‘This might tank my career’: Pruitt accuser on whistleblowing

When Kate Laskowski was alerted to strange data patterns in a paper she had published three years earlier, the University of California, Davis scientist faced a difficult choice – a choice that has now been vindicated after a long, testing road.

The evolutionary ecologist was immensely proud of the acclaimed 2016 American Naturalist article that appeared to confirm a new theory on animal behaviour that she had developed during her PhD, and a relatively easy explanation was at hand.

According to her co-author, Jonathan Pruitt, who had conducted the experiments on spiders in his laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, the anomalies were down to a minor technical issue related to differences in reported methodology.

But Dr Laskowski dug deeper into the data and found more instances of duplicated sequences that she knew would be impossible unless multiple spiders in different settings had moved in exactly the same way in lab experiments – with their movements identical down to a hundredth of a second. She decided to push for a retraction, but then went further, writing a blog in January 2020 called “What to do when you don’t trust your data anymore”, which drew attention to the suspected data fabrication.

“I thought ‘this might tank my career’, but it was something I had to do,” Dr Laskowski told Times Higher Education about the decision to call out the suspected data manipulation across three co-authored papers, all of which were later retracted.

“It was my reputation on the line,” she continued. “If I wasn’t completely upfront and honest about this immediately, I knew there would always be questions at conferences from people asking, ‘What’s really the story?’

“I knew these papers were a problem, and it really bugged me too – I wanted to be able to sleep at night, not wondering if I’d be constantly explaining this,” Dr Laskowski added.

Disowning the papers so publicly was risky, but it has nonetheless proved important. Not long after publication of the blog, more collaborators of Dr Pruitt – a rising animal behaviourist – came forward to report their own concerns, eventually leading to 15 retractions, 11 expressions of concern and four corrections. By then, Dr Pruitt had moved to McMaster University, having gained a highly prestigious federally funded Canada 150 Research Chair, but his PhD thesis from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville was withdrawn in 2021 and, in July 2022, he resigned from the Ontario university having been placed on administrative leave a year earlier.

Last month, Dr Laskowski’s accusations were vindicated when McMaster published the results of its investigation, which concluded that Dr Pruitt had “engaged in fabrication and falsification” when working on their three papers. Additional results presented in a Nature paper published in 2014 “never occurred and were simply fabricated”, McMaster ruled.

Reflecting on her explosive blog post three years ago, regarded by some as a landmark moment for research integrity, Dr Laskowski explained that she had been extremely cautious with her language and had consulted with her university’s lawyers before publication. “I was careful to say nothing more than ‘this is my account and these are my observations’,” she said.

She had not anticipated her post’s wider impact. “I didn’t realise, however, that it would turn into something this big – I thought maybe 10 people in my field might read it,” said Dr Laskowski.

Although she feared the high-profile loss of several key publications might damage her career, the scientific community has instead rallied round, recognising that she and other collaborators were victims of Dr Pruitt’s actions. “I was embarrassed about what happened to me, but I think this episode shows the community values transparency and honesty – people saw this had happened but that what I did was the right thing to do,” said Dr Laskowski.

She is less impressed by the conduct of some journals affected by the scandal. Despite evidence of wrongdoing, many publications were reluctant to withdraw papers, particularly when Dr Pruitt threatened legal action if journals did not wait until McMaster’s investigations were complete.

“Journals varied wildly in terms of how risk-averse they were – I was shocked at how some journals would not stand up for themselves. Others pushed back against him, which was the right response,” said Dr Laskowski.

McMaster’s publicly available report into Dr Pruitt’s data falsification has also won praise, although the university could hardly attempt to sweep the affair under the carpet given the case’s profile, said Dr Laskowski. “Their investigation was very comprehensive – and probably very expensive – and I’m glad about this. But what other option did they have?” she said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com