Personal Experience on the Problem of Ethical Behavior in Scientific Publications

The American Scientist published in 2011 an article by Anderson Melissa S. et al. dedicated to the problem of ethical conduct in the publication of technical and scientific papers. The author of this article was motivated to reconsider events which occurred to him in the years 1990-1996 at the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) U.S., under the viewpoint of the analysis made in the mentioned article. While at ANL the author invited Prof. Katsuhiro Sakai, of the Osaka University, Japan, to cooperate with him, during a one-year stay, on numerical problems related to thermal and fluid-dynamics computer simulations. At the end of the stay Prof. Sakai wrote a report documenting his work made with the author. The section manager, who had not cooperated to the technical work, pretended to be considered as co-author of the report, excluding the author of this article. This blatant violation of professional ethics was reported to higher management levels which, however, engaged in a cover-up policy, thus violating the Code of Ethics established by the Laboratory. Those events are summarised in this article and reviewed from the viewpoint of the considerations illustrated in the article by Anderson Melissa S. et al.


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Published by SCHOLINK INC. Meanwhile, on September 16, 1991, after termination of my first term as visiting scientist, I had become staff member of ANL in the CT Division. Dr. Sha had opened a position in his section and formally had declared me as "the ideal candidate" to fill that vacancy.
Beside the cooperation with Prof. Sakai, my main tasks to be tackled as staff member involved development and verification of the above mentioned computer code COMMIX-M. This code had to be applied to the NRC supported project on Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) safety analysis, entitled "COMMIX PWR Applications", for which Dr. Sha and I were both PI (Principal Investigators). I was also involved with modeling of turbulence in single-phase flows with thermal stratifications and, later on, in particulate two-phase flows.

Prof. Sakai's Report
Before his departure from ANL in summer 1992, Prof. Sakai wrote a report of about 130 pages documenting his work done at ANL in co-operation with Dr. Sun and myself. I amended his English, improved the text and returned him the draft before the end of 1992 for further revision and possible additions. A second version of the draft report was sent from Prof. Sakai to Dr. Sha at the end of 1993.
Dr. Sha prepared a front page in which he inserted as co-authors the names of Sakai, Sun and Sha, but ignoring my name and therefore my contribution to the full work. It became clear to me that Dr. Sha wanted to share the credit of the work with Prof. Sakai and Dr. Sun, but was trying to exclude me from co-authorship. This attitude was retaliation for open criticism I had expressed about Dr. Sha's unethical way of conducting the section. Details about the reasons of disagreement between me and Dr. Sha are given in (Bottoni, 2013). Dr. Sun, after a preliminary temporary term, had just been promoted to staff member. As a counterpart for his promotion he was requested to accept Dr. Sha's imposition to join him in the attempt to sideline me. Thus far Dr. Sun and I had been on good friendly terms, used to spend free time together in the countryside of Illinois. In a vis-à-vis talk I asked Dr. Sun whether he really wanted to continue in his hostile attitude towards me and spoil our friendship. His answer was: "I have no choice". In fact he was aware that in case of refusal to act as requested by Dr. Sha his life, already difficult, would have turned to hell. Dr. Sha's attitude of imposing to a young scientist an unethical attitude is a blatant violation of what Zuckerman says is <perhaps the first commandment of science … that "thou shalt not mislead thy colleagues"> ( (Zuckerman, 1977, pp. 87-138), quoted by E.
In January 1994 I requested Dr. Sha and Dr. Sun to give me a copy of the second version of Prof.
Sakai's report, because I wanted to continue to revise it. As the best connoisseur of Prof. Sakai's work I was best entitled to continue that task. Dr. Sha and Dr. Sun refused to give me a copy of the report. I then asked Prof. Sakai i) to send me a copy of the second version (draft of December 1993) of the report and ii) to state clearly in written form who had contributed to his work and co-operated with him during his work at ANL. Prof. Sakai sent me immediately a copy of the report. Furthermore, with a letter dated December 28, 1993, Prof. Sakai made clear statements about the co-operation at work.

Memorandum to Director-ET
In the following, to make anonymous the management cadres of the Argonne National Laboratory, we use the following conventions: The Director of the Energy Technology Division is referred to as Director-ET; the General Manager of the Energy and Industrial Technologies is referred to as

Manager-EIT; the Associate Laboratory Director is referred to as Director-ALD; the Laboratory
Director is referred to as Director-ANL; the Director of the Human Resources (a woman) is referred to as Director-HR.
On June 1, 1992, the Director-ANL, signed and sent to all Argonne employees a document called "Employee Problem Resolution Policy and Procedures". In a cover letter to that document Director-ANL explained that policy and procedures for resolving employee problems had been revised to incorporate new laws and regulations and to provide a formal process to address problems involving technical and scientific issues. The main objective of the document remained however essentially the same, namely <to provide employees a means to have problems addressed fairly and promptly>.
Because Dr. Sha continued to claim the right to exclude me from co-authorship of Prof. Sakai's report, I decided to address myself to Director-ET, with a letter dated October 17, 1994, centred on the subject:

Petitions to Higher Decision Levels i) Petition to Manager-EIT
Director-ET had not been willing to make justice. I was well aware that he had not taken any decision without consulting the Manager-EIT. Thus recourse to Manager-EIT would have been useless. I had however to follow the Laboratory's procedure which did foresee an application to the next management level. Manager-EIT had been promoted only months earlier to that new position. To comply with the Laboratory's rules I addressed myself to Manager-EIT with a memorandum dated December 20, 1994.
After summarizing the situation, as sketched in the previous part of this account, and after recalling the statements written by Prof. Sakai, concerning the contributions given to his work at ANL, I concluded my petition asking that all contributors to Prof. Sakai's work should be considered as co-authors of his report.
Manager-EIT's response came on January 23, 1995. As expected he did not want to make justice. He concluded his answer by stating: <My review has not determined any reason to reverse the decision already reached. Therefore, I encourage you to accept acknowledgement of your efforts in the report, and to put the matter behind you>.

ii) Petition to Director-ALD
I addressed myself to next higher management level, namely to Director-ALD. In a memorandum dated February 2, 1995, I explained him the situation and I asked for corrective actions to be taken. Dr. Sha did not accept the proposal. Obviously, he was sure that an impartial person, outside of the Laboratory and not exposed to anyone's retaliation, would recognize the absurdity of his claims.
Months passed by and I did not receive any updating of the situation. I therefore decided to appeal to Director-HR.

iii) Petition to Director-HR
In a memorandum dated September 12, 1995, addressed to Director-HR, after introducing the general situation, I denounced the violation of the Code of Ethics in the issue of the cooperation with Prof.
Sakai and I asked for corrective actions to be taken.
According to the rules of the "Employee Problem Resolution Policy and Procedures", signed by the Director-ANL, on June 1 st , 1992, the normal response time for providing a written answer was set in 10 to 15 days. I would therefore have expected an answer from Director-HR, within a comparable period of time, but she never answered my complaint. She seemed to have forgotten that the goal of the above mentioned document was, in Director-ANL's words, <to provide employees a means to have problems addressed fairly and promptly>. In thus doing, Director-HR ignored and herself violated the Code of Ethics, obliterating the rules that had been established.

Letter to Director-ANL
From the previous account it becomes evident that the ANL management preferred to wash hands, rather than taking seriously into consideration the application of the "Code of Ethics". In 1996 it was known that Director-ANL was going to retire in a short time and in fact a nationwide search for a new Director to fill the vacancy was going on. The Laboratory Director was the grantor of the correct application of the Laboratory rules and procedures, especially regarding the ethical conduct of the staff members. ANL rules and procedures did not foresee an appeal to the Laboratory Director but I decided anyway to address myself to him. I had a faint confidence that he would consider the issue of the violation of the "Code of Ethics" and possibly take actions for its enforcement. For these reasons, on June 20, 1996, I addressed to Director-ANL the following letter: Apparently Director-ANL was not interested in seeing honored his signature put upon the "Code of Ethics", which remained once more defrauded of his value.

Eugene Garfield on the Ethics of Scientific Publication
Every scholar in the United States of America, and also most of the scholars abroad, know Eugene Garfield, of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) of Philadelphia, PA, the information scientist, who, after a brilliant career stretching over more than 60 years, passed away in 2017. Among the several essays written by Eugene Garfield, particular interest raised in me an article published in 1978 concerning "The Ethics of Scientific Publication" (Garfield, 1978, pp. 644-651). Other significant articles on the topic of fraud and other forms of intellectual dishonesty in science were issued in 1987 and are recalled as (Garfield, 1987, pp. 88-92) and (Garfield, 1987, pp. 93-100). I quote now these articles, and especially the first one of 1978, because they enlighten the kind of procedures which should be definitely considered as fraudulent. They also allow us to consider the events occurred at the Argonne National Laboratory under the light of the opinions of recognized scholars dealing with several aspects of fraudulent actions.
The correctness of the practice used in the United States for attributing authorship to scientific papers is strongly questioned in a survey performed in 1970 among psychologists and since known as the "Spiegel Survey", from the names of its originators Spiegel and Keith-Spiegel. As reported by E. The problem of co-authorship, I continue paraphrasing E. Garfield in (Garfield, 1978, pp. 644-651), is actually twofold: From one side there is the problem of the non-contributor who should not be entitled to co-authorship status, but eventually gets it in virtue of his powerful status in the establishment. The second problem concerns the real contributor who does not receive recognition of his co-authorship when in fact it is warranted. In some cases research organizations or other professional societies have created an internal code of ethics and formed ethics committees which do usually acknowledge the existence of ethical problems but also remark that seldom complaints are addresses to them. In the vast majority of cases people do accept injustice rather than exposing themselves to retaliation from the powerful superior.
<If strict guidelines were adopted, -writes Dr. Garfield-they might deter the powerful from using their influence to get their names on papers to which they did not contribute… I comment on a few words of the above quotation: "Authorship is the basis for promotion, tenure, salary, honors...". The question might arise about the motivation for a person like Dr. Sha, in the position of Section Manager in a great National Laboratory, which could be the dream of many researchers, to act in the way he did in the case of the Sakai's report, claiming credit for work not done, and trying to exclude Prof. Sakai's main co-operator. Without being a psychologist, I am convinced that the key point for a rational explanation of this irrational behavior lies in the recognition that, for Dr.
Sha, to become division director was dream, struggle and nightmare. Many similar psychopathic behaviors, originating in minds that can be considered deranged, are explained on the basis of the anomie theory. The etymology of the word (<a>, arising from the privative alpha in Greek, followed by <nomos> or <law>) implies "lawlessness" in current language. The definition given in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is "social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values".
As reported in (Garfield, 1987, pp. 93-100)  According to Merton, aberrant behavior in scientific conduct, resulting in frauds and unethical practices in publishing, is often originated by the perception of some individuals of the own ineptitude to reach goals, and therefore social recognition, they had long time aimed at. This would explain why some scientist, with a mind degenerated by self-imposed pressure, would resort to cheating to keep the pace of more able colleagues and struggle to replicate their achievements.
The concept of "anomie" has gone over the past century through a series of shades in its meaning.
Recent research on the subject has been often devoted to analyzing Morton's work and interpretation on the light of new sociological events. It is now recognized (Featherstone & Mathieu, 2003, pp. 471-489) that <Robert Morton presented two, not always clearly differentiated theories, in his seminal explorations on the social-structure-and-anomie paradigm: a strain theory and an anomie theory>.
Differentiation and partial overlapping of these two theories continues to be discussed in current literature on sociology, but we do not pursue further this topic because it does not shed more light on the series of events we are discussing. The reader interested in a broad discussion on anomie theories and their relevance in the frame of sociology may consult the well known book by Gerber and Macionis (Gerber & Macionis, 2010).
With reference to another unethical practice, referred to as "Errors of Omissions", the Anderson et al. preliminary version of the code did fail, becoming unstable, just after boiling initiation. In making several publications presenting work not successfully completed, not only the "salami slicing" technique was applied, but it was cheated, declaring operational a code which was not properly working. The question which I could never answer was how peer-reviewers could have accepted those articles for publication. Facts like this cast suspicion about the competence or the rectitude of some peer-reviewers.
Dr. Sha was also a master in the application of "ghost authorship" to inflate his publication list. He had some Chinese friends, professors at the University of Champagne-Urbana in Illinois, who were regularly paid to write reports which were published under Dr. Sha's name, without any technical contribution from him. The quality of the reports was generally very good, at a level that Dr. Sha would not have been able to reach on his own. The professors were paid with money which should have been destined to make research within ANL, fostering young talents. I concede that under particular circumstances the support provided by consultants is necessary and gives new impulses to the work of a section. However, to rely almost exclusively upon consultant work and to reduce young co-workers to the rank of mere programmers of theoretical formulations prepared outside of the section was a disregard of the professional capabilities of the young scientists. It was frustrating to see how fine academic minds were degraded, year after year, in Dr. Sha's section, to perform tasks which should have been carried out by programmers.

Conclusion
My activity at the Argonne National Laboratory during the years 1990-1996 was extremely important for my professional formation, mainly due to fruitful cooperation with two exceptional scientists who were for me examples of professional capabilities and integrity: The first was Dr. Henry M. Domanus, the very genius in Dr. Sha's group, who unfortunately passed away prematurely; the second was Dr.
Robert Lyczkowski whose broad and multifaceted experience taught me a lot about modelling of two-phase flow. The working environment was however unpleasant because of the tense atmosphere created by the presence and attitudes of Dr. Sha, even after his demotion from the position of section manager. All events mentioned shortly in this article have been explained, with abundance of details, in my referenced book. Writing, editing, publishing the book have been demanding tasks, but I do not regret to have spent a considerable part of my time in accomplishing that task. The reason for this can be easily understood by reading the very last beautiful sentences of the article by Anderson et al., which I quote: <Maintaining the integrity of authorship is complicated in the global contest, but the stakes can be high