Report: Superconductivity researcher found to have committed misconduct

Details of what the University of Rochester investigation found are not available.

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[nickf]

At least the grad students stuck to their principles ...

Sad if we can't trust even Nature.

The glamour journals do publish a fair share of junk. Sadly the university administrators and search committees prefer Science and Nature over PNAS.

 

[nickf]

He might find a job as an adjunct teaching professor, or maybe an industrial lab as a junior lab-rat... maybe... but every bit of data he collects would be scrutinized for years.

His academic career in the US (and Europe) is almost certainly over, but doubtless there are other institutions around the world willing to hire him.

 

[nickf]

PNAS has a nice system that helps reduce (though not eliminate) the junk: The editor making the go/no-go decision after referee reports is an actual working scientist, a member of the NAS (of which the journal is the Proceedings). That means that while they're probably not a specialist in the exact area of a given paper, their areas of expertise are close enough that they can make much more informed decisions than the professional editors at Nature and Science. The latter usually have PhDs in their areas of coverage, but aren't active researchers, so their domain knowledge is more second-hand.

Yep. I've published there.