A former University of California, Berkeley postdoc in physics “engaged in research misconduct in research reported in a grant application” submitted to the NIH, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.
The postdoc, Shuo Chen, “reused an image of visual cortex neurons to represent fluorescence calcium imaging of hippocampal neurons,” the ORI said. Chen, who was awarded the 2019 Science & PINS Prize for Neuromodulation for this essay published in Science, also used data from a 2018 Nature Neuroscience paper he co-authored while at the RIKEN Institute in Japan “to represent several sessions of two-photon hippocampal calcium imaging of progressive place fields, obtained from multiple mice running on a treadmill in a head-fixed VR set up.”
Chen “neither admits nor denies” ORI’s findings, according to the agency, but agreed to one year of supervision for any research funded by the U.S. Public Health Service, of which NIH is a part.
Chen did not respond to a request for comment.
David Foster, the PI of the lab where Chen was a postdoc, told Retraction Watch he is “gratified that the NIH has completed this investigation and reached their conclusions” and said he was unaware of Chen’s current whereabouts.
The finding of misconduct is the second of 2022 for the ORI, which last year made just three findings.
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Since it’s not explicitely stated and in case anybody wonders – the NIH grant Chen submitted was a K99/R00 (a so-called Pathway to Independence Award), so Chen (rather than his Berkeley advisor) was the PI and therefore solely responsible for its contents. Postdoc mentors can assist with providing feedback, not sure that happened in this case.
You know, there are plenty of aspiring brilliant scientists who can’t get positions or grants. Instead of this one-year supervision bullshit, how about a lifetime ban for faking data? Let someone else have a chance.
I doubt that he will ever work again as a scientist, regardless of the penalty. Competition is so stiff for jobs that there is not a reason for anyone to take a chance on him.
Yes, and this on the background of constant harping on how IMPORTANT scientific research and STEM subjects are. If they really were there would be NO competition for jobs but competition for scientists willing to embark on such a difficult career. But here as everywhere else hypocrisy reigns supreme.
Yep, the posterior-doc is now far far away “over the ocean”.
I am in favor of giving people a second chance, albeit under some conditions. In particular for an early career researcher who could still learn how to do better science and correct his past misbehaviour.
This being said, the one-year supervision is indeed not a very strong constraint, there are other options between a one-year supervision and a lifetime ban. I am not sure how much ORI (and others) can do but we have seen too many slaps on the wrist (not mentioning the ban for acting as a grant reviewer that comes bundled for PIs – which is probably considered a blessing rather than a constraint).
At some point, given the career options for ECRs in general, it will be more beneficial to cheat (even if getting caught) than to play by the rules. Or have we already passed that point ?
The ORI stipulations might be considered light, but for someone at the early career stages, being featured on RW is probably punishment enough. I don’t think there are too many faculty search committees who would be able to look past this and give Dr. Chen serious consideration.
I’ve sat on faculty search committees and I don’t share your optimism. Plagiarism is not only a massive problem, it’s rapidly growing and taking over a large fraction of research scientists’ time. It should be immediate career suicide to engage in it.
In this case, it was fraud rather than plagiarism, as data were presented as being something else than they were. But I fully agree: this should be at least a lifetime ban from being involved in any governmental grants.
Come now. People are more than happy to buy into a con. Liz Holmes is raising money for her next Silicon Valley con, despite her conviction. Robert Getzenberg was still accepting awards from professional societies as his millions-dollar scams, targeting grants and venture capital investments, was falling apart. To this day, the whole field of Urology is actively trying to rehabilitate Robert Getzenberg’s reputation.
So don’t underestimate the willfulness of university faculty recruitment efforts to fall in love with frauds. Regularly. And willfully.
I would just like to point this story out to all the conspiracy theorists out there who think data can be faked without repercussion. Science doesn’t operate on favoritism. Research goes through peer review to validate the data. This is a great example of just how objective science strives to be. If a few people start acting up, the rest of the community will remedy the issue.
Really? There are plenty of people who are associated, or have lead labs that have faked data, and doing quite well without suffering reprucussions, including:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=c+ronald+kahn
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=carlo+croce
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=anil+sood
and this is for starters….
All of these individuals have great jobs making over a 1/2 million a year, and some (the first two) collect fine art (!)
I think there is a problem here.
And at least one is in charge with the moonshot program for ovarian cancer… Basically the hopes of so many women and their families) – oh, who also happen to be taxpayers- rest with a fraud, interested in only one thing: his own career.
Sure…
Science is not above human behaviour. It is not an independent entity that stays away from biases. The system of Academia is fueled by prestige and elitism, sadly this type of behaviours are common. We cannot just pretend science is perfect and self-correcting when we people are the ones who do it and when misconduct is taboo. Also science has not been able to counteract the conspiracy theories that circulate among people partly because scientists along with government are making an awful job at vulgarisation. Again, academia is a bubble where people get to experiment in perfect conditions completely detach of the community reality.
Shouldn’t this be ‘postdoc in psychology’ rather than ‘postdoc in physics’?
We thought the same thing but the ORI has him as physics: https://ori.hhs.gov/content/case-summary-chen-shuo
Will double-check.
This paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-020-0762-7 also lists his affiliation in Physics, so probably correct. Quite a few people in that department have an interest in developing imaging techniques to study biological systems, see https://physics.berkeley.edu/research/biophysics
ORI tells us that “Shuo Chen submitted the K99 NS116562-01 grant as a post-doc from the Department of Physics, UC Berkeley, with Drs. Na Ji (Physics) and David Foster (Psychology) listed as co-mentors” — so physics is correct.
Oh, he will be recruited to a high profile university, he will have tons of grant money thrown at him, he will commit fraud again, and he will be given another pass.
This is standard procedure…
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/cancer-carlo-croce.html
If anything, high-profile universities seem more susceptible. Once you’re in the old boys club, it’s very difficult to get thrown out.
“… but agreed to one year of supervision for any research funded by the U.S. Public Health Service, of which NIH is a part.” That is just laughable. Getting caught by ORI is highly unlikely, and on the of-chance it does happen, you basically don’t get penalised. At this point, they are basically encouraging fraud in grant applications.
Looks like the very same guy moved to NYU and just got a K99 from NIA.
https://reporter.nih.gov/search/Xyi8poeZI0eyjzVUZf3lbg/project-details/10371698
http://www.cn3laboratory.org/members.html