US free-speech law offers protection - at a price

摘要

Daniel Klessig has had two open-heart surgeries in the past eight years, and would gladly have two more rather than face another lawsuit like the one brought against him by Meena Chandok, his former postdoctoral researcher, in 2005 after Klessig alleged that she had falsified data. "It is the worst thing that ever happened in my life," says Klessig, who studies plant immunology at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research (BTI) in Ithaca, New York. An institutional inquiry ultimately exonerated Chandok of misconduct, but Klessig resoundingly defeated her lawsuit. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled on 13 January that he had a "legal or moral obligation" to describe his suspicions to journal editors, funding agencies and the BTI after other scientists were unable to replicate Chandok's work.