Trial by Internet by Avery Elizabeth Hurt

Author:Avery Elizabeth Hurt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC

ORI’s Response

John Dahlberg, director of the division of investigative oversight at the ORI, did not speak about any of these particular cases, but acknowledges that having an official record of misconduct is a “heavy burden.” However, the ORI has no control over the NIH Guide or the Federal Register, and can’t take down its annual reports when they contain notices that have expired, he says. The agency does remove the names from the Administrative Actions listing once the penalty period is up, Dahlberg notes, because that information typically comes up very quickly in an online search. Still, he adds, there is a public benefit to making misconduct findings public, and easily retrievable. For every case of misconduct the ORI catches, there are many more the agency misses, Dahlberg says, and announcing every guilty finding sends a message. “It’s creating a deterrent effect. When we publicize findings of misconduct, it makes people more aware of the consequences of their actions.” But to the scientists at the heart of misconduct findings who want to continue their careers, the public benefit offers little consolation, he adds. “There’s collateral damage. I regret it.”

If you type his full name into Google, the first article that appears is the notice of misconduct. (In part because of that, Levick now publishes mostly under “Gerry,” not “Gerald.”) The night he and I met in his office, Levick flew to Israel to deliver a lecture and discuss more details about another offer he just received from a “major university” there. His contract at Touro ends June 30, and he has nothing lined up. Again, that offer from the Israeli university fell through at the 11th hour—the result, Levick believes, of the public information about his voluntary exclusion agreement, which ended 12 years ago. “I’m angry as hell,” he says. “And there’s nothing whatsoever I can do about it.”

After his wife died 3½ years ago, John Franklin, 67, started dating again. On a first date, a woman asked him about something she’d found on Google. As of this spring, if you put his (real) name into the search engine, the eighth entry is a 1990 news article about concerns that a blood test to detect cancer that Franklin developed didn’t perform as he claimed. Six entries below that is the NIH Guide’s entry about Franklin. It stated that he fudged data in a grant application to show that the test was more accurate, sensitive, and specific than it was. He was barred from federal funding for 3 years.

Franklin explained to the woman that he, in fact, was the person in those articles. Had he known that the details would be so permanently fixed on the Internet, however, he says he never would have signed the document accepting the ORI’s ruling of misconduct. But it was the mid-1990s, before the Web became such a fixture itself.

Franklin doesn’t dwell on the details of his case or replay the decisions he made. Much of it he can no longer remember, though he does recall contacting the ORI once he realized his case was so prominent and permanent.

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