Have Comments?

Envoi

Helene Z. Hill, Ph.D.

Truth even unto its innermost parts

"We have met the enemy and he is us" Walt Kelly in Pogo

It is a sad commentary, but I am afraid my story reflects a lack of due diligence on the part of many scientists and a judiciary whose goal should be the protection of the integrity of the scientific record. It starts with an ambitious post doc who wants to please his boss, a PI wearing blinders, a Department Chairman too busy with other things, three campus committees that failed to ask the right questions and missed the discrepancies in the testimony. It continues with Vice Presidents of a University already under the microscope whose goal was to keep the University from getting a bad name, an arrogant and complacent government office that did not even recognize the importance of the data they held in their hands and refused to back down when faced with more truths. It progresses to colleagues who resorted to intimidation rather than support for taking the hard road. It does not stop at the doors of the affected university. It penetrates the halls of a great ivy league university, pollutes the air of an esteemed scientific society and confounds the editors of prominent scientific journals who refuse to allow their pages to be sullied by such an untouchable subject. And these cowards have hidden under the skirts of an inadequate judicial system that relies on judges that don't even remember their high school science. The scientific community rejoices when it happens to somebody else viz the Retraction Watch (http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/) but refuses to recognize the gorilla in our own back yard.

Where are they now?

Howell: He continues as Professor of Radiology at the NJ Medical School. The funding of his renewal ended 5/31/11. He had a contract from the NIAID to study Protection Against Radiation-Induced Damage to Intestinal Nutrient Transport that ran from 9/1/09 through 2/28/11. This information comes from the RePORT website of the NIH. He was awarded an Inventors prize by the UMDNJ several years ago, was elected Basic Science NJMS Faculty of the Year 2 years ago and received the Loevinger-Berman Award for excellence in Medical Internal Radiation Dosimetry from the Society of Nuclear Medicine in 2004. Since his last paper with Bishayee in 2002, he has published 41 more. In a number of these, he was still using Helena tubes which I believe are hypoxic cf Robbins Report and Figures. If this is the case, the interpretation of the results might have to be revised. More information is available at http://njms.umdnj.edu/departments/division_radiation/index.cfm

Bishayee: He had a short stint in a lab in the Pharmacology Department but left that to become a Radiation Safety Officer on the UMDNJ Newark campus. In 2007, he secured an Assistant Professorship at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Pharmacy and once there, he took off. He has published 50 papers between now (March, 2014) and 2009, he received a grant from the National Cancer Institute to study A Synthetic Triterpenoid in Breast Cancer Chemoprevention which ran from 7/23/09 to 6/30/12. He is now Founding Chair & Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy,at the American University Of Health Sciences in Signal Hill, CA. His biography can be found on Linked-In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/anupam-bishayee-ph-d/.

Tom Hei: served last year as the President of the Radiation Research Society and is now the past-president

Mike Robbins died of cancer November 23, 2012. He was highly respected both as a person and a scientist and will be sorely missed.