To the Editor of På Høyden
In an article entitled “Strong reaction to UiB allegations” on your web page dated 9th August 2006 you referred to a letter that we had submitted to you in June in which we contrasted the Sudbø case in Oslo with the Refsum case in Bergen.
Our letter arose because your account of the recent court settlement in the Refsum case was incomplete. You declined to publish our letter “due to the Attorney General’s preliminary assessment that it may be libellous”. Thus, despite the fact that our views are not available to your readers, you have now reported the reaction of the UiB administration to our original letter. We assume that censorship is anathema to both your editorial policy and to your readership and therefore find it strange that the UiB is permitted to respond to a letter that was not published. We were not shown your report or UiB’s statements in advance, and your article contains several statements that might mislead your readers about the content of our letter. We therefore wish to make some corrections.
You state “The three professors claim the University of Bergen encourages a practice that is in contravention of the Vancouver Convention as regards co-author’s rights” and that Deputy Director of Personnel at UiB “rejects the allegations that UiB does not comply with the Vancouver Convention.” We did not make any such allegations in the letter nor did we mention the ‘Vancouver Convention’. We did, however, claim that UiB had compromised on established international practice that co-authors should have the right to study raw data independently.
You state “The university administration reacts strongly to the accusations of unethical practice.” Nowhere in our letter did we use the phrase ‘unethical practice’. In our letter we only pointed out that UiB’s actions in the Refsum case regarding transfer of raw data contrast with normative conventions in science.
You cite the Deputy Director of Personnel as assuming that “the English-speaking professors do not have sufficient information to properly understand the chain of events in the Refsum case”. But in fact, prior to giving evidence in court, we had read a translation of the full primary defence statement by the UiB in the case (27 January 2004). We assume that this statement accurately reflects the views of the UiB.
You cite Advocate Therese Steen as stating that “the letter to the editor may be libellous because it contains factual errors that are damaging to private citizens.” Nowhere in our letter did we refer to any named private citizen. Reference to individuals was made in the sense that they were representatives of UiB. The only possible exception was when we mentioned, without naming, a student. We did not criticise the student, but rather the way UiB handled the case. Furthermore, we do not believe that our letter contained factual errors and certainly none such was intended. We will be happy to apologise in public in your magazine to any individuals, if we have made such errors.
You cite the Deputy Director of Personnel as saying “the research fellow received support for making the data available to Professor Refsum in another manner than via electronic transfer.” As we pointed out in our letter, the ‘another manner’ involved Refsum looking at the data under supervision by the student or head of department, in one of their offices. This is not acceptable practice in academia and certainly would make it impossible for a co-author to analyze the data independently.
We note from your report that UiB intends to translate the relevant legal documents into English and make these available to interested parties and we ourselves have now received from UiB a translation of the Judgement (December 2005). However, we have been advised that this Judgement, so far as the UiB is concerned, has been superseded by the Court Settlement of June 2006 and so is no longer valid in this respect.
Finally, the statement in your report by the Deputy Director of Personnel “that it is of course UiB’s view that co-authors are entitled to demand access to raw data” makes our criticism appear unnecessary. But this is the first time during the case that UiB has made such a clear statement. Previously, UiB have criticised Refsum for “putting obstacles in the way of the fellow’s work by making such demands” (page 14, UiB defence statement, 27 January 2004). As admitted by the Deputy Director of Personnel in your article, the normal right of access to raw data was compromised in the Refsum case. This has now been recorded in a legal document, the Court Settlement of the Refsum case (June 21st 2006). Our concern is that it is now possible for any Norwegian co-author to claim legal precedence if they do not want to share raw data with a co-author in any country, simply by invoking the vague principle of lack of trust.
Ian Graham, M.D. Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Irwin H. Rosenberg, M.D. University Professor,Tufts University, Boston, USA
A. David Smith, FMedSci, Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK