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Dispute at Harvard leads to a restraining order against a prominent scientist (sciencemag.org)
70 points by georgecmu on Jan 20, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 52 comments



This is awesome. The way that (often foreign, often on J1 or H1B or student visa) students are treated in major labs is often horrible. If this destroys Rubin's lab, so much the better. Maybe he can serve as a warning to other PIs.


Yes this sort of behavior is common. One of my dad's friends was doing his PhD as an immigrant in the 90s in the US and his professor did something similar to him. Had the police called and accused him of interfering with other people's experiments due to some small dispute that had nothing do with the lab. This is common fare behavior in the US research establishment against immigrants. Another friend ended up getting electroconvulsive therapy mostly as a result of dealing with a bad advisor, ending up in the hospital like this guy, and having the shrinks diagnose him with depression, etc. He had no family, they gave him ECD despite the fact that he did not want ECD on the recommendation of the shrinks, his personality changed significantly after that.


I heard it was "worse" way "back then" but I had no idea how much worse. Without regulations and scrutiny, competitive people will push the envelope on how bad they can abuse others and for how little money. Gotta push back.


I'm more saddened than anything. Rubin's lab is dedicated to studying Spinal Muscular Atrophy - the leading cause of infant death in the USA. My cousin died of SMA and it was absolutely devastating for my aunt and uncle. If Rubin's lab is destroyed by this, even if justified, it is a setback for SMA research. I wouldn't call it awesome.


You think that bogus work doesn't siphon funds away from good quality research? What universe do you live in? With a 10% pay line, even most good research won't get funded. For bogus research to get funded, better work MUST go unfunded. Guaranteed that will lead to more dead kids and a longer wait for effective treatments.

And if Rubin was falsifying data, then so much the better if it wipes him out. Few things are more disgusting than preying on the horrible situation of kids with rare diseases just to crank out research indirects and promotions, mostly on the backs of slave-labor postdocs with no alternative employment in this country.

So, to sum, if Rubin falsified the work, fuck him twice as hard as other frauds for his mendacity.

If he did not, and this is all much ado over nothing, then I sincerely hope he will be vindicated and I wish him the best.


I agree. I guess what I meant to say is that either way it's sad. If it turns out he has been doing bogus research / falsifying the data then it's terrible for all the reasons you stated. Good that someone blew the whistle, but really sad. If it turns out he has been doing good research but this dispute means that the lab can't continue to function it's also a setback for the lines of research they were pursuing into SMA. I just, perhaps over-sensitively, took issue with characterizing the situation as awesome.


Fair enough, SMA is certainly not awesome for anyone whose kid is dying from it. I should be more measured in the words I choose. "It's a shame that a lab run by a guy who may be an asshole slave driver could negatively impact the perception of SMA research, but if he is in fact playing fast and loose with the facts, it will be better in the long term for him to stop working on SMA, or anything else"


If (note well that "if") Rubin's lab is fabricating data, is it still a setback for SMA research if Rubin's lab is destroyed? Or is the fabricating data already the setback for SMA research, and removing the fabricator is... maybe not a step forward, but at least stopping stepping back?


"Often, a person accused of misconduct will try to “isolate, humiliate, and terminate” the whistleblower, says Patrick Burns ... But he’s never seen a case involving a forced mental exam."

Unfortunately this is certainly not the first time this exact tactic has been used. Adiran Schoolcraft was held against his will in a psychiatric facility for 6 days after exposing corruption in the NYPD.

[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft


FWIW, 30.5 m is 100 ft which explains the unusual number.


That false precision really bugs me. It's obviously not exactly 100 feet - no-one is ever going to get a measuring tape and check it - so 30m is a much better unit conversion!


They should have just said something like "100 feet (about 30m)", since that's what the actual court order is. I get that a science-oriented publication would have a convention of converting to MKS units, but in this case I think it was excessive.


Broadly, I think it's inappropriate to convert when the specification is tied to units like this.

For a wild hypothetical, imagine the definition of the foot was increased by 10%. The country would burn, of course, but this restraining order would probably expand with the change. If you're measuring a fact about the world, convert as you will. But if you're "creating" a fact like the court is, that should probably be reported in the original terms.


The definition of "a foot" was only agreed relatively recently: it wasn't all that long ago that countries differed on their definition. That difference in measuring systems (an Amsterdam foot was 11 inches, a Swedish foot was 12 inches) was attributed as one of the causes of the sinking of the Vasa [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)


I knew the standardization was new-ish, but that's an excellent story. Right up there with building a bridge measured "above sea level", such that the two sides didn't match when they met in the middle.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27509559


Yes, that would have been far better. It's not like they'd have been shy about converting units like "cubits", so why not do the same with "feet"?


31m would be a better conversion: the subject of the order is not permitted within 30m of the student, but is permitted within 31m.

That said, I would suggest simply using the original units. It would be silly to misrepresent a judge's decision.


No, that's my point. They would not be permitted within 31m and they'd be stupid to try. That's the kind of pedantic crap that junior judges get pissed off with every day (depending on your country I guess). Round to 30m and realise that they really mean "not in your face" because you're an intelligent human being.


  They would not be permitted within 31m
Do you have a good justification for that claim?

If a judge made a ruling that someone couldn't approach closer than 30.5m, and the subject was outside that limit, surely they are complying with the judge's instructions?

I would find it hard to imagine a lawyer arguing "I know the judge said 30.5m, but that also includes 31m, and 32m - the judge meant that they can't be in the person's face".

You don't find similar arguments for prosecuting someone driving at 1mph below the speed limit - "I know the limit's 70mph, but that's an absolute limit: 69mph is not OK either. Nor 68mph."


It very possibly depends on your local laws, but I would check with a lawyer in your country before pushing that limit.


I usually see it the other way round. When a movie is in US units and gets translated to literal values, like 16 km, 32 km, and so on.... when it's obvious that it doesn't matter.


this is a horrifyingly ugly mess up one side and down the other.

nobody comes out of this looking good.


I dunno, what did German do to warrant the way he was treated?

Showing up in the middle of the night and forcing him to a mental health facility against his will? Harvard investigators taking his writings? People believing he could be spiking their coffee with poison?

It just sounds bizarre and German seems to be the real victim.


> It just sounds bizarre and German seems to be the real victim.

I have no idea since both stories seem plausible. That said, this portion stood out to me:

" In January 2016, a postdoctoral researcher reported that German asked her to perform a tedious task, which she believed was disrespectful, leading to a dispute. German was “red in the face and shaking with rage,” she said in her sworn statement. "

Reading the docket NO. 1681CV01640 shows: " The Lab Manager, LaLonde, who would have seen German daily (until May 21, 2016), described plaintiff as "odd sometimes in his behavior, but nothing requiring immediate action, no danger to himself or anyone." " " how they should treat him better and how he deserves things other people should not have. This behavior has lasted for a while. "

That makes me question exactly who is the real victim. There doesn't seem to be enough evidence to know for sure. I've seen both types of things. I've seen advisors sabotage their pupils. I've seen pupils blame their advisors when things didn't go their way.

I'm sure we've all heard how Robert Openheimer tried to poison his tutor at Cambridge. Unrelated, but still worth mentioning is also a suspicious suicide of a former lover of his.

Openheimer got out of trouble, despite the attempted murder because of his parents influence at Cambridge. It is interesting that this article mentions German was with his parents as well. That swayed me a bit against believing that German was the real victim.


The bar for dragging someone away by force for potential involuntary commitment is pretty damn high. It's way above making an appointment with a psychiatrist and moving further if he skips the appointment.


It depends on where you live to some extent, but it goes like this where I live (I know cause it happened just like this).

A (in this case well-meaning good) kid calls the police saying your kid is suicidal.

The police and paramedics show-up to your house.

You and your kid say all is fine, SI has passed but paramedics say a LCSW needs to make the call, police agree.

They strap your kid to a stretcher and go to hospital.

There you learn that a social worker cannot make the call unless your kid is sure to not be in an altered state (like say high on drugs), so you need for a nurse to draw blood and wait for results.

A doctor looks at the test results showing no substances and calls for the LCSW.

A social worker shows-up speaking to you and your kid separately.

The social worker now needs to consult a psychologist and the doctor on call.

The doctor on call discharges your kid from the ER.

Clearly this can be abused, but I'm happy it's the way it is.


You're right, both stories do seem plausible, and we're getting both sides presented through a third party who might or might not have an editorial slant as well. Still, here's the part I noticed more than anything:

"In the fall of 2015, he took a refresher course in the conduct of science, which covered topics such as ethics and misconduct. The course reminded him that, around June 2015, a member of Rubin’s lab had told him about the alleged data fabrication in the Cell Stem Cell paper."

It "reminded him"? As in, someone told him his supervisor was falsifying data, and that didn't warrant even taking notice until something had to jog your memory? While the general circumstances -- student makes false allegations vs supervisor maliciously treats student -- are both plausible, this one line, if accurate in truth and accurately worded, makes me pretty skeptical.


Agree- it's hard to know. But the misconduct was probably not black and white (catching somebody gluing extra tails on a rat). It may be more fuzzy, especially to a student, who may have undergone training in ethics and had some issues identified as "bad" that maybe aren't obvious. In this (contorted and invented) scenario, I can see it. Like there are "gray areas" in sexual harassment that department training clarifies and says "this is (or is not) sexual harassment."

What stood out to me was the fact that he was accused his own advisor BEFORE GETTING HIS PH.D. There is just something wrong here- especially if it's gray area. It's almost like it's not your place at that time (not to mention realizing you are throwing everything away- it's not like somebody is going to pick you up).

So, yeah. Weird story.


I had the same doubt, but on reflection I'm not sure how implausible it is. The article does say "fabricated", but I'm not sure that means the data was generated by sitting at Excel going "0.6 sounds nice!"

When data falsification comes out, these numerically small "four of six" cases don't usually seem to represent total invention. (Some larger cases, like one of the social psych studies that tanked a few years ago, do appear to involve making up hundreds of data points from scratch.) Rather, someone drops data, or reruns an experiment a few times, or 'adjusts' a number "based on their judgement". Normally you wouldn't call it fabrication, but sometimes people do that aggressively enough to get completely-baseless results off real experiments.

In that case, I can honestly see someone (perhaps short on judgement overall) suddenly realizing that something was fraud. There's a note that German talked to some people and concluded that what happened was "grave misconduct". Infamously, Millikan 'tweaked' a lot of the data for his oil drop experiment, but got results so stunningly accurate that it's hard to criticize his chosen methods. If you think you're seeing that, I guess it could be a moment of realization that you're actually seeing fraud.

Obviously there's not enough information to distinguish here, and no one comes out looking pretty. But that's the best justification I could come up with for 'realizing' an ethical issue had occurred.


  >> "In the fall of 2015, he took a refresher course in the conduct
  >> of science, which covered topics such as ethics and misconduct."
  
  > It "reminded him"?
I wonder what prompted him to take a refresher course in a subject covering ethics and misconduct?

It suggests that he had misgivings, and took a refresher course to determine whether his fears were justified, or whether this was a normal part of academic life. Or perhaps he took the course to give himself a rationale for raising the issue.


Strawmen are stuffed full of perhaps. It makes the best kindling.


> It is interesting that this article mentions German was with his parents as well. That swayed me a bit against believing that German was the real victim.

This confuses me. I don't see how his parents being present affects the story.


Anecdotes and mild testimony from his peers about odd behavior sways you to the side of involuntary medical incarceration? I don't understand what convinces you here?


If you arrest every oddball in every university, the buildings would be near empty.

I have to say though, the police in this seemed very reasonable and friendly, so a great round of applause to the guys in between doing a good job.


I read it the same way. Either, or both, sides could be bending the truth based on their perspective. The main takeaway that I have is that Rubin's lab is toxic.


[flagged]


I downvoted your comment because I think you are wrong to believe that there is a simple answer to this issue that can be seen from the outside. Your level of confidence would only be justified if you have inside knowledge that the rest of us lack.

you're happy to see someone dragged from their home in the middle of the night

I didn't see anything in the parent's comment to indicate this. I took "There doesn't seem to be enough evidence to know for sure" to express the parent's sadness at the turn of events, rather than satisfaction in the outcome.

The woman with delusions of assassination plots is the one who needs mental examination

Whether they are delusions or not would depend on details of what happened in the lab. Someone who files a report of academic misconduct against their advisor in the final year of their PhD and continues working in that lab is likely to exhibit signs of stress. Someone not aware of the underlying cause of this stress might reasonably conclude that the subject is behaving erratically and unpredictably.

how much you want to bet this guy's got a different skin color than his accusers?

Very little, but I guess it depends on who you consider to be his "accusers". If we are restricting ourselves to the members of the lab group who were referenced in the article (cross-referenced with the names in the docket), all participants appear to be of approximately the same pale skin color: http://hscrb.harvard.edu/res-fl-rubin-members.

If it's true that the parties are of the same skin color, how would it affect the confidence you have in your interpretation of events? While it's possible that other ethnic or cultural issues are in play here, I think the simpler explanation is that normal relations break down in the presence of accusations of academic fraud.

If you want to dive into it further, the docket referenced by the parent is interesting reading. The judge who wrote seems to feel the white male advisor unfairly took retaliatory action against the white male graduate student, and there is no mention of race or skin color being a factor. The docket no longer appears to be online, but is still present in Google's cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:86cjl1...


> retaliation prompted by German’s allegation of scientific misconduct against Rubin and two of his students. (The allegation was later dismissed.)

Allegations of academic misconduct can be a serious, career-ending thing, even if they are dismissed. If German did this maliciously, or even just negligently, Rubin might have been very justly incensed (but getting someone committed of course is completely unjustified).


It's extremely difficult to know who's account to trust. But it seems likely that both sides made missteps. Committing him is ludicrous. To me, it sounds like German may have set off this bitter battle and while he might not have mental health problems, he doesn't sound like a net positive team member.


Apparently the judge did not see that as a reason to prevent him from finishing his work and delivering evidence one way or the other (maybe he's awesome and his work will show this, maybe he sucks and his work will show this).

"Team science" is actively penalized, just so you know. You're either a rock star PI with 5 R01s and an indentured servant "research professor" to handle actual work, or you're nobody. It is, and always has been, all about the money -- those sweet, sweet indirects from NIH grants, and the endowments from gullible old rich people.

Rubin sounds like an asshole, exactly the sort of PI that is selected for at many top-tier institutions. If he's really clever he'll "help" German GTFO of his lab and then write some coded instructions in recommendation letters ("if you've any questions, please call me at 617-867-5309"). And then things can go back to normal, hopefully with Rubin being more cautious and/or less vindictive the next time around.


If net positive team member means go along to get along then you are right. He had questions about the integrity of the research data and reported that to the ethics board. For this his PI and team members branded him as crazy, going so far as to get him committed.

If you suspect someone is tampering with your research you review the access logs or, better yet, put a camera on it. You don't spread a rumor that so and so is crazy and watch your coffee mugs because you don't know what crazy they might do.

I believe the judge made the correct ruling. It's unfortunate for the lab and researchers that care caught in the middle.


Wow, this is an excellent example of unbiased journalism.


[flagged]


That you're trying to tie this in with SJWs and such is just sickening. Not every dispute boils down to entitlement, and there's no evidence of it here. Just smart people differing opinion and one side taking it too far.

You can disagree all you want but I'll go with the judge who got all the facts.


No, German doesn't fit in the category of smart people. German clearly has major socializing problems. He his certainly not "smart" when it comes to social relations and even if what happened to him was excessive (like I said it was before) he is still not fit to work in a team.

Let's remember that he had problems with other people inside the team, not only with the PI.


> Let's remember that he had problems with other people inside the team, not only with the PI.

Note that the judge specifically said this:

"It does not appear to be disputed that at all relevant times the lab members were approximately 35 in number. Defendants submitted affidavits from five of those 35, two of whom included Muela and Grass, one of the three alleged to have knowingly participated with Rubin in the alleged scientific misconduct and her boyfriend. Plaintiff has submitted other affidavits and emails based on personal knowledge of others, all of which support that plaintiff then had no mental health issues or concerns."

So out of 35 people in the lab, only five submitted affidavits, and three of those were connected to the original complaint. German submitted (an unknown number of) affidavits and emails in support of his position.


Well, I don't know what's the standard in your work place, but where I work, if someone over the space of 1 year managed to piss off 5 people out of 35 in my work place, then he most definitively would have to be a total asshole and should have been fired a long time ago.

That kind of people hurts the workplace and brings the all team down.


I'm only going by what's in the judge's finding, which states:

> "Plaintiff has submitted other affidavits and emails based on personal knowledge of others, all of which support that plaintiff then had no mental health issues or concerns"

This immediately followed the line:

> "Defendants submitted affidavits from five of those 35, two of whom included Muela and Grass, one of the three alleged to have knowingly participated with Rubin in the alleged scientific misconduct and her boyfriend."

Which, to me, suggests that the first 5 affidavits did allege that he had "mental health issues or concerns".

Three of those five can be dismissed:

> The "fear" that three of the lab members expressed concerning German appears, at least to this court, exaggerated.

The other two could be explained as "Rubin's retaliation was getting to German, and two people were worried enough about German that they wrote 'he might have a mental health issue or concern' in an affidavit" - although multiple others were willing to say, either in affidavits or emails, "he's fine".

The other two could also be explained as "Rubin wrote an affidavit for them to sign, and stood there until they signed it" - given that Rubin was found to have retaliated against German, would it be within his character to similarly terrorize other lab members? I don't know, and I don't need to know - the judge's finding seems to me to strongly suggest that the only reason German's mental health was brought into question was because Rubin intentionally raised it.

Plus, if you're willing to say "pissing off 5 out of 35 makes him an asshole", would you say the same about "pissing off 2 out of 35"? Or what about "worrying 2 out of 35", since we don't know what their affidavits actually said?


* People were better educated in the past - check.

* People should regain authority - check.

* Political correctness makes the problem worse - check.

* More competition would solve the problem - check.

Someone should make a bingo game for comments like this.


> to see the higher authorities side with the person that started the problems just to look politically correct and go against the "installed power"

From the judge's opinion:

"I accept that at least Rubin, as PI for plaintiff and a number of grad students and because he is head of the Rubin Lab, brings in a lot of funding and has a lot of authority at Harvard. So much authority that Cardozo would likely be deferential and not interfere with Rubin's choice to dismiss a grad student."


Exactly. You have the PI, someone that gets the funding and takes care of the research path (and a good research path, since you know that the PI is actually acknowledged worldwide in the field) for an all team of 35 people, and you behave like a spoiled brat and try to sabotage his work.

This German guy didn't suffer any kind of racial or gender based discrimination by the PI, he just proved over more than one year that he was not the kind of person that could work in a team and the PI used what he could (although wrongly in the execution, cause sending someone to German's house in the middle of the night was wrong) to get rid of the guy.

If the PI had more authority (and he obviously should have and now we wouldn't have this issue) he should have just told the guy to pack his things and leave since he was hurting the team and the research being carried out.


If the PI had more authority (and he obviously should have and now we wouldn't have this issue) he should have just told the guy to pack his things and leave since he was hurting the team and the research being carried out.

Presumably you are saying this conditional upon the accusations of academic fraud being false? If the research was indeed being faked, I feel like the controversy is preferable to allowing such practices to continue. Or do you think that quietly removing German would have been a better outcome regardless?


No in the case about academic fraud I'm with you, i.e. I do feel that it should be exposed if it existed (but on that theme I actually have a lot to say, because I see it as a failure of the publication methods and evaluation above all... but that is not related to this theme).

What I find hard to believe is that, after all the issues that German had with the team before coming up with those accusations, those accusations are actually true. Specially given the exact accusation, which is quite odd, German claims that some (not all) points are false about experiments where he wasn't directly involved.

Still, in any case, even without the issue of academic fraud and/or it's accusation existing, the previous behavior from German is not that of someone I would like to have my team as a colleague, much less if I was the PI. I never in my life had anything that amounted to this kind of trouble with any member of my team at work... much less with 5 of them. SO, on that light, I think there is a problem when the PI doesn't have enough authority to remove someone like German.


What I find hard to believe is that, after all the issues that German had with the team before coming up with those accusations, those accusations are actually true.

If the personality conflicts arose before the accusation of fraud, I'd agree with you, but it's not clear that this was the order of events. The judge's description suggests that the conflicts arose after the report of fraud, with the implication that despite anonymity the accused (who were the ones with whom there was conflict) immediately concluded that German was the source of the accusation.

So for me, it all depends on whether the accusations of academic fraud of justified. If the accusations are true and substantial, German is probably the aggrieved party, or at least deserving of sympathy. If they are not, he is poisonous to the the lab and should be cast out. Without knowing the details of the complaint, I don't feel I have any way of knowing the probabilities of the different possibilities.

Circumstantially, I was impressed though by the rationality and civility of German's communications that were cited in the judge's ruling[1]. His email to an undergraduate advisee explaining that he was unable to continue his labwork seemed like a model of tact and good communication:

"Hi Alex, unfortunately, due to personal matters I'm off from school. I don't know when I'm coming back. Meanwhile, you have to find another mentor. I highly recommend you to contact Becca (Rebecca Gibbs) for a mentor since she is a very bright scientist (mentored by me) and she was interested in having an undergraduate. This is the most I can do for you at the moment. I'm very sorry about this. My best, Gustavo."

That this was the letter used to justify the attempt to have German involuntarily committed for his own safety (emphasizing "I don't know when I'm coming back") makes me doubt the doubt the "good will" of the advisor. The judge shared this doubt, although it's entirely possible there is further background not brought up in the trial that would justify the advisor's concern.

[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:86cjl1...




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