Scientist accused of faking dinosaur-extinction data
TV expert denies making up material so he could pip colleague to the post in publishing research
A PALAEONTOLOGIST who appeared in the David Attenborough documentary Dinosaurs: The Final Day is under investigation for misconduct after a former colleague claimed he made up data.
Robert Depalma, of Manchester University, is accused of inventing his findings in a scientific article that concluded that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs landed in springtime.
Melanie During, a doctoral student at Uppsala University in Sweden, claims she made the breakthrough much earlier after studying fossilised fish from cretaceous layers in the United States.
Ms During submitted her results to the journal Nature but before the article was published Mr Depalma’s paper appeared in Scientific Reports, reaching the same conclusion.
She claims Mr Depalma made up his data to pip her to the post and claim credit for the discovery that dinosaurs were wiped out in the springtime. Ms During and her supervisor, Per Ahlberg, recently posted their concerns on the Pubpeer website, stating there were “a number of concerning anomalies” with the research.
“We are compelled to ask whether the data may be fabricated, created to fit an already known conclusion,” they wrote.
The raw data used to produce the charts has not been made public by Mr Depalma who said the scientist who ran the analyses died before the paper’s publication, and he had been unable to access his laboratory.
Scientific Reports has since added an editor’s note to the article, warning readers that reliability of the data is “currently in question”.
The University of Manchester also confirmed that it was looking into the matter. Another author of the paper, Dr Phil Manning from the same university, is also being investigated.
Ms During met Mr Depalma in 2017 when the pair collected fish fossils together at the Tanis site in North Dakota which holds layers from the period when the dinosaurs became extinct, about 66 million years ago.
Ms During noticed that a thin layer of bone cells on sturgeon fins thickens each spring and thins again in the autumn, providing a clock to monitor in which season the animals died.
She described her findings in her 2018 master’s thesis – which she sent to Mr Depalma – and the following year began to write a journal article.
She invited Mr Depalma to participate because the pair had collected the fossils together, but he declined. Even then, she still listed him as the second author, and said she was shocked when his paper came out first.
Mr Depalma and his colleagues have denied making up data. He said: “We absolutely would not, and have not ever, fabricated data and/or samples to fit this or another team’s results.
“Ultimately, both studies, which appeared in print within weeks of each other, were complementary and mutually reinforcing.”