Pitt says scientist shirked duty

A University of Pittsburgh panel has ruled that reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten committed "research misbehavior" in helping South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk publish a since-discredited stem cell paper, according to a report issued Friday.

After a two-month investigation, the panel found that the Pitt researcher shirked his professional responsibilities while in pursuit of fame and fortune that came from associating his name with a major breakthrough in the high-profile stem cell field. This was a "serious failure that facilitated the publication of falsified experiments," the report said.

The panel recommended that the university take disciplinary or corrective action against Schatten and that Pitt change its ethical guidelines for researchers.

Pitt medical school dean Dr. Arthur Levine will determine what, if any, sanctions might be levied. Levine's decision, "like all other such personnel matters," will remain confidential, university officials said yesterday in a statement.

"This is a huge black eye to (Schatten) that will be very damaging to his ability to get grants, conduct research, recruit graduate students and publish in top journals," said David Magnus, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Pitt panel absolved Schatten of the most serious offense a scientist can commit -- research misconduct -- because his actions did not meet the university's narrow definition of this infraction.

"We conclude that Dr. Schatten likely did not intentionally falsify or fabricate experimental data, and that there is no evidence that he was aware of the misconduct reported to have occurred in Dr. Hwang's group in Korea," the nine-page public summary of the report said.

Schatten remains a tenured professor and active researcher at the Pitt-affiliated Magee-Womens Research Institute, the university said. He did not respond to e-mail or phone messages left yesterday.

Pitt officials would not comment beyond the statement that said the panel had identified "shortcomings" in Schatten's work. The university's statement did not mention the finding of research misbehavior and commended Schatten for promptly alerting the scientific community when he had suspicions about the research.

The unidentified panel members signed a confidentiality agreement.

Schatten has not spoken publicly since severing ties with Hwang, whom he once described as "my brother," after he charged the Korean scientist in November with unethical practices in procuring human eggs for research.

Schatten served as senior author on a landmark paper published in the journal Science in June 2005 in which Hwang claimed to have isolated stem cells from cloned human embryos with dazzling efficiency. Schatten also acted as a liaison between Hwang and the editors of Science to help the Korean scientist to publish a related cloning paper in 2004.

"There is a lesson here for all of us: Do not put your name on a paper unless you did the experiments or you have been associated with every aspect of the research," said William J. Brinkley, senior vice president for graduate sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, who has known Schatten for decades.

Brinkley and several other stem cell researchers said yesterday they never believed Schatten had falsified data.

"I've always thought that Dr. Schatten was a victim in this as much as the rest of the scientific community was," said Dr. Evan Snyder, who heads the Stem Cell Research Program at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "Of course being the senior author on a paper is like being a CEO in an organization -- the buck stops with you."

Hwang -- often photographed with Schatten -- soared to international fame because his research raised hopes that genetically matched tissue could be grown to help paralyzed people walk and to treat incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and diabetes.

Last month, Science retracted both stem cell papers after Seoul National University concluded they were falsified. Hwang has publicly apologized in South Korea, but maintains he was deceived by junior researchers.

The investigatory panel convened Dec. 14 by Pitt's Office of Research Integrity set out to determine what Schatten knew about the fabrication, when he knew it and how much he should have known, given his role as senior author. By scientific convention, the senior author is responsible for a paper's integrity.

Schatten did not exercise "a sufficiently critical perspective as a scientist," the report said. He failed to question suspicious changes in data reporting, did not look into reports of cell contamination and ignored inconsistencies in the research, it said.

Schatten met Hwang at an international stem cell meeting in Seoul in 2003. He later invested "a tremendous amount of time and energy" in preparing Hwang's 2005 paper for publication.

By co-authoring the paper and aggressively promoting Hwang and his purported breakthroughs, Schatten improved his chances of securing money for his own research and getting patent applications approved, the panel found. He also accepted personal payments from Hwang.

The report said: