Little Office of Research Integrity

Master Thesis (1999), Josee Robert (Adamson), Queen's University - Supervisor: Reginald W Smith

    Huge parts of the thesis dealing with the experimental results, discussion and conclusions are taken from the supervisor's papers (papers # 1 and # 2, below), apparently with the supervisor's permission.

Paper # 1: Single- author conference paper, RW Smith (Feb.1998).

Paper # 2, RW Smith, Microgravity Science &Tech. (1998) 



Josee Robert is not a co-author in any of these papers. She does not claim to be a co-author. In fact both papers are eliminated from the list of references in the thesis despite the fact that they were published in 1998.  

Conclusions in the thesis are copied from paper #2 and paper #1, both written by the supervisor alone in 1998. See the conclusions side by side.



Conclusions were available in1998. Some of the conclusions were available in Feb.1998 when the student first started her program at Queen’s. Apparently, the student was not given an opportunity to make her own conclusions.

Few other examples.

How many members of the examination committee were aware of the problem in 1999? What about the Graduate School?

Major sections in the thesis are copied from the supervisor's papers:

Pages 40 to 52: Results & interpretations presented are copied from paper# 1& 2 published by the supervisor alone in 1998. Both papers copied in the thesis contain fabricated and falsified data.

Pages 53-54: Conclusions of the thesis are all copied from paper#1 &2 written by the supervisor alone in 1998.

Appendix I (pages 59-72): All materials are copied from paper #3 published by the supervisor in 1998. Josee Robert is not a co-author and is not mentioned in the acknowledgement section of the paper.

Appendix II (pages 74-86): The description of MIM presented on pages 74-77 is copied from paper #2 published in 1998 by the supervisor alone.

Graphs presented on pages 78-86 are not the results of experiments conducted by the graduate student. These results wre given to the graduate student and the results were falsified . The astronauts on board MIR did not process samples # 63 and #64 under isolation mode. Conflicting data are omitted from the analysis in the thesis.

Pages 20-26 (Experimental Procedures):   Diffusion experiments were all conducted before 1998. Diffusion couples were designed and made by others before 1998. Diffusion couples were delivered to NASA in 1995 ("95/12/20") and 1996 ( "96/ 4/ 30").

What is most disturbing is the fact that the supervisor did not disclose the experimental problems to the graduate student.

 In 2002 Josee Robert (Adamson) co-authored the following paper which is based on her thesis.  That paper is now Retracted .

Reginald W. Smith, Xiaohe Zhu, Mark C. Tunnicliffe, Timothy J. N. Smith, Lowell Misener, and Josee Adamson. 2002. The Influence of Gravity on the Precise Measurement of Solute Diffusion Coefficients in Dilute Liquid Metals and Metalloids. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 974: 57–67.

Queen’s university should convene a panel to review the award of the MSc degree. 

Allegations of institutional non-compliance against Queen's university: here.