There is a letter to the editor from a journal called Plagiary where the student’s lab advisor ommitted data, changed words in an article to to make it sound more sensational (like in this story), threatened the student calling the student “snarky” and “destructive” on E-mail when the student pointed out the shoddy lab methods. It seems the student believed the advisor then plagiarized the student’s work and published it as his own, but mixed up the methods and results paragraphs when copying them, resulting in a lopsided paper.

Searching the web for keywords in the letter, like “Bueche theory” and “cystic fibrosis”, points to this investigator. It seems the plagiarized lopsided paper was published in the New York Academy of Sciences, 2007. Comparing the draft version of the paper which is still up, to the final version, there is a huge difference, perhaps due to the student’s allegation of Rubin’s plagiarism.

I wonder if this Vicks study was performed with the same questionable methods that the graduate student uncovered in Rubin’s lab. From the student’s letter, it appears Wake Forest’s Office of Research was very aware of the situation, but chose not to have the draft removed. I would just beware. You can find that story at http://www.plagiary.org/responses.htm. If anyonoe knows this and knows where the student’s original work or copies of the E-mails are, I’d be interested in seeing them.