Last year we discussed Why We Sleep, a book that contained misrepresented data. Why We Sleep was written by a professor at the University of California. Alexey Guzey discovered many many problems with the book, including a smoking-gun graph, and Yngve Hoiseth contacted the contacted the University of California to report Walker’s violation of their research misconduct policy. The university politely but firmly refused to look into the situation.
It was understandable (from a cynical point of view) but disappointing that the official university body didn’t seem to care about research misconduct by one of its famous professors.
Nick Brown reports on a similar situation, where he found problems with suspicious data in a published article with authors coming from 12 different academic institutions. Brown sent a letter to all these institutions, and this is how 9 of them replied:
Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK: Stated that they would investigate, and gave me an approximate date by which they anticipated that their investigation would be complete.
Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia: Stated that they would investigate, but with no estimate of how long this would take.
Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, Monterrey, N.L., Mexico: No reply.
Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India: No reply.
University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy: No reply.
Army Share Fund Hospital, Athens, Greece: No reply.
Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada: No reply.
University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland: No reply.
Lero Irish Software Research Centre, Limerick, Ireland: No reply.By “No reply” here, I [Nick] mean that I received nothing. No “Undeliverable” message. No out-of-office message. No quick reply saying “Sorry, COVID-19 happened, we’re busy”. Not “We’ll look into it”. Not “We won’t look into it”. Not even “Get lost, there is clearly no case to answer here”. Nothing, nada, nichts, rien, zip, in reply to what I (and, apparently, the research integrity people at the two institutions that did reply) think is a polite, professional e-mail, with a subject line that I hope suggests that a couple of minutes of the recipient’s time might be a worthwhile investment, in 7 out of 9 cases.
So, yeah, the usual story.