Cover-Up: Collusion in the Halls of Academia (Paperback or Softback)

This is a story about scientific fraud and one woman's attempt to set the record straight.

In March 2001, post-doctoral fellow Dr. Marek Lenarczyk reported to Professor Helene Z. Hill that he had found that post-doctoral fellow Dr. Anupam Bishayee had set up an experiment involving cultured mammalian cells that were contaminated with bacteria or mold. Drs Hill and Lenarczyk believed that the lab chief, Dr. Roger Howell, had great faith in Dr. Bishayee and would not believe them if they reported their observations to him at that time. They thus determined to follow the progress of the experiment to its end knowing that it could not produce reliable results. This fateful decision would set in motion twelve years of investigations by the University's Campus Committee on Research Integrity - three sittings, the US Public Health Service's Office of Research Integrity-two sittings, a qui tam Federal law suit charging violation of the False Claims Act, followed by 6 depositions by members of the department of Radiology of the NJ Medical School, 3 depositions by expert witnesses: 2 for the prosecution and one for the defense, a ruling by by the Federal District Court that there had been no violation of the False Claims Act because defendant Principle Investigator Howell had not known at the time that he filed the grant application that some of the data, produced by Bishayee, were false. Finally, a ruling for the defendants by the US Court of Appeals for the third Circuit in Philadelphia brought an end to the court case. Hill and expert witness Professor Joel Pitt now attempted to publish their findings of data fabrication and finally succeeded after 12 rejections.

Dr. Helene Z. Hill is a graduate of Smith College and received a PhD in biology from Brandeis University in 1964. She was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard and the University of Colorado Medical Schools, and she rose through the ranks from assistant to full professor at the Medical Schools of the University of Colorado; Washington University in St. Louis; Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia; and the New JerseyMedical School, in Newark, New Jersey. Dr. Hill has co-authored more than eighty scientific publications and was awarded the Smith College Medal in 1997. Dr. Hill retired in December 2016 and is Professor Emerita, at Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey. Dr Hill has written Hidden Data: The Blind Eye of Science CreateSpace 2016 and co-wrote with Amy Waters Yarsinske Cover-Up: Collusion in the Halls of Academia. The Crying Window: Memoir of a Woman Scientist Looking for Truth will be published in the summer.Amy Waters Yarsinske is the award winning author of the An American in the Basement: the Betrayal of Captain Scott Speicher and the Cover-up of His Death, which led to major media interviews and speaking engagements across the country. It importantly continues the national conversation of POW/MIA accountability. The book won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Non-fiction in 2014. Amy'snew books include an historical series based on her favorite Virginia, North Carolina and Washington, D.C. locales and historic sites. This includes Norfolk Botanical Garden - A Natural Treasure, a Virginia Historic Landmark, a site that is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.