Peter Chen, Zurich polytechnic institute (©ETH 2009)

Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Peter Chen, head of research at Switzerland’s EPFZ (ETHZ in German)  polytechnic institute in Zurich, has resigned effective the end of September, the university has announced. “There are suspicions that scientific data may have been falsified in two publications and a doctoral thesis in 1999 and 2000,” the EPFZ press release says, noting that Chen, a full professor of physical-organic chemistry since 1994, who was the research group leader at the time, called for an investigation. The five-person team has concluded that results were indeed falsified. The research was in the field of basic chemistry.

It is not clear who was responsible for the falsifications, the university states, but “nevertheless, out of respect for ETH Zurich and the function as head of research, Peter Chen has acknowledged his responsibility and decided to step down as vice-president.”

Zurich's federal polytechnic institute

The announcement is accompanied by a long, praise-filled review of Peter Chen’s work.

The falsification concerns research “results relating to the spectroscopic structural clarification of hydrocarbon radicals: short-lived chemical compounds that are formed during combustion processes, for instance,” the university reports. ” After the results were published, other groups working in the field came up with significantly different results. The group then tried and failed to reproduce the first results; it also failed to come up with an explanation for the differences,” reports EPFZ and at that point “Peter Chen began to suspect foul play. He called upon the Executive Board of ETH Zurich to appoint a scientific board of inquiry to clarify the irregularities at the beginning of January 2009. At the same time, he and his co-authors withdrew an initial publication.”

Lab books and “most of the raw data” were missing, it turned out, and the university decided to withdraw a second publication: “All of the people involved in the experiments categorically deny having carried out the falsifications; however, they all agree that the data was falsified.”

President Ralph Eichler of EPFZ says it will now be impossible to legally identify the culprit(s).

Chen, an American, has held the head research post since 2007.

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