High-profile scientist accused of taking false credit for research
A junior faculty member at MD Anderson Cancer Center has accused a high-profile scientist of improperly taking credit for research and making false, defamatory statements that damaged her career, according to a lawsuit filed in Harris County.
The suit, filed in August and first reported Thursday by STAT News, represents an unusual public clash at one of the world’s leading cancer research hubs. The defendant, Dr. Padmanee Sharma, is a senior MD Anderson faculty member and a major figure in the field of immunotherapy, or treatment that uses a person’s immune system to attack cancer cells. She is married to Dr. James Allison, a Nobel Prize winner and the namesake of MD Anderson’s Allison Institute.
The plaintiff, Dr. Jamie Lin, an assistant professor and onco-nephrologist at MD Anderson, alleged in court documents that Sharma used threats to claim a significant authorship position on a manuscript submitted to a research journal, even though Sharma wasn’t involved in the original work. Lin said Sharma began to “repeatedly threaten and intentionally defame” her after they continued to disagree on the authorship position. Sharma interfered with another manuscript from Lin, falsely alleging plagiarism, according to the lawsuit.
Sharma issued a general denial of the allegations in court documents. As an employee of a University
of Texas System institution, she asserted sovereign immunity, a legal principle that protects governmental agencies from lawsuits. Her attorneys with the Texas Attorney General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Lin could not be reached for comment Friday. Her attorney, Julia Haines, was not immediately able to respond when reached by phone.
Mediation failed
MD Anderson, which is not named as a defendant, said it does not comment on pending litigation. The dispute became public only after failed mediation attempts within the institution, the lawsuit said. Lin asserted in court documents that she has no complaint against MD Anderson and that she wants to continue working there.
“We can share that the institution has established processes for addressing concerns filed by any
MD Anderson employee,” according to a statement from an MD Anderson spokesperson. “Upon receiving a concern, the institution immediately initiates its review process. In some cases, an external review may be required. Upon completion of each review, the institution addresses the findings and closes the matter.”
In the medical field, authorship positions convey how much a person contributed to the work and can carry a certain amount of prestige. For example, they can help researchers obtain promotions or funding to support future endeavors.
One of the manuscripts at the center of the dispute deals with tertiary lymphoid structures — clusters of immune cells that can develop in inflamed tissues. TLS is associated with conditions like autoimmune disorders, infections and cancer.
The complaint says Lin’s spouse, Dr. Cassian Yee, conceptualized the idea in November 2020 of a TLS signature in immune nephritis, or kidney damage caused by the immunotherapy. In the complaint, Lin said she and her spouse led the research laid out in the paper. The research and findings are not detailed in court documents.
After Lin presented the analysis to her superiors, including Sharma, the senior researcher “unambiguously verbally threatened” Lin at the Santa Barbara Airport, demanding to be added to the manuscript as a senior corresponding author, the lawsuit said.
That authorship position typically indicates that the researcher worked in a supervisory role. It also gives them the important responsibility of communicating with the journal during the submission process and other interested parties after publication.
The complaint said Sharma threatened to pull financial support for Lin’s research if the senior researcher was not included. The junior faculty member was frightened for the stability of her career and was “forced to acquiesce,” according to the complaint. Later, Sharma agreed to remove her name from the manuscript at Lin’s request but continued to make other attempts to claim credit, the lawsuit states.
After the manuscript was submitted for publication, Sharma wrote to the publication, the Cancer Immunology Research Journal, suggesting an investigation had been opened into Lin’s connection to the research. No such investigation existed, the lawsuit said, adding that the statement was “false and defamatory.”
The manuscript was ultimately pulled from publication on Nov. 10, 2021. The journal returned the manuscript and told Lin that it would not be sent for a re-review because of Sharma’s allegations of an internal investigation. Mediation attempts between the two researchers failed, the lawsuit said, and Lin was eventually required to put the issue behind her.
Email to journal
In 2022, Lin completed a draft of another manuscript and circulated the document among her superiors. After it was accepted to be published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight, Sharma emailed the journal editor and falsely alleged Lin plagiarized data, patient sources and research results, the lawsuit said. Sharma also told the editor that the journal accepted the work “without including us as co-authors,” according to an excerpt from an email included in the complaint.
With the manuscript’s publication stalled, Lin hired an outside expert to investigate the plagiarism claims and found no basis for the allegations, the lawsuit said. Her pleas continued to be ignored by superiors, forcing her to seek court intervention, the lawsuit said.
The case was filed in the 333rd Judicial District Court. Lin has asked for $5 million in damages and a judgment naming her to her appropriate authorship positions. A possible trial is slated for Sept. 23, 2024.