WIKIMEDIA, US GOVERNMENTAt least fifteen former National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) researchers and their collaborators are prohibited from publishing certain data because of a controversy surrounding one former faculty member’s alleged misconduct, Science reported this week (February 22). After a 2016 audit called neurologist Allen Braun’s research conduct into question, NIDCD fired him and barred his colleagues and trainees from publishing any studies based on Braun’s data, going back to 1992.
Although the audit suggests that Braun’s research conduct was not quite up to snuff, those who worked his lab say that they deserve the right to use their data. As Science noted, the agency has not called for retractions of any currently published studies that make use of these data sets. Some of the scientists in his lab were working on areas that suffer from a dearth of studies, such as stuttering.
“We’re truly collateral damage,” Nan Bernstein Ratner of the University of Maryland in College Park, who spent five years collaborating with Braun, told Science. “The process has been—you can use this term—surreal.”
The audit, obtained by Science, described Braun’s alleged transgressions as deviations from experimental protocol, but not necessarily an indication of problems ...
