More art than science...

Press, 25 February 1977, Page 7

More art than science...

NZPA-Reuter London: A remarkable tale of scientific fraud involving a, British scientist, a leading German research institute. ( and six leading science journals is revealed in the pages of “Nature” magazine. Dr Robert J. Gullis, a biochemist in his late 20s who; graduated from Aberystwyth University and gained his! doctorate at Birmingham, hasj written to the iournal confessing that results published, in eight scientific papers over l four years “are mere figments of my imagination.” The various papers were written along with eight other! 1 scientists, seven of whom;: worked with Dr Gullis during a two-year spell'at the Max 1

Pianck Institute in West Germany, where he studied the 1 response of particular cells to i opiate drugs. He left the institute in September. 1976. ] The fraud came to light only when his co-authors tried ; to reproduce the results late i last year, and failed. Dr Gul- i lies was invited back to re- ; peat the experiments. i In another letter to “Nat- i jure,” Dr Bernd Hamprecht, of the institute, says: “In : I none of the experiments was : iDr Gullis able to obtain hisj previous results.” j He “admitted having in- : vented the results of all his experiments.” Dr Hamprecht then lists four papers, published by Dr ; Gullis and seven other ■ authors, including himself, i which he says are based on ‘“invented data.” I

Dr Gullis, who is back in t Britain but now understood i not to be working as a scientist, says in his letter that the ’ papers are “not reliable." 1 “The curves and values published are mere figments: 1 ■ of my imagination, and during my short research career I ‘ published my hypotheses i rather than experimentally! i determined results. “The reason was that I was i so convinced of my ideas that i I simply put them down on ‘ paper. I “I must take full respon-J ■ sibility for these unfortunate . incidents, and have consequently suffered. “I hone that my experiences are noted by others, and I would like to apologise to the scientific communitv and the various people involved.” I Dr Gullis’s hoodwinking of'

the scientific world appears to stretch back at least to 1973. In addition to the German work, he lists four other papers, the first published in 1973, where the results are “wrong.” These were written with Dr Charles Rowe, a senior lecturer at Birmingham Univer sitv. The confession — a rare; event in science — raises I questions again on the wav scientists working in teams publish papers sometimes, based heavilv on the work ofi just one or two individuals. There is much pressure oni scientists to publish to prove their activity. But Dr Gullis! denies in his letter that he invented the results “because o f the tremendous importance of published papers to the career iof a scientist."