Deb Kelly: Setting the Record Straight
You may have come across recent reports questioning some of my research findings. It is standard practice for institutions to examine these situations in a confidential manner in order to protect all parties. It is highly unusual, inappropriate, and against federal policies that select details be made public. I am using this post to set the record straight and to call for accountability against those who aim to disrupt my scholarly pursuits.
The first thing every good scientist learns is to be skeptical of data, reasoning, evidence and results. And the first obligation of every institution that supports and promotes scientific progress—universities, scientific journals, professional organizations—is to preserve and protect the foundations of that healthy skepticism. It is through rigorous debate and interrogation of each other’s work that we make progress toward better understanding the world around us, and our place in the universe.
That is why scientists spend a good proportion of our working days not only doing original research, but also taking part in the multi-layered system of academic peer review. It is why I have not only published nearly 100 peer-reviewed papers of my own work, but also served as a reviewer for other published articles in scores of journals over the past two decades. It is why I have played an active role in my professional organization—the Microscopy Society of America—over the years, which I led over the course of 2022 after I was elected as President of the organization. And it is why I have voluntarily served on numerous university committees and journal editorial boards. These aren’t thankless tasks that sap time and energy from “real” research work—they are the hard slog behind the scenes that makes the scientific enterprise run. If those foundations falter, the scientific enterprise falters.
Over the last few years, I have experienced just what happens when those foundations corrode toward the point of collapse—which not only threatens my research and livelihood, but the entire scientific process itself. I have been subjected to a witch hunt by individuals and institutions who claim to act on behalf of scientific integrity but are in fact violating academic norms and federal regulations (as well as basic standards of human decency) to advance their own interests. Now, for the first time, I am speaking out publicly to protect myself, my team, and the research community at-large from these insidious injustices. I am not the only victim. And while the costs of these actions have fallen primarily on me in the short term, letting them stand un-redressed will do greater damage to other scientists—and to every part of our economy and society that benefits from scientific progress.
Breaking Ranks
Perhaps I should have seen it coming earlier. After earning my PhD in the heavily male-dominated field of molecular biophysics, I spent years in a post-doctoral fellowship at a top research university under the “mentorship” of a senior faculty member with high status in my field. This is a common pathway for aspiring academics, and when I secured a prestigious faculty appointment at a top-tier research institution (a so-called R1 university), I felt like I had fully built the foundation, paid my dues, and I could now freely develop and execute on my own research trajectory. This is the way things are supposed to work.
Except just a few months after starting my professorship, I received a harassing email from my fellowship mentor in which he explicitly threatened my career.
I knew I wasn’t his first or only target—during my fellowship, it was an open secret that he subjected several of his trainees to multiple forms of abuse. So, I acted to counter the impact of his threats. I didn’t just ignore his email and hope that he’d turn his attention to some other victim, which would have been the easiest and safest choice for my own career. I decided instead to become a whistle-blower against him. I remain certain it was the right thing for me to do, but I have had to live with and navigate retaliation for “breaking ranks” for over a decade. Being driven by truth and purpose, I didn’t let any of this get in the way of my research.
And now to 2023: I am a tenured full professor leading a prominent team of gifted students and postdocs. We’re publishing in some of the most prestigious journals in our field, and I just completed a term as president of an important professional organization.
My current institution, Penn State University, issued a press release celebrating not only the substantive quality of my team’s work, but also the fact that I have successfully mentored scientists from disadvantaged backgrounds—like international and LGBTQIA+ students. I’m proud of these achievements, and most proud of the young scientists whose careers I’m helping to promote as they advance the state-of-the-art in their work.
Let me be clear: all of this is in some sense par for the course, or should be, when it comes to doing top-tier science. The papers from my lab are accepted by the top journals because they are subjected to rigorous peer review prior to publication. My research productivity has always been ranked as exceptional in every institutional performance review. Penn State has celebrated the achievements of my lab because these achievements reflect well on the institution. And we’re all living through a time where enhancing opportunity for disadvantaged minorities in professional settings is a source of respect.
When It All Started
Everything was smooth sailing, or so it appeared. Then, the harassment started. A junior researcher at Newcastle University started trolling me on Twitter shortly after the university’s press release about my lab went out in 2023. His tone was toxic, bullying, and quickly turned toward behaviors that I can only describe as outright stalking.
My team and I have continued to receive threats from this person. Not scientific queries or invitations to debate hypotheses and evidence. Threats. And not one or a few emails. Hundreds of them, sent through PubPeer and Twitter. My colleagues and I have received what I estimate to be thousands of emails from this person. His biased critiques of our work were then picked up by a professor at the University of Virginia—a person who collaborates with my former postdoctoral mentor, also a lead complainant.
The instigators claim to point to mistakes in multiple articles published by my team. I welcome constructive critiques of our results; that is what peer review and scientific debate is all about. But the process only works if critique and debate is rigorous, respectful, and based in evidence. Arguments need to be grounded in facts and data, not unsupported speculations and sketchy concoctions. And institutions need to provide a structured framework for free expression of competing ideas, and clear evaluation of claims to maintain integrity in the scientific process and trust in peer-reviewed results. These processes are supposed to be confidential to ensure that competing arguments are judged on their merits—and that reputations aren’t ruined by inaccurate and unfair allegations.
Sending innumerable haranguing public messages meets none of these criteria. That isn’t science; it’s a perversion of the process into something more like mob justice. It has no place in modern scientific inquiry and, to be honest, seems more akin to the persecutions of Copernicus and Galileo who dared to suggest that the evidence pointed to the Sun, not the earth, being at the center of the solar system.
I’m certainly not suggesting that I’m some kind of modern-day Copernicus…but I am highlighting the fact that heterodox beliefs, outside perspectives, and the courage to cross disciplinary boundaries aren’t always greeted in a friendly or even respectful manner in science, going back centuries. I never expected my work to be loved by everyone, in part because it questions some sacred assumptions and crosses disciplinary boundaries. But that’s what makes our work impactful. And I expect our work—and the people behind it—to be treated with respect and to be evaluated by the rules and established norms of the scientific process.
Thousands of harassing emails do not meet that standard. To break confidentiality in a university review process by leaking stories to the press does not meet that standard. Active efforts by groups like Retraction Watch to report on confidential-by-design processes do not meet that standard. And Penn State's support of the harassers over the well-established and peer-reviewed work of the dedicated scientists on my team does not meet that standard. Perhaps it is just an unfortunate coincidence that the harassers are male, and that many of my team identify as LGBTQIA+. Perhaps it isn’t. Regardless, no one should mistake this kind of witch hunt for anything like rigorous debate. The junior researcher who set off this firestorm is making vicious accusations, but he has never published peer-reviewed findings that contradict my lab’s work. He has simply and repeatedly attacked us while ranting his opinions, which are at best differing interpretations of the results that we published.
To repeat the point: our published work has gained full acceptance by credible academic peers in major journals. He has not proven any major inaccuracies in our work but has made sufficient noise that a few journals have erroneously responded by retracting a small number of publications. This is unfortunate and unjustified and should not be interpreted as some kind of proof that our work was faulty. Retraction Watch itself reports that thousands of papers are retracted each year, and the prestigious journal Nature reports that more than 10,000 papers were retracted in 2023 alone. Research integrity leaders have made clear that “a retraction in the published literature is not the equivalent of, or a finding of, research misconduct.” Surely some retracted papers in the field should never have been accepted in the first place, but if all of them were faulty or inaccurate and peer review fails that frequently, then we have a much larger problem on our hands.
A public-facing expose like this one isn’t the place to debate the precise scientific merits of my publications. It is the place to make the broader public aware of how the underlying processes have been subverted. And to communicate a small sense of the costs and suffering this has continuously caused for me and my colleagues. The time we've spent battling unfair accusations, we should have been spending advancing our research for the benefit of science that can help improve the human condition.
I have struggled to understand why this is happening. I don’t know for certain and probably never will. I do know that I’m not afraid to cross disciplinary boundaries with provocative arguments when evidence demands it. I know that I’m inspired by boundary-spanners like Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist who recently won a Nobel Prize in physics; or Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won a Nobel in economics. I know it’s important to me, and the cause of good science, to champion DEI issues in institutions that say they support such efforts but in practice are often timid about it and prefer to substitute rituals for real progress. I know that I’m not afraid of bullies, regardless of what positions they hold in universities or editorial boards. I know that my work has authenticity, integrity, and impact, I will continue to defend it at every juncture.
My Call to Action
I want to be crystal-clear about what I’m asking of the process from here forward. Ultimately, the motivations of those who have attacked me don’t matter. What needs to happen first and foremost is that the sanctity of the process be restored—for my sake and for the sake of my students and postdocs, and for other scientists who will undoubtedly be put in similar positions in the future if we allow academic processes to be hijacked.
That means no more interference from university administrators to subvert academic freedom in our published work. No more support for hate speech by institutional officials and editorial teams. No more speculations sold as fact under the ambiguous guise of “concerns.” If these “concerns” were legitimate, I would have rigorously performed the necessary experiments and reported the results. If they are new “concerns”, then I have the right to defend my results in an unbiased way, and if necessary to conduct additional experiments that test and affirm them. The most important ask is this: No more willful misrepresentations of our work in public domains. This borders on defamation, and I will pursue all legal options to defend my integrity and the integrity of my research.
More broadly, there is important work to be done in restoring the integrity of the review processes that drive scientific discoveries. The community should come forward to defend the principles of peer review—not harassment. Academics should honor and protect their distinctive status by proclaiming loudly and acting in accord with the principle that character assassination is not what academic freedom allows. Universities and journals should own the fact that adjudication of disputes without any accountability for the institutions is indefensible, both from a scientific perspective and from the perspective of a democratic society that believes in due process.
I’m inspired by something Victor Hugo once said “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” To be clear again: I’m not and never have been afraid of opposition to my positions and critiques of my research. But I will not accept a vicious and unjustified attack by mean-spirited agitators—some of whom I’ve never met—that clearly seem to take pleasure in willfully misrepresenting my work and my achievements. If they think this is the way they can settle old scores or push out of the way an iconoclastic voice that they simply don’t want to hear, they chose the wrong person to target. Because I won’t stand for it. I stand for inclusivity in science and the principles of academic freedom that should guarantee protection from serial harassers.
I can’t guarantee that what I’ve experienced will never happen to another researcher because sadly, it will. But in defending both my rights and the processes that make progress possible, I’m confident that I can contribute toward fewer such perversions of the scientific enterprise in the future. That’s as important to me as the findings of any single paper, professional recognition, research grant, or experiment I conduct. Progress is the only goal worth fighting for, and that’s what I intend to do with what I’ve learned through this experience.
Dr. Deb Kelly, Ph.D., is professor of biomedical engineering and Executive Director of Structural Oncology LLC. Her research makes use of innovative technologies to investigate the molecular culprits of disease and to improve human health. She is a diversity and inclusion champion, and marathon runner…never afraid of a challenge with a passion for training the next-generation of academic thought-leaders.