively when conecrs raised by researcher. If Univrsity causing a student losses a funded schloarship, its University responsbiltiy to compensate the loss. ARIC is also weak in governing Australia rserah cinstitution inevstgation process..this is another repating example…Dr Zafari is a highly regarded researcher who has not been found by any university or comparable institution to have engaged in research misconduct.”
This statement itself now neatly captures the situation: two retracted publications, several years of an Australian funding ban, and serious breaches formally identified in the University of Melbourne investigation, all effectively acknowledged by the University. It reflects dishonesty, poor ethics, and a lack of transparency—ironically summarised in his own defence.
I feel for Kim. It’s alarming to see a professor describe and equate acknowledgments in scholarly articles as casual “thank you” sort. This news says on the balance of probabilities Xia engaged in research misconduct and Zafari in serious research misconduct yet the mitigation is reduced to “training” and “minor” corrections. Both researchers should not have remained and assessed the public funding at the University since then. That generic soft remedy response points to a deeper University cultural and governance problem. A public funded university technically signalling that its compliance systems for publicly funded research are inadequate. An institution that cannot demonstrate robust research integrity safeguards should not be trusted with public research funding. Xia, Zafari, University and ARIC all are equally answerable !
The ‘cultural problem ‘ cited might have to do with the evident fact that all the named parties are of foreign heritage ( I think that is the PC term) and that nominally Australian universities have sold themselves to foreign interests for the holy dollar and their principles with it ( but not the vice principals who do not come cheap – in the millions of dollars 😉)
ARIC determined that the university ‘did not do enough to protect the interests of Dr Kim.’ “ARIC declined to comment on whether it has since received any updates from the university about steps taken” What is ARIC for? If a case or an Australian uni can’t be investigated by ARIC..their functions in Australia are purely redundant…
Exactly right. AIRC is largely powerless to police research misconduct of Universities. AIRC annual reports to the sector lay out serious weaknesses in university integrity governance and systemic functional failure.
The University of Melbourne up to its old tricks again. A student shows integrity and courage and UoM throws them under a bus. First the Mark Smyth debacle where a courageous PhD student was ignored for the sake of appearance (https://www.theage.com.au/national/the-cancer-drug-the-faked-data-and-the-superstar-scientist-20250710-p5mdxa.html
https://www.theage.com.au/national/follow-the-mice-how-whistleblowers-secret-lab-videos-brought-down-top-scientist-20250710-p5mdxc.html) and now this. How many more cover ups are going to emerge and what is it going to take for UoM to treat research misconduct seriously?
This issue isn’t limited to the University of Melbourne — the full University of Queensland investigation reports of alleged academic and research misconduct are available here:
https://thehousewillwin.com/appendix-a-david-lavells-investigation-report-for-the-ccc-formerly-known-as-the-cmc/
and
https://thehousewillwin.com/appendix-b-bruce-abernethys-report-of-investigations-of-alleged-academic-and-research-misconduct/
Agree. I think it would help if Retraction Watch wrote a simple overview about why the University of Melbourne, and Australian universities in general, seem to have so many retractions and research misconduct issues compared with the US and Europe. From the outside, Australia is starting to look like a hotspot for retractions, misconduct findings, and legal or regulatory action. There are many examples already visible in Google and Retraction Watch, and probably more cases that only show up as brief retraction notes from publishers without a public explanation from university.
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/05/09/concussion-researcher-mccrory-up-to-17-retractions/
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbourne-uni-pays-out-700-000-to-phd-student-20200410-p54ixi.html
https://journals.lww.com/annals-of-medicine-and-surgery/fulltext/2018/02000/retraction_notice_to__the_use_of_super_selective.8.aspx
https://europepmc.org/article/med/34870780
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12640-021-00440-z#author-information
https://www.neurotherapeuticsjournal.org/article/S1878-7479(23)02024-X/fulltext
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/2024-media-releases/april-2024/20240405-university-of-melbourne-adverse-actions-penalties-media-release
https://retractionwatch.com/2019/10/15/a-researcher-with-30-retractions-and-counting-the-whistleblower-speaks/
https://www.smh.com.au/national/university-investigates-papers-by-top-australian-cancer-researchers-after-retractions-20241112-p5kpue.html
https://www.smh.com.au/national/university-investigates-papers-by-top-australian-cancer-researchers-after-retractions-20241112-p5kpue.html
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/11/09/researcher-leaves-post-at-australian-university-years-after-papers-come-under-scrutiny/
+++++
Ha ha.. UoM is a shameless rotten University…..
“How many more cover ups are going to emerge?”
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbourne-uni-allowed-sexual-harasser-professor-to-keep-jobs-20210317-p57bmm.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/sexual-complaint-against-professor-investigated-by-university/12601766
For me Kim made the big mistake of his lifetime when he decided join this Melbourne university. when you choose that place you must accept how the university treats their students
UMelb is supposed to be a top research university. It’s their job to act like it.
Zafari’s legal representatives said: “Dr Zafari is a highly regarded researcher who has not been found by any university or comparable institution to have engaged in research misconduct.” Lol :)…Punchline of the article:)
The only thing moving so fast in this story was the submission of those Zafari and Xia papers 🙂 .liked that ‘cultural problem’ apparently means we keep doing this and nobody stops us…
Without people like Kim who refuse to quiet, cases like this would stay buried as internal matters under ‘cover up’.Kudos to Kim for not accepting petty pay for cover up th ematter.
what a floppy, whackling, muck around investigation to save their own backs. logic is wild here. they admit Kim’s work was central for the papers.admit he was shut out, may be because of power dynamics of senior researchers, but then say he doesn’t meet authorship criteria because he was shut out. That’s a convenient circular reasoning. Power dynamics play by seniors and shutting out junior or student researchers is a common issue in academia…
Two retractions for data use and a minimal real penalties should be ringing alarm bells for funders, not quietly filed as matter concluded for a university.Putting someone in acknowledgements after using their work without permission is like stealing their car and leaving a thank you note.Well articulated report.Well done Lori !
I am stunned that ‘wilful and representative of an ongoing pattern’ misconduct plus ARIC’s criticisms results in a short ARC ban and supervisory training. What message does that send to every other supervisor watching?
Cultural problem of the lab is likely just a vague excuse due to the distinct nationalities of the involved parties. I completely disagree with the panel using it.
I think the second journal was retracted few days before this news. I think Elsevier journals do not come out of this looking great either. Waiting for a complainant to chase for years from 2022. And then quietly retract in lightening speed when retraction watch asks questions is not an ethics framework.
As a PhD student reading this, I find it absolutely terrifying. The power gap between professors, university leaders and one student is so huge that even when you win with a fight like this it still feels like you lose. Respect to Dr Kim for standing his ground.
Very, very bad example of a research misconduct investigation from University of melbounre- I would say. Offering 15K of taxpayers’ funds without justification is a crime. Stupid researchers and university, without doubt. The student should have been a coauthor simply in the first instance when he raised a serious concern. Discreet and ethical decision-making at a lower level by a qualified research integrity office would have saved several hundred thousand dollars for the University of Melbourne. The researchers and the university should have received a clear warning about all consequences of the investigation and potential remedies from their ‘advisors’. In the US, an average research misconduct investigation costs around 400K to 600K US dollars in direct and indirect costs. This was obviously an expensive investigation for the university, with no justice served for the student and no benefit for research integrity. The article reinforces why the University of Melbourne is leading, without counterpart, in retraction counts in Australia definitely not because of their high level research integrity and vigilance. All university ranking firms must take these serious flaws into account before providing high ranks to such flawed universities.
whole story looks like a big cover up. We closed the case therefore don’t ask us any questions. This is a tip of an iceburg. university system always protect their staff not students.
I think research misconduct in Australia will not change unless ARIC is given real power to control funding, enforce the rules for universities. All cases of serious misconduct should be listed publicly with the person’s name and their university, instead of using fake names like “Dr Brown” “Dr Smith” or “Grevillea University”, ” Correa University” in ARIC reports. The recent ARIC annual reports show that most of the universities are failing to follow the Australian funding and integrity guidelines, yet public money keeps going to them. Without real transparency, real names, and real consequences from ARIC, Australia will stay a safe place for serious misconduct and a dangerous place for honest researchers. When a researcher with serious misconduct findings against them can still call himself a “highly regarded researcher”, that is the real tragedy of the Australian research integrity system.
I feel like there are “thieves in the house” – and inside the university as well. The preliminary data for publication comes from Kim’s PhD work, so why was he not included as an author? Good on Retraction Watch for bringing this case into the open.
When I read this, I can’t help thinking: if someone took a few million dollars from the University of Melbourne, would they just be asked to apologise, do some “training” and then carry on? It almost looks like there are no real consequences if the University investigate it, which sends a terrible message to the research community.
Unfortunately, this is a serious and very common problem in many universities. From what I have seen, part of the problem comes from how some universities and journals put so much weight on the corresponding author. Not everyone in that role behaves badly, but a small number have treated junior researchers poorly and acted unethically in their research.
In theory, research guidelines say the corresponding author should make fair decisions about who is listed as an author. In reality, in many cases I’ve seen, names on a paper are chosen more because of personal connections to the corresponding author than because of who actually did the work or produced the data.
When you raise a concern with a journal, the usual response is to tell you to sort it out with the corresponding author. That sounds reasonable on paper, but it doesn’t work when the corresponding author is the one misusing their position. Some use this power to protect themselves instead of doing the right thing. These comments come from my own experience over about 22 years working in research.
I can’t believe this thing really happened. How did they publish the papers without agreement? If they were in Dr. Kim’s shoes, what would they do?
Scripta Materialia has ignored him and not taken any actions even though their research violations were tipped off? Thanks for Retraction Watch to contact the journal. It’s shameful that the journal didn’t take the violation seriously.
I think Kim fought with the university for several years and still got no real justice. It is sad. From my experience as a Phd student, if you want to be sucessful as a resercher, specially in early career, you sometimes have to be a bit submissive to athority. This is kind of a known thing all over the world, even though the official rules are very strict. Doing some extra work for the professor, long hours, sometimes with no payment or no authorship, is almost treated as universally “normal” among Phd students. I’m not saying it is fair, ethical but for many students it feels like the only logical way to save their Phd and their future career. In an ideal situation, research professors and senior reserchers will appreciate phd students’ work and contribution for authorship, so everyone can grow together.