Quotes from the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT) hearing
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Jeff Poulin refusing to testify under oath (II HT 105: 3-6): [Poulin is Dr. Kay's former research assistant, and now one of the primary witnesses against her] DR. GLITTENBERG: Jeff, I would like to have you raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? MR. POULIN: No, I don't swear. Jeff Poulin's credentials as given to the CAFT panel. II Hearing transcript (HT)105:19- 106: 1-4 "You know my name, Jeff Poulin. I got my degree in psychology, I minored in chemistry. Prior to working for Dr. Kay as a research assistant I was a lab ass[ay][assistant] for the chemistry department. I taught chemistry lab for approximately a year and a half. I acquired the position from Dr. Kay as an assistant. Up until time of graduation, which was in '93, I was promoted to the position of technician and worked for her approximately an additional three years. It was April 18, I believe, I submitted a letter of resignation in the year '96." Cathleen Cover's testimony, CAFT panel. IV Hearing transcript 24: 6-15: Cathleen Cover is reading from a letter dated October 30, 1996 faxed to Dr. Kay while she was doing collaborative research in another state: Cover: "I would like to start by saying that I do not talk behind your back. If I do talk about you it is statements about how good you have been to me over the past three years, that I feel fortunate that you have allowed me to explore and pursue my scientific theories, and that you can be a great person to work for." Dr. Kay: "Was that a true statement at the time you wrote it?" Cover reply: " No." Hearing transcript volume V HT 23: 6-15; 16-24 DR. HERBERT WAGNER, Director of University of Arizona's Risk Management testifying: "I believe what was done with the freezer clean up was correct, that Dr. Kay did not ask any of her employees to do anything unreasonable and they were all trained and given proper equipment to do the job completely and correctly." DR. KANOF: "Are you aware of whether the infection control course that's offered to new employees at the VA is equivalent to the bloodborne pathogen course from the University?" DR. Wagner: "I've never seen the curriculum from that course, but if it's meant to comply with the bloodborne pathogen standard, it would be equivalent then." Dr. Leslie Tolbert's testimony. Dr. Tolbert is an insect morphologist in the Arizona Research Laboratories directed by Dr. Michael A. Cusanovich (Dr. Kay's chief accuser). She was the University's main expert on the panel, from II HT: 5: 19- 6: 3-14; 7: 1-4 Dr. Kay: "Dr. Tolbert, yesterday you made the statement that claimed that I made antibodies to normal B cells. When, in fact, or where could you point out for us in the manuscript where I made the statement that we prepared antibodies against human B cells, please.." Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "It says specifically in one of your papers, I don't remember which one I need to be looking at right now, that these antibodies were raised in 20- to 30-year-old normal individuals." Dr. Kay: "First, I would never raise antibodies in human beings nor did I. . . I never made such a statement. In addition, I never made or used antibodies to human B cells, normal, abnormal or otherwise. Now, if you would like to look in the papers what, in fact, I said was that B cells from normal human beings were used in a fusion system with mouse partners [in] tissue culture. There is a tremendous difference..." "The question is, what I actually did. What is the actual fact of the case. If you are to criticize me and accuse me of fraud, then you should understand the experiment that I am doing." Dr. Leslie Tolbert saying that she wants computer generated data not the original autoradiographs which were scanned into the computer, processed to generate "numbers" from which a histogram was later generated (V HT: 171-175). Dr. Kay tries to explain to Dr. Tolbert and the CAFT Panel that autoradiographs are original data and that all the other "processed" data that involves data and number crunching is not the original data . Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "So you do not have the primary data for Figure 7? Do you have the primary data for instance for the individual patients that were the basis of 11, 12, and 13? I think it would be helpful to have the P value. Do not agree with the values that you've shown us or that we've seen from Cathleen's data?" Dr. Kay: "I do have the primary data. Thank you for asking. Let's start with Figure 13. Figure 13 is a phosphorylation experiment. Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "No. No. I'd like one of the histogram [computer generated] figures." Dr. Kay: "You said 11, 12, 13. 13, I'm sorry." Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "What I'd like is the data." Dr. Kay: "This is as primary as you can get. Figure 13 is a phosphorylation experiment on middle-aged membranes... Let me explain the experiment to those that don't do this sort of stuff and let me assure you this..." Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "Not on my time. What I'd like is the numbers." DR. KAY: "May I answer the question?" DR. GLITTENBERG: " Yes, you may." DR. KAY: Please, thank you. What we do in these experiments is we take membranes, prepare membranes, and incubate them with ATP, which has P32 [.] [T]he phosphorous is radioactively labelled. Then we run them on a gel just like I showed you on western blot, run them on molecular weight, and transfer them to a piece of paper[,] and incubate [the paper] with a piece of x-ray film. The x-ray film, the radioactivity acts just like light. Let's see if I can make this easy. Can you see this at all? I'll pass it around. We have -- this is Cathleen Cover's writing. You can ignore these. And also ignore -- we compared middle-aged patient to middle-aged control. We know there is a change with age. So here's control, maybe you can see it's more phosphorylated. It's darker, so it exposed more of the film just like light. Here's patient which is lighter. Here's a different experiment we have controlled middle aged. It's darker. We have patient middle aged." DR. GLITTENBERG: "Is that sufficient?" DR. TOLBERT: "That's not the numbers, but we'll move along." [note: Dr. Tolbert is asking again for processed rather than raw data]. DR. KAY: " The numbers, the means of the P values come from [no] scanning. We are looking at trends." Q. BY DR. TOLBERT: " How do you get a P value when you have a single patient?" Dr. Kay: "Where do you see a single patient?" Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "Do you generate a P value? For instance for Figure 13 here, Article A, Figure 13 there is no P value. Dr. Kay: "Right." Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "We'd like to see all of the [histo]radiograms if you'd..." Dr. Kay: "She asked for some of the primary data. We have some other data that's not primary that's entered into the computer that I'll show you. When we do this, we can either accomplish the straight away -- and if you have a real good photographer and back up and so on, print it. We've had trouble for various reasons with the people, so what we were doing is we were scanning things into the computer. I have sent these off to Alabama and had prints made." Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "So when you are scanning, you get a single number for the density?" DR. GLITTENBERG: "I want her to move along so you can ask her questions." DR. KAY: "It is better than scanning. I think that nobody will question that. Better is the actual raw data. This is as raw as you can get. It's very much better than a..." Q. BY DR. TOLBERT: " I understand this experiment was repeated four additional times on five other patients and controls with no significant differences, so it would be helpful to produce the audioradiograms to look at." Dr. Kay: "Excuse me. Your understanding is incorrect. Would you like the data?" Dr. Leslie Tolbert: "Maybe you could give them to Panel 2." Dr. Kay: "Wait. Wait. If I'm going to be accused of something, I need to find the truth." Dr. Margaret Kidwell testifying that the vitamin E results were significant even when all data points including outliers were included (II HT 126: 17,18): " . . . the overall benefit of high Vitamin appears from analysis in general to be a robust result." Michael A Cusanovich, Ph.D. Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Arizona, stating that he doesn't know University Policies governing scientific micsonduct ("Misconduct in research, scholarship, or creative endeavor" which are stated in the University Handbook for Appointed Personnel (UHAP): II HT 71: 1-7 Dr. Cusanovich: "I don't have any -- I'm not involved in the activities of UHAP so I couldn't comment." Q: "Is it a requirement of the University policy on scientific misconduct you have, I believe it's 2.13.09, that the accused be[ing] interviewed?" Dr. Cusanovich: "I'm not knowledgeable as to the operations of UHAP." |
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