Letter to Peter Likins, Ph.D., President of the University of Arizona
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ROBERT K. WREDE
CLAUDE I. PARKER (1871-1952) May 29, 1998
Peter Likins, Ph.D., President Re: In the Matter of the Hearing Before the University of Arizona Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure Regarding Marguerite M.B. Kay, M.D. Dear President Likins: I have received and reviewed with care a copy of your July 15, 1998, letter terminating Marguerite Kay. As with so many other aspects of these unfortunate proceedings, your letter reflects either a serious misunderstanding or an intentional misrepresentation of critical facts, thus compelling this clarification. First, to the extent your reference to "acknowledged misrepresentation" was intended to imply that Dr. Kay acknowledged, or that there was credible evidence, that she intentionally participated in manipulating or misrepresenting data in any publication, such implication - to put it as charitably as possible - is flatly contrary to fact, as I discussed at considerable length in my July 9, 1998, letter to you, and as was corroborated by the documents I forwarded to you and the exhibits I identified for you, at Mr. Thompson's express request. Second, your letter implies that Dr. Kay was, and remains, unwilling to accept supervisory responsibility for the misconduct of subordinates of which she was ignorant if and when it occurred. Any such implication is patently false. In fact, during the CAFT Hearing, during our June 11 meeting with you, and in my July 9 letter to you, we repeatedly acknowledged Dr. Kay's acceptance of supervisory responsibility for the failings of her subordinates, just as we repeatedly denied wrongdoing or culpability on her part. As I stated in my July 9 letter: . . . I am compelled to state in the strongest possible terms that Dr. Kay; the panel of exceptionally qualified experts who testified on Dr. Kay's behalf during CAFT's prosecution of its scientific misconduct claims against her; and I, all remain steadfast in our belief that no credible evidence, whatsoever, was adduced in the course of the CAFT hearing that Marguerite Kay ever intentionally fabricated data or expressed anything other than deeply and honestly held opinions about the implications of the data reviewed and presented in any publication - whether addressed in CAFT's attenuated pursuit of her or otherwise. In short, it is our collective view that, as with the UCEC, the CAFT prosecutors totally failed to adduce credible evidence that Dr. Kay intentionally published any data which she knew at the time to be false or expressed any scientific opinions which were not then, or are not now, honestly held and wholly justified. * * * * That is not to say that Dr. Kay and her supporters, alike, do not recognize and have not expressly acknowledged that any human endeavor, especially an endeavor fraught with the complexities and frequently competing demands imposed by Dr. Kay's hectic teaching, research, lecturing, publishing and clinical obligations, and repeated laboratory moves required by the University, may well result in honest management and judgment errors, innocent oversights, and the like. Indeed, we candidly agree that this appears to have been the case with Table 1 in the Gerontology article. For such understandable human failings Dr. Kay has already candidly acknowledged organizational responsibility. What she will not, should not, and cannot honestly do, or be expected to do, is acknowledge moral or legal culpability for such errors, since they clearly involved no intentional wrongdoing on her part. In short, Dr. Kay continues to deny that she is guilty of "scientific misconduct," but readily continues to accept supervisory responsibility for the transgressions of her subordinates. I hope this sets the record straight, at least in your mind. Very truly yours,
Robert K. Wrede, of |
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