Rampant text recycling at the world's largest independent research organization [PART 1]

Battelle Memorial Institute has an annual budget of $11B and oversees 7+ national labs. Yet, beneath the surface of this non-profit giant's success, lies a troubling pattern of academic dishonesty.

This is PART 1 in a 4-part investigation.

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Before there was Claudine Gay at Harvard, there was Marc Tessier-Lavigne.

In July 2023, Tessier-Lavigne resigned as President of Stanford University after ‘an investigation opened by the board of trustees found several academic reports he authored contained manipulated data … [he] authored 12 reports that contained falsified information, including lab panels that had been stitched together, panel backgrounds that were digitally altered and blot results taken from other research papers.’

Rumors of Tessier-Lavigne’s misconduct first originated on PubPeer, a forum that ‘enables scientists to search for their publications or their peers publications and provide feedback and/or start a conversation anonymously.’’

The brave student journalist at Stanford who broke the story simply needed to follow the PubPeer breadcrumbs. In an Interview with the LA Times, he explained how PubPeer led to him breaking the story:

I thought it was plausible that additional instances of scientific misconduct remain unnoticed on PubPeer. Indeed, upon scouring the website, I found numerous claims of plagiarism against many senior scientists affiliated with the Battelle Memorial Institute.

PubPeer is the source of this investigation, it’s what made me start digging.

The plagiarism I found is mostly out in the open, and connects dozens & dozens of Battelle scientists, yet has received zero media attention because nobody cares, and nobody has put it together that Battelle might have a systemic problem with academic dishonesty. This is not just one or two bad apples... This is a whole rotten apple tree.

Despite being a non-profit institution, Battelle boasted total revenue of $10B and $11B reported in 2020, and 2021. 

I prefer tax-exempt. We want to make a profit … this phrase “non-profit” is very misleading. I refuse to use it. I used to say we were tax-exempt, and that’s a business advantage. “Non-profit” implies all sorts of nonsense that — we made as much profit as we possibly could … we wanted to make as much profit as we could.

— Battelle CEO Jeffrey Wadsworth

With their massive budget (and all the profit they make despite being tax-exempt) Battelle controls, well, the very notion of science itself in America. Battelle manages the following labs:

• Brookhaven National Laboratory

  • the world’s most advanced X-ray

• Idaho National Laboratory 

• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 

  • the world’s most powerful laser

• Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • THE NUCLEAR BOMB LOCATION FROM OPPENHEIMER!

• Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  •  the world’s most powerful supercomputer

• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

• Savannah River National Laboratory 

• National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center

• the National Ecological Observatory Network

They have fingers in the following pies: 

• Chemical Demilitarization, High Hazards, Threat Assessment, Cyber tools, Microelectronics, Metallurgy, Advanced Robotics, Missile Defense Systems, Tactical Equipment, AI, Armored Vehicles, Forensic Genomics, Aviation, Aerospace, Ecology, Chemistry, Energy, Materials Science, Drug Delivery, Vaccines, In Vitro Tech, Bioweapons, Neurotechnology, Toxicology, Health, Military Health, Advanced Materials, and much much more.

As a 501(c)(3), Battelle is not only exempt from paying taxes but also from being queried by the Freedom of Information Act, allowing it to operate beyond the usual governmental and commercial oversight channels. Instead, Battelle is governed by the Atomic Secrets Classification system, placing it beyond the direct oversight of both the Executive branch and the Department of State.

This structure offers a strategic advantage for conducting sensitive government operations through outsourcing. This allows Battelle to be the epitome of secrecy and clandestine black ops, most recently allegedly having played a key role in managing Biolabs in Ukraine.

It's alleged that, as the war broke out, Volodymyr Zelensky directed the Ministry of Defense to eliminate all governmental records related to Battelle:

Following the infamous Roswell UFO incident of 1949, the US Government contracted Battelle to research innovative Titanium alloys. This operation is detailed in "ROSWELL, BATTELLE, & MEMORY METAL: The New Revelations."

In his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience — and numerous other appearances — Jacques Vallee said that Battelle is the private contractor who studies UFOs for the government and that Battelle executives sent the memo canceling the US government's planned disclosure event.

Basically, Battelle is in charge of researching UFOs for the government.

The link between Battelle and the suppression of UFO disclosures gained further credence through WikiLeaks when an email exchange between John Podesta and an astronaut was made public.

In these leaked communications, the astronaut, who was in hospice care at the time and passed away less than a year later, made what could be considered a deathbed request: He implored Podesta to discuss alien disclosure with President Obama.

The astronaut specifically identified the Battelle Memorial Institute as the entity advocating for the non-disclosure of UFO secrets to the public.

Fifty years ago Battelle … convinced the government to remove knowledge of the extraterrestrial presence from the citizens of our country. These organizations advised with their best information. However, today much, if not most, of the extraterrestrial reality they examined is known by our citizens. These organizations' resultant strategies and policies of 50 years ago no longer hold credibility or benefit."

 - astronaut Edgar Mitchel’s dying request via Wikileaks

Look: I’ve written hundreds of articles, but never a single word about Biolabs, aliens, or UFOs. I am not particularly interested in these rabbit holes. My point is simply that Battelle stands as one of the most secretive, sensitive, and powerful defense contractors in history.

This context only heightens the irony of Battelle's lapses in academic integrity.

It's an amusing thought that if a Harvard president can be accused of rampant plagiarism, then certainly, those delving into UFO research and Biolabs might not be immune to similar ethical breaches.

Example 1: Retraction: Ion-beam-induced structural changes in MgAl2O4 and TiO2

Dr. Kurt Sickafus worked as a research scientist at Los Alamos National Lab (managed by Battelle) for 22 years, until 2011. In 2002, while working at Los Alamos, one of his papers published in Microscopy was retracted because it ‘‘partially reproduced content previously published in [a previous] paper.’’

The paper that he plagiarized was his own, from 2 years earlier, published in Applied Physics Letters. I am unable to show you side-by-side comparisons of his self-plagiarism since one of the papers went offline, but the fact that he had to retract the 2002 paper indicates it was extremely similar to the 2000 paper.

I've chosen this retraction as my first example of text recycling at Battelle for its clarity and simplicity: republishing an old paper in a new journal as if it were original, to artificially enhance one's CV, is a clear violation of academic integrity.

Example 2: Retraction: X-ray observations of PSR B0355+54 and its pulsar wind nebula

One of the co-authors of X-ray observations of PSR B0355+54 and its pulsar wind nebula published in 2007 in Astrophysics and Space Science is Dr. W. Thomas Vestrand, a scientist at Los Alamos National Lab.

The authors retracted this publication in 2019, 12 years after it was initially published because it was ‘‘submitted in full length as part of a conference proceedings … the authors had already published the article in another journal (McGowan et al. 2006). Therefore this article is redundant’’.

According to PubPeer:

Although approximately 98% of the 2007 version, including all seven figures, was copied from the 2006 version, the 2007 version did not cite the 2006 version and did not enclose copied passages in quotation marks.

The 2007 version did not acknowledge that copyright in the work was held by the American Astronomical Society, nor did it include any permission to republish the copyrighted work.

The work was funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration awards NNG04EF62I and NAS8-03060. 14 CFR § 1275 prohibits use of NASA funds for research misconduct.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2016-title14-vol5/pdf/CFR-2016-title14-vol5-sec1275-101.pdf

I'm highlighting this case as the second example of plagiarism for its clear-cut evidence of text recycling, underscored by the issuance of a retraction. The severity of this case is notable, with a staggering 98% of the text being duplicated.

This is an example of duplicative publication, the most severe type of text recycling, as defined by the National Science Foundation in Understanding Text Recycling: A Guide for Editors:

• developmental recycling: reusing material from one’s unpublished documents

• generative recycling: reusing portions of one’s previously published documents in a new work that makes an original intellectual contribution

• adaptive publication: republishing an entire document or its central part(s), modified to fit a new context (e.g., new audience, new genre) 

• duplicate publication: republishing a work having the same genre, content, and target audience as the previously published work

However, compared to example #1, this case introduces a slightly more complex scenario. Here, the recycling occurred from a journal-to-conference proceeding, a different pathway than the journal-to-journal recycling previously noted. This type of text recycling, while distinct, is no less prohibited, as the retraction indicates.

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In PART 2, PART 3, and PART 4 of this series, we will get into much more complicated and egregious cases of plagiarism. There are many, many plagiarism cases at Battelle to examine….. I am not suicidal…