Four more retractions

The New York Times reported today that Dalibor Sames, a Columbia University chemistry professor, has retracted four more papers after the results could not be reproduced in his labs. Back in March, Sames retracted two other papers published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society for the same reason. All of the results in question was performed by a former graduate student in Dalibor's, Bengü Sezen. She, now listed as a PhD student in the Elmar Schiebel's lab at the University of Heidelberg, maintains that her work is reproducible and has been performed by other members of the group. She's confident in her results, in an email to C&E News she wrote:

I am also prepared to perform the reactions under the supervision of professor Sames if I am given a chance.

In the recent New York Times article, Sezen is now calling into question the procedures used to verify her results:

Dr. Sezen said that other members of Dr. Sames's group had not followed detailed procedures for the experiments and that the catalysts needed to shepherd the chemical reactions had not been made.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Bengü (is she really still a Dr. after all this, Columbia?). No one can reproduce this work. Give it up. Accusing other people as being hacks is not the way to go. Pray that you can salvage some of your reputation in your new field and try to stay out of the press, unless of course you cure cancer or something.

Also see: The Chem Blog, and SezenGate 2006 at Tenderbutton.