I have some comments in response to the letter by Hiroshi Mizubayashi (Physics Today, February 2009, page 12), in which he defends the University of Tsukuba report that claimed that I falsified data in an article published in 2006 in Physical Review Letters (PRL). 1
No falsification took place. Certain analyzed data files were lost or erased by the two students who lodged a complaint, but we fortunately had equivalent original raw data files. Any errors that may have occurred in the analysis of the raw data were entirely inadvertent. If the procedures were insufficiently explained or if insufficient caveats were given, that was also unintended. Any such deficiencies in the PRL paper were not only inadvertent but also innocuous and left intact our main lines of thinking. A subsequent, more detailed publication, 2 not limited by the PRL page limit and inappropriately ignored by Mizubayashi’s committee, remedied any identifiable deficiencies—and notably reached the same conclusions drawn in reference 2.
Nonetheless, I was ordered by the University of Tsukuba to withdraw the PRL article. I refused, because a simple erratum would suffice to adequately acknowledge any problems. I have asked the editors of PRL to publish the following simple erratum: “Part of the data used in Figs. 1 and 3 is based on different equivalent shots. However, a subsequent published analysis of a single equivalent shot, together with more detailed explanations of the methods of analysis, reached identical conclusions. 2 ” I ask my colleagues who have been urged by the university to disavow the article to join me instead in this succinct and sufficient erratum. There is no need whatsoever for disavowal of the article or its conclusions.
The Tsukuba position is incredible, outrageous, heavy-handed, and profoundly damaging. At stake for the field are scientific freedom and process. At stake for me is something far beyond the loss that I have endured of a directorship and a professorship. No one can know the full agony that this defamatory and unfair report has caused me, but anyone who has, like me, fully devoted himself to a life of scientific pursuit can appreciate the special kind of pain that such a report can cause.
What heartens me is that three senior coauthors also refused to withdraw our article. I am heartened as well by the fact that the notorious Tsukuba report has been seriously questioned by 11 prominent scientists in the field (Physics Today, December 2008, page 10).
To find a fair forum through which to counter their defamatory report, I have brought civil suit against the University of Tsukuba. Through the legal discovery process, Tsukuba has now been forced to reveal facts that undermine any presumption of fairness and honesty that would normally be accorded an academic institution in the preparation of such a report. I and my coauthors have an online response to the Tsukuba report (see http://www.choteruji.org/ScientificExplanationFigss.pdf).
