Paleontology drama: Scientist accused of faking asteroid-death data to scoop colleague.

Science is not a publication normally given to interpersonal conflict. But now it’s covering the story of the weird competition between Robert DePalma and Melanie During, who suspects DePalma made up data to publish an article on the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs (it seems to have struck in spring in the Northern Hemisphere) before she could get her own study out. DePalma made up data to publish an article on the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs (it seems to have struck in spring in the Northern Hemisphere) before she could get her own study – which listed DePalma as a second author – out:

After trying to discuss the matter with editors at Scientific Reports for nearly a year, During recently decided to make her suspicions public. She and her supervisor, UU paleontologist Per Ahlberg, have shared their concerns with Science, and on 3 December, During posted a statement on the journal feedback website PubPeer claiming, “we are compelled to ask whether the data [in the DePalma et al. paper] may be fabricated, created to fit an already known conclusion.”

The plotted line graphs and figures in DePalma’s paper contain numerous irregularities, During and Ahlberg claim—including missing and duplicated data points and nonsensical error bars—suggesting they were manually constructed, rather than produced by data analysis software. DePalma has not made public the raw, machine-produced data underlying his analyses. During and Ahlberg, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, question whether they exist.

DePalma, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Manchester, vehemently denies any wrongdoing. “We absolutely would not, and have not ever, fabricated data and/or samples to fit this or another team’s results,” he wrote in an email to Science. He says the study published in Scientific Reports began long before During became interested in the topic and was published after extended discussions over publishing a joint paper went nowhere.

The raw data are missing, he says, because the scientist who ran the analyses died years prior to the paper’s publication, and DePalma has been unable to recover them from his deceased collaborator’s laboratory.

Several independent scientists consulted about the case by Science agreed the Scientific Reports paper contains suspicious irregularities, and most were surprised that the paper—which they note contains typos, unresolved proofreader’s notes, and several basic notation errors—was published in the first place. Although they stopped short of saying the irregularities clearly point to fraud, most—but not all—said they are so concerning that DePalma’s team must come up with the raw data behind its analyses if team members want to clear themselves.