E-mail from D.J. Keenan to Lynn Videka [2008-06-06]

Dear Vice President Videka,

I am confused about the purpose of your letter of May 23rd. Your letter says that the Investigation Committee has completed its work and asks me for comments. Yet I am not allowed to see the report on the investigation, nor learn anything about the investigation's deliberations, until after my comments have been submitted. I believe that this can be fairly described as Kafkaesque. Nonetheless, I will submit some comments.

First, that an investigation had been conducted came as a surprise to me, because the university's Policy and Procedures on Misconduct in Research and Scholarship states the following.

The President will make the final determination whether the findings of the inquiry provide sufficient evidence of possible misconduct to justify the initiation of an investigation....

The Vice President for Research shall notify the respondent, the complainant, all persons involved in the inquiry (i.e., anyone who has been interviewed or otherwise informed of the allegations) and the chair of CERS of the President's decision

Yet I was not notified of the President's decision to initiate an investigation, until your letter of May 23rd.

The Misconduct Policy also contains other stipulations that have not been adhered to. In particular, the policy states that the "Vice President for Research will also notify the complainant in writing of the initiation of the investigation ...". Again, I received no notification.

As well, the Misconduct Policy stipulates the following, in the section "Initiation of the Investigation" (prior to the section "Formation of the Investigation Committee").

When an investigation involves a sponsored program through the Research Foundation, the Vice President for Research will notify the Research Foundation of SUNY (Office of the General Counsel and Secretary). The University will also notify relevant federal or other external granting agencies and partnering institutions, in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements.

Prof. Wang has directly received about $7 million in research grants from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, and perhaps others. I ask you to send me a copy of the letters that you sent to the DOE and the NSF. You are not obligated to do this by the Misconduct Policy, but the letters do fall under the purview of the Freedom of Information Act.

The Misconduct Policy further stipulates that the "investigation process will include ... interviews with all individuals involved ... in making the allegation ...". Indeed, that would appear to be in accordance with natural justice--but it did not happen.

An interview would seem to be particularly important given that the Inquiry Committee made a "careful and thorough review of the evidence" and then found that "documentation and input from [Prof. Wang's co-worker] would be necessary to allow for any clear determination". Because the investigation has now made a clear determination, such documentation and input would be expected to be provided: obviously then, such should have been discussed with me. If documentation was not provided, then the investigation would contradict the unanimous "necessary" finding of the Inquiry Committee.

All this would seem to give the appearance of a cover-up, and breach federal regulations. I ask you to considering conducting an investigation that meets requirements.

I have been involved with other allegations of scientific fraud. In one case at Gothenburg University, the university administration also stood by the accused professor. The university president, Gunnar Svedberg, was criminally convicted of malfeasance (for his role in refusing to make documents available), and afterwards resigned from the university.

Your actions would also seem to be illegal. I contacted the Office of the Attorney General of New York State about this, and reviewed the case with an attorney there, Hannah Long. Ms. Long has now passed the case to another OAG attorney, but there is a backlog, and it will be a few weeks before further work on this is undertaken.

Sincerely,

Douglas J. Keenan