{"id":1498,"date":"2011-07-21T09:25:17","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T03:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2019-07-20T11:16:57","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T05:16:57","slug":"research-misconduct-bengu-sezen-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enago.com\/academy\/research-misconduct-bengu-sezen-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate Student Fraud: The Beng\u00fc Sezen Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although I like to think that fraud in academic publications is rare, there have been a number of cases where researchers have had to withdraw supposedly groundbreaking research papers when it became apparent that the results were fabricated<\/a>. A case study that illustrates this occurred at Columbia University. Graduate student Beng\u00fc Sezen joined chemistry professor Dalibor Sames\u2019s group in 2000. She was seemingly a brilliant researcher and had coauthored six papers based on her research. But as early as 2002 some flags were raised concerning the reproducibility of her work. Some of Sames\u2019s other grad students were tasked with following up aspects of her work and could not get the same results she reported.<\/p>\n

Scientific Fraud by Graduate Student<\/h2>\n

Confronted with these reports, Sezen was calm. The work was difficult and the other grad students must have done something wrong. Her professor sided with Sezen and bullied the unsuccessful grad students. Some wasted years trying in vain to reproduce the results then gave up and left Sames\u2019s group. By 2006, reports of the non-reproducibility of Sezen\u2019s work had prompted a formal investigation, which ultimately concluded that her entire thesis was fake. Sezen had fabricated NMR data; for example, by logging into the spectrometer under an assumed name, merging spectra, and erasing unwanted peaks by hand with correction fluid. All six papers that she coauthored with her adviser were withdrawn. During the investigation, Sezen, then overseas, disappeared from public view.<\/p>\n

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