San Diego

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California has fired a physicist for allegedly fabricating data that contributed to a 1999 article on the purported discovery of two heavy elements.

Victor Ninov was fired in May after a year of internal probes into claims of scientific misconduct involving the apparent discovery of elements 118 and 116, reported in Physical Review Letters (V. Ninov et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 1104; 1999). Physical Review Letters formally retracted the article on 15 July, although Ninov's co-authors withdrew their support a year ago.

Ninov, who could not be reached for comment, has filed a grievance with the University of California, which manages the LBNL for the Department of Energy (DOE), says Pier Oddone, the LBNL's deputy director. Ninov, who was in charge of computer analysis of the experiments, denies fabricating any data, says Oddone.

None of Ninov's 14 co-authors on the article were engaged in data fabrication, says Oddone. The data in question involved a computer analysis of an experiment in which high-energy krypton ions were fired at a lead target in the LBNL's cyclotron.

But questions are being raised in Germany about Ninov's work in two earlier articles, published while he was working at the GSI, a national research institute in Darmstadt.

The European Physical Journal A published an article this month (S. Hofmann et al. Eur. Phys. J. A 14, 147–157; 2002) discussing repeat experiments of the previously reported discoveries of elements 111 and 112 (S. Hofmann et al. Zeitschrift fur Physik A 350, 277–280; 1995, and S. Hofmann et al. Z. Phys. A 354, 229–230; 1996). Ninov did analysis at the GSI for the 1995 and 1996 papers, researchers say.

The European Physical Journal A article alleges that there were two instances in which raw data from the earlier experiments did not match the published results. Results “were spuriously created”, wrote GSI physicist Sigurd Hofmann, lead author in all three articles. But the discovery of elements 111 and 112 still stands, he wrote.