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MIT professor alleges fraud within research By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff, 2/9/2002 A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor has accused two MIT colleagues of falsifying the results of a 1997 ballistic missile test to please their funders at the Pentagon - and has formally complained that MIT president Charles M. Vest knew about the alleged misconduct but has failed to police it. Earlier allegations by MIT physicist Theodore Postol and another engineer, Nira Schwartz, triggered two congressional investigations into the missile test that will be completed in two weeks. Postol's new complaints about Vest and his fellow scientists, which he presented to the MIT Corporation last month, are roiling the university's administration, as officials and scientists argue over how to handle the explosive charge of scientific fraud. At issue is the success of an infrared sensor that the Pentagon tested in the Pacific Ocean in 1997 as part of a planned national missile defense system. In 1998, the tests were evaluated by two scientists from MIT's Lincoln Laboratory and three others. The scientists pronounced the test ''basically sound,'' and the Pentagon used their report - which won respect in some Washington missile defense circles as the ''MIT study'' - to champion US spending on missile defense. But Postol says research he later conducted, along with that of another engineer, so discredits the 1998 report that there is no way that the two Lincoln Lab testers could have reached their conclusions honestly. Postol, a longtime critic of missile defense, contends his findings raise questions not only about the effectiveness of President Bush's proposed national missile defense system, but also about MIT's close relationship with the Defense Department. Lincoln Lab has a five-year contract to perform research and development for the Pentagon worth an estimated $1.6 billion; the contract was renewed about two years after the disputed missile study was finished. The two Lincoln Lab researchers who worked on the 1998 report, M.J. Tsai and Charles Meins, did not return phone calls and e-mail requests for interviews last week. Attempts to reach the three other researchers involved - two from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and one from the private, nonprofit Aerospace Corporation - were unsuccessful. MIT is one of the largest recipients of US research spending among universities: It received $251.2 million last year, including $60.9 million from the Pentagon, on top of the Lincoln Lab funding. The 1,200 scientists at the Lexington-based lab are MIT employees, but the lab itself is a government-owned, contractor-operated facility, and all of its equipment is property of the US government. The scientific issues disputed by Postol are complex questions of physics and mathematics. But the issues facing MIT and the government are more clear-cut: MIT's reputation as a leading science institution flows from the integrity and impartiality of its research, and the White House has sought to build a firm body of science to support the billion-dollar investment in a missile defense system. Postol, a missile expert who consulted for the Defense Department in the 1980s, said he has become embroiled in the issue because he thinks the ''MIT study'' impugns the institute's name. ''The Pentagon wanted to hide the fact that its missile test failed, so they went to Lincoln Lab to get them to produce a fraudulent study that said otherwise,'' said Postol. ''MIT is aware of this, but has done next to nothing. MIT's academic integrity is at risk.'' Postol provided letters to the Globe showing Vest received Postol's fraud complaints as early as last April. In November, Vest told Postol that MIT was weighing how to review the complaints ''within the framework of MIT policies.'' MIT officials yesterday would not say whether an investigation has begun. Postol did not, however, supply evidence that MIT scientists deliberately falsified data to curry favor with the Pentagon. That allegation, he says, may be addressed in the congressional investigation. MIT officials strongly reject the fraud charge. ''There's always the possibility that a scientific study can turn out to be wrong, but not fraudulent,'' said an MIT official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the administration is not publicly discussing the issue. ''Fraudulent means intent to deceive, and we don't believe that was occurring here.'' The US General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has received two requests - from Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and from two other members of Congress - to investigate the 1997 missile test, the 1998 study involving Lincoln Lab, and Postol's accusations. The reports are slated to be given to the members in two weeks. The GAO review has found problems with the missile test data, a GAO official said, but he and other officials declined to reveal if those problems reflected errors or outright fraud. According to Postol and MIT and government officials, the GAO is studying problems with an infrared sensor that was designed to identify objects that simulated the presence of enemy warheads. But the sensor did not produce usable data, Postol alleges, because it failed to cool to its designed operating temperature. The 1998 study by the Lincoln Lab researchers pointed out some flaws in the test, but judged it to be ''basically sound.'' Science magazine reported this month that the GAO has uncovered ''a problem with the sensors that was never mentioned'' in the 1998 study or other Pentagon reports on the missile test, which the test program manager initially termed ''highly successful.'' Roger Sudbury, a spokesman for Lincoln Lab, said yesterday that the Pentagon had asked the two MIT researchers to conduct ''a fairly quick study'' of whether the missile test had been successful or flawed. ''It was a task that was carried out and completed to the satisfaction of all the parties on the study,'' Sudbury said. ''There is no evidence of fraud.'' Asked if Lincoln Lab was conducting an investigation, Sudbury referred the question to officials at the MIT campus. Vest has told Postol and MIT officials that he supports an internal review of the allegations. But Vest's promises have failed to satisfy Postol, a senior member of the MIT faculty who is a longstanding critic of the MIT president. Postol took the unusual step last month of lodging a formal complaint against Vest with MIT's governing board for ''failing to investigate a serious case of scientific fraud that has taken place under his oversight of the MIT administration.'' Last Wednesday evening, Postol and another colleague, political scientist Harvey Sapolsky, met with MIT board chairman Alexander V. D'Arbeloff to discuss the fraud allegations. According to the two professors, D'Arbeloff assured them that he would ''expedite'' an investigation at Lincoln Lab and MIT. D'Arbeloff said in an interview he was dismayed that the fraud charges had been made public, and refused to comment about his meeting with Postol and Sapolsky. ''This is a highly discreet matter, and it's appalling that it's being discussed publicly,'' said D'Arbeloff, an MIT graduate and former chairman and chief executive officer of Teradyne, a maker of semiconductor testing equipment. An MIT spokesman declined to discuss, or even confirm, details about an internal review. Michael Levi, a strategic security expert at the Federation of American Scientists, said Postol's allegations about the missile test were important. ''The fundamental question raised here is, what kind of accountability is there in the missile defense program and defense programs at large?'' Levi said. ''If this one instance of misleading the public is exposed as accurate, you have to ask what other ones have not been exposed.'' Lieutenant Colonel Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon ballistic missile program, noted that no investigations have turned up evidence of fraud related to the 1997 test or the 1998 report. He also said that the Pentagon has since decided not to use the missile design tested in 1997, instead selecting a design with two sophisticated sensors. |
