Scientific Sharks and AAAS - (Jun/20/2007 )
Hey buddies,
Look up this link and leave your comments on the issue. I did my part 
Best part? No registration required!
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53081/
Quote: "Nilsson has accused his postdoc for all the faults in his Science publication (316:367, 2007). Yet, he had initially grabbed all the credit for the so-called "discovery" and will even go on to collect a major prize from His Majesty the King of Sweden in Stockholm in the autumn .."
certainly a scarry tale
Scarry indeed!
Quote "..[The paper] was ranked as the third most important globally in the year 2005.."
Quote "..Ove Nilsson required us to do that experiment as soon as possible at group meeting in the middle of May 2005 because he got news that another two papers about florigen story would be published soon.." SURPRISE, SURPRISE! Who haven't been through that.
Quote "...was submitted on July 21, 2005 [accepted August 3] and was published online on August 11, 2005. This speed of light-fast publication may be NORMAL for Science but is in fact very rare in traditional scientific publishing. More amazingly, the speed of making this 'discovery' may also be a world-record: it took only about two months from the 'inception' of ideas to the finishing of the manuscript. Thanks to the detailed behind-the-scenes knowledge, Nilsson's experiments were so 'well' designed that only about 10 days were needed to collect 'all' the necessary data..."
The questions are, how did Nilsson learn about the other two papers, why did he ignore the red markings made by the first author in his interpretation of data, were the experiments done only once and submitted? etc. and--How could have Science editors handled the peer review process for such a "paradigm study" in just 14 days?
Above all: Why they don't respond to such legitimate questions?
What do you recommend doing? I would say sue the PI for defamation. 
I suppose it depends if the PI was complicit or not, but anyway he has to take responsibility for the research done in his lab. Plus it was done so quickly so he must have known things were a bit dodgy.
Also I was a bit suprised to see LlanfairPG on Bioforum.
Have a good weekend,
Ceri
Very interesting!
From: http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53081/
comment:
Defining or Re-Defining PI
by Shi V. Liu
[Comment posted 2007-06-22 11:45:37]
PI in scientific research world usually means the Principal Investigator.
In the old days, PI not only found the money to support the research but also did the investigation in the research. Thus, when a paper is written (mainly by the PI) for publication, the corresponding honor and also the responsibility for the publication is naturally assigned to the PI. If the publication reveal a real truth that is very important discovery then the PI will the undisputable candidate for any award given for that discovery.
However, if the corresponding author really being assigned to the Principal Investigator in all the scientific publications today?
No! It is absolutely not.
It is hard to argue that many corresponding authors are not the Principal Investigators when the publications are in their glory phase. As a matter of fact, all the corresponding authors of these publications will claim themselves as the Principal Investigators and will not decline any award given for their discovery. But the pseudo-PI status can be easily exposed when the publication is under fire. Then the paper PI wrapped around the discovery will evaporate/escape first and leaving behind the true research PI to suffer the burn. We have seen such ?corresponding? author from decline any investigator?s role in the famous stem cell scandal (see article http://im1.biz/albums/userpics/10001/SE200...0_Schatten.pdf) last year in Science. Now we see ?corresponding? author Nilsson has denied his investigation role in a then ?discovery? and now ?misconception?. Interestingly, Nilsson has not yet declined the 2007 Marcus Wallenberg Prize that was awarded for his (not Huang?s) discovery reported in the now retracted 2005 Science paper.
In my observations, many PI assigned corresponding author honor are not any true sense PI - the Principal Investigators. They are more like the Principal Investors (actually investing received money to his/her subordinate?s investigations) or the Principal Invitors (inviting others to join a collaborative research investigated by his/her research team). The major roles played by these PIs may be supported by their political capability or power to grab financial resources and/or organize research collaboration. They may also play a key role in securing a publication, especially a publication in some high impact factor journals. But their intellectual contribution to the invention-side or their research contribution to the investigation part of the study may be very limited.
So these PIs really have a reason to complain themselves being held up for any investigation error or misconduct for any publication that does not contain their discovery. But they deserve such blame because they choose to take the Corresponding author?s honor and thus should be held responsible. To be more frank, they should not deserve the glory for the discovery that it is not their investigation but should deserve the punishment for the publication of any lies that they signed off as the corresponding authors.
Because there are many meanings practically under the name of a PI, I suggest all journals take a procedure to identify who is the true PI - the Principal Investigators and clearly assigned this honor and also responsibility to the appropriate author(s) up front at the publication time. If there is a need to separate PI from the corresponding author, then distinction should also be made clearly at the publishing time, too. In this way, readers as well as prize selection committees will have a much easy time to identify the respective contribution to a scientific publication and find correct responsible authors for their true contribution to the discovery or fakery.
From Scientific Ethics 2: 53-54, 2007
http://im1.biz/albums/userpics/10001/SE2007V2N2A6_PI.pdf