Luk Van Parijs

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Luk Van Parijs was an associate professor of

Denise Casper for a 6-month jail term because of the seriousness of the fraud, which involved a $2-million grant. After several prominent scientists including Van Parijs' former post-doc supervisor pleading for clemency on his behalf, on 13 June, Van Parijs was finally sentenced six months of home detention with electronic monitoring, plus 400 hours of community service and a payment to MIT of $61,117 - restitution for the already-spent grant money that MIT had to return to the National Institutes of Health.[1]

Van Parijs' area of research was in the use of

immune cell
function and defects in these cells during disease development.

Timeline

  • About 1970: Born in Belgium.
  • Before 1997: Receives
    undergraduate education at Cambridge University in England
    .
  • About 1993 - 1997: Works in the laboratory of
    Harvard professor Dr. Abul Abbas at Brigham and Women's Hospital
    (BWH).
  • 1997: Earns doctorate in immunology from Harvard.
  • 1998 - 2000: Postdoctoral student in the laboratory of Dr. David Baltimore at MIT and California Institute of Technology.
  • 2000: Joins the biology department at MIT.
  • 2001: Named the Ivan R. Cottrell Career Development Assistant Professor of Immunology at MIT for a three-year term.
  • July 2004: Promoted to the rank of associate professor at MIT, without tenure.
  • August 2004: MIT begins a confidential investigation when a group of researchers in van Parijs' laboratory alleges research misconduct.
  • September 2004: Placed on paid administrative leave and denied access to laboratory by MIT.
  • 6 October 2005: Caltech begins inquiry (requested by Baltimore, "when New Scientist pointed out" problems in Caltech papers). (Date & quote: news media #8 and #18, below, respectively.)
  • 27 October 2005: MIT fires van Parijs.
  • 28 October 2005: News media coverage begins; Harvard/BWH and Caltech work questioned by New Scientist; Abbas determining "course of action" in light of New Scientist enquiries.
  • 26 January 2006: Data in 2 Caltech patent applications having inventors van Parijs & others questioned in press (News media #16, below).
  • March 2007: Caltech investigation concludes: van Parijs committed research misconduct; four(4) published papers require correction.
  • 23 January 2009:
    Office of Research Integrity's findings of scientific misconduct at Harvard/BWH, Caltech, & MIT as well as van Parijs' Voluntary Exclusion Agreement published in the Federal Register: Vol. 74, No. 14, Notices, Pp. 4201-2

Literature corrections

(Original paper, correction; Chronological by literature correction - w/in institution of origin.)

Harvard papers

Caltech papers

MIT papers

(Each correction retracts data.)

News media

(Chronological)

  1. Robert L. Hotz, "Caltech President Who Raised School's Profile to Step Down" (Los Angeles Times, 4 Oct. 2005, P. A1) [1]
  2. MIT News Office, "MIT professor dismissed for research misconduct" (press release) 27 Oct. 2005; published in News Office's TechTalk 2 Nov. 2005 (50(7): 3, 6) [2]
  3. Boston Globe, "MIT professor is fired over fabricated data," 28 Oct. 2005 [3]
  4. Samuel Reich, Eugenie (2005) MIT professor sacked for fabricating data. NewScientist.com (28 Oct.) [4]
  5. New York Times, "M.I.T. Dismisses a Researcher, Saying He Fabricated Some Data," 28 Oct. 2005 [5]
  6. The Tech (MIT student paper), "MIT Fires Professor Van Parijs for Using Fake Data in Papers," 28 Oct. 2005 [6]
  7. Boston Globe, "More doubts raised on fired MIT professor," 29 Oct. 2005 [7]
  8. Harvard Crimson, "MIT Professor Fired for Faking Data," 31 Oct. 2005 [8]
  9. The Tech, "Van Parijs’ Research at Caltech, Brigham Drawing New Scrutiny," 1 Nov. 2005 [9]
  10. TheScientist.com, "Immunologists prepare for fraud fallout," 3 Nov. 2005 [10]
  11. Dalton, R. (2005) Universities scramble to assess scope of falsified results. Nature 438(7064): 7 (3 Nov.)
    PMID 16267515
  12. Couzin, J. (2005) MIT terminates researcher over data fabrication. Science 310(5749): 758 (4 Nov.)
  13. New Scientist, "One bad apple..." (unsigned editorial), 5 Nov. 2005 [11]
  14. Chronicle of Higher Education, "MIT Fires Biology Professor Who Admitted Faking Data," 11 Nov. 2005 [12] (Payment or subscription required.)
  15. unsigned editorial (2006) Scientific blues. Nature Immunology 7(1): 1 (1 Jan.)
    PMID 16357846
  16. Reich, E.S. (2006) Bad data fail to halt patents. Nature 439(7075): 379 (26 Jan.)
  17. Odling-Smee, L., Giles, J., Fuyuno, I., Cyranoski, D., & Marris, E. (2007) Misconduct Special: Where are they now? Nature 445(7125): 244-5 (18 Jan.)
  18. Reich, E.S. (2007) Scientific misconduct report still under wraps. New Scientist ?(2631): 16 (24 Nov.) [13]
  19. Reich, E.S. (2009) Former MIT biologist penalized for falsifying data. Nature.com (3 Feb.) Nature News or here
  20. Reich, E.S. (2009) Beating the science cheats. New Scientist ?(2706): 22 (2 May) [14]

See also

References

External links