Dirty Old Men

This is a story about three dirty old men, two of them in Yale.

Sexual harassment used to the main perk of being an alpha male professor. Your lab and your lecture hall used to be your buffet, grab whatever you like, with zero consequences. Because scientists are geniuses and geniuses are entitled to things like that.

Well, attitudes changed, but even now whenever a sexual harasser is caught the peer community immediately starts its dirge about his scientific achievements which justify bullying and harassment.

Surely you all remember one of the most famous sexual harassers in science, David Sabatini, who reached a star status as “mTORman” for his (apparently irreproducible or falsified) cancer and aging research, and who was sacked first by Whitehead Institute and then by MIT for sexual harassment, for which he then sued his victim, Whitehead, and the institute’s director.

What does the dirty youngish man Sabatini have to do with dirty old men of Yale? There is a very direct link!

Now, as I reported in March 2022 Shorts, Sabatini almost became professor at New York University (NYU) Langone Health, supported from the outside by two billionaire donors, Ken Langone and Bill Ackman, and on the inside in particular by the Health Chief Scientific Officer, Executive Vice President and Vice Dean for Science, Dafna Bar-Sagi. She and her colleagues in charge ignored the protests by graduate students and by the faculty, but then all big national media, including the New York Times reported, so the pressure got too big. Sabatini ended up not getting that NYU job, went instead to Prague where this toxic creep failed to raise any EU money to set up a lab, so the Czechs sent him back to USA where his billionaire friend Ackman promised to built Sabatini his own private bordello research institute (read May 2024 Shorts).

Thing is, Bar-Sagi’s own academic success was based on overlooking fake science and sexual harassment. From a dirty old man of Yale.

Bar-Sagi did her PhD at the pharmacology department at SUNY Stony Brook, supervised by Joav Prives, the two soon became a couple and are still together. Back when Bar-Sagi was his graduate student, Prives was married to the cancer researcher Carol Prives, who published a string of papers with fake data.

Now, Joav Prives’ best friend from his graduate days at the Weizmann Institute in Israel was the then NYU professor Joseph Schlessinger, who is said to have been very supportive of Bar-Sagi’s scientific career. Schlessinger is now endowed professor of pharmacology at Yale University, and he is one of the three dirty old men I wish to tell you about.

Joe Schlessinger

Regarding Schlessinger’s past, the Academic Misconduct Database links to this 2006 article in Yale Daily News:

“Mary Beth Garceau filed a complaint last week with the U.S. District Court alleging that her supervisor, chair of pharmacology Joseph Schlessinger, made repeated lewd observations and suggestions to her, from telling jokes about penis size to showing her hard-core pornography. The harassment started on her first day of work in 2001, she said, and continued until her resignation nearly three years later. […]

Garceau stated in the complaint that University officials protected Schlessinger when she informed them of the situation and told her that not only would her complaints be ignored, but that she would be the subject of investigations into her own conduct. As a result, the complaint said, Garceau resigned in March 2004. […]

In several incidents over the next year, Schlessinger showed Garceau pictures of naked women and, on one occasion, a hard-core pornography Web site, the complaint alleged.

Schlessinger claimed that a photo of a naked woman without a head was his wife, Irit Lax, an assistant professor in the pharmacology department, the complaint stated. While he was showing Garceau the photo, according to the account, Lax walked in and started yelling at her husband.”

An archived website www.josephschlessinger.com (another copy on Wikileaks), for which Schlessinger sued WIPO and won, has more information, and not just on his distant past in Israel (“A federal court has found Joseph Schlessinger and his Pharmaceutical industry partners guilty of stealing research from the Weizmann Institute of Science“). There are also details of Schlessinger’s sexual harassment of Garceau:

“Garceau stated in a sworn affidavit […] that Joseph Schlessinger initiated numerous conversations with her about sex, bragged to her about his marital infidelity and the number of women he had slept with, (Joseph Schlessinger claimed he has slept with 46 different women) showed her hard-core pornography, made lewd comments, told dirty jokes about penis size and commented on the size of her breasts and style of her underwear […]
Schlessinger showed Mary Beth Garceau pictures of large-breasted naked women, men in the process of ejaculating, and other hard-core pornography on his university office Apple Computer”

[the above section was updated on 4.10.2024 to include additional information]

The lawsuit ended with a financial settlement, in 2001 Schlessinger left NYU for Yale and Bar-Sagi inherited his as chair as biochemistry professor at NYU. We do not know what kind of jokes and photos that dirty old man may have shared with Bar-Sagi, but surely having a mentor like this steeled her for dealing with Sabatini.

Of course I understand how academics think. Yes yes, Schlessinger is a sexual harasser and definitely not someone you would leave your daughter alone with. But so what, he is a science genius who cured cancer with his groundbreaking science!

Maybe not.

Here is a paper by Schlessinger and his wife Irit Lax, whose open-mindedness earned her a Yale professorship at her charming husband’s lab. The study was never corrected:

Dawn R Mattoon, Betty Lamothe , Irit Lax , Joseph Schlessinger The docking protein Gab1 is the primary mediator of EGF-stimulated activation of the PI-3K/Akt cell survival pathway BMC biology (2004) doi: 10.1186/1741-7007-2-24 

A Schlessinger paper with inappropriately spliced gels, which leaves the data unreliable. But it is old and in Cell, so the number of people who care trends against zero:

   

This Schlessinger paper has No Obvious Abnormality, at all:

S. Harroch, M. Palmeri , J. Rosenbluth , A. Custer , M. Okigaki , P. Shrager , M. Blum , J. D. Buxbaum , J. Schlessinger No Obvious Abnormality in Mice Deficient in Receptor Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase β Molecular and cellular biology (2000) doi: 10.1128/mcb.20.20.7706-7715.2000 

We don’t know whether and how much pornography and penis jokes Schlessinger exposed his mentee Sheila Harroch to, but we do know she returned to France to set up her own lab at Institut Pasteur, and this is the result:

Smaragda Lamprianou , Nathalie Vacaresse , Yoshihisa Suzuki , Hamid Meziane , Joseph D. Buxbaum , Joseph Schlessinger, Sheila Harroch Receptor protein tyrosine phosphatase gamma is a marker for pyramidal cells and sensory neurons in the nervous system and is not necessary for normal development Molecular and cellular biology (2006) doi: 10.1128/mcb.00101-06 

After 13 years as Pasteur group leader, Harroch briefly returned to USA, then went back to France where she took up different unconvincing jobs. Did Schlessinger break yet another female researcher?

This PNAS paper with its falsified gel was “Contributed by Joseph Schlessinger” in his capacity as National Academy of Sciences member:

This PNAS paper was also “Contributed by Joseph Schlessinger“, it again features his wife Lax. It also brings us to the other dirty old man of Yale, Michael Simons, formerly Director of Cardiovascular Center at Dartmouth University and now professor of cardiology in Yale:

Pei-Yu Chen, Lingfeng Qin, Zhen W. Zhuang , George Tellides, Irit Lax, Joseph Schlessinger, Michael Simons The docking protein FRS2α is a critical regulator of VEGF receptors signaling Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2014) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1404545111 

Simons replied on PubPeer right away in February 2024 with “An incorrect figure version was published. […] Quantitative analysis is correct as published.” There was no need to publish a correction because of who the authors are.

Mike Simons

Regarding Simons’s past, on 14 November 2014 The New York Times brought this:

“Yale Medical School has removed a doctor after a finding of sexual harassment as director of its Cardiovascular Research Center, the latest development in a nearly five-year-old case that has agitated the institution.

The removal of the director, Dr. Michael Simons, effective immediately, was the result of an independent management review from April to August […] Dr. Simons was Yale’s chief of cardiology until January 2013, when he was suspended for 18 months after a university committee found that he had sexually harassed a postdoctoral researcher. […]

In addition to the sexual harassment, the university committee found that Dr. Simons had exercised “improper leadership and compromised decision-making” with regard to the researcher’s husband, also a cardiologist. Dr. Simons, who is married, began making advances to the researcher, Annarita Di Lorenzo, in February 2010, in a letter, and continued his pursuit despite repeated rebuffs. She left Yale in 2011. Her husband, Dr. Frank Giordano, who remains at Yale, said Dr. Simons froze his professional advancement.”

In 2013, Yale investigators “made confidential recommendations that Dr. Simons be permanently removed as chief of cardiology and barred for five years from any position of authority“. But the provost decided to merely suspend Simons for 18 months while leaving him in charge of the Cardiovascular Research Center which had 110 principle investigators. Also:

“Some faculty members said Dr. Simons had told them that the dean had promised to protect him, and Dr. Giordano’s Connecticut complaint said the dean had announced that he was “90 percent certain” he could get the committee’s decision reversed. […] the dean ignored other faculty misconduct, too. “When a professor complained to him about still another professor who had sexually harassed a postdoctoral fellow, the dean responded, ‘What can I do? He has two grants””

In October 2014 however Simons “had decided not to return” to that office, following student and faculty protests and inquiries by New York Times. And then he sued his employer, for harassment! Yale News report from 5 October 2020:

“Cardiology professor Michael Simons MED ’84 can move forward in his case alleging that the University discriminated against him because he is a man by punishing him twice for the same sexual harassment offense, a judge ruled last week.”

Yes, a sexual harasser sued his university for discriminating against him because he is a rich white man:

““Dr. Simons is a Caucasian male,” the complaint stated. “The defendants acted intentionally and in a discriminatory manner in regard to Dr. Simons for the express purpose of placating those #MeToo activists and sympathizers in the grip of moral panic and self-righteous indignation.””

The trial for Simons’s God-given rights as a powerful white man with certain needs seems to be still ongoing. Now, was the dean right? Is Simons a genius who is allowed to, nay, entitled to sexually harass junior employees? Not really.

Visit Simons’s PubPeer record.

Jian Li , Nicholas W. Shworak , Michael Simons Increased responsiveness of hypoxic endothelial cells to FGF2 is mediated by HIF-1alpha-dependent regulation of enzymes involved in synthesis of heparan sulfate FGF2-binding sites Journal of cell science (2002) doi: 10.1242/jcs.115.9.1951 

This should be retracted due to abnormalities:

A very old but very fake one from Simons’s lab, flagged on PubPeer already in 2017:

A fresh collaborative paper by Simons with Chinese colleagues:

Ruizhe Ren, Sha Ding , Kefan Ma , Yuanqing Jiang , Yiran Wang , Junbo Chen , Yunyun Wang , Yaohui Kou , Xiao Fan , Xiaolong Zhu , Lingfeng Qin , Cong Qiu , Michael Simons , Xiyang Wei, Luyang Yu SUMOylation Fine-Tunes Endothelial HEY1 in the Regulation of Angiogenesis Circulation Research (2024) doi: 10.1161/circresaha.123.323398 

In January 2024, the last author Luyang Yu announced to “have reported this issue to editors of Circulation Research for a correction.” The journal decided to go for a stealth correction by replacing the problematic data without any notice at all.

Simons remains a fellow of American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Society of Physiology and other learned societies. They think he is a role model.

Dirty doctors

Schlessinger and Simons are not the only dirty old men in Yale. More cases are in this database. Here some from Yale medicine:

New York Times from 2015, about Dr. Mahnensmith who for years “pressed his erect penis against the back” of his female subordinates:

“A nephrology professor, Dr. Rex L. Mahnensmith, who worked at the university for over 20 years, has been accused of a pattern of sexual harassment while he was medical director of the New Haven Dialysis Clinic, where university physicians treat their patients.

Last year, when the accusations boiled over but were being handled quietly by Yale, the clinic removed him, and Yale forced his resignation.”

Yale psychiatry professor Eugene Redmond was made to retire in 2018 and banned from the Yale campus. Reporting by Yale News from 2019:

“Retired Yale School of Medicine professor and former Morse College advisor Eugene Redmond sexually assaulted five students affiliated with his University research and engaged in sexual misconduct with at least eight other undergraduates, recent college graduates and one high school student over a period of 25 years, according to a report released today by a Yale-commissioned independent investigator. […]

The sexual assaults and most incidents of sexual misconduct occurred at Redmond’s research facility on the Caribbean island St. Kitts, where he ran a summer internship program for Yale undergraduates and other students. The School of Medicine first investigated Redmond for misconduct in 1994, after a group of Yale interns raised complaints of sexual molestation and harassment against the then-University professor. After the investigation, Redmond told University officials he had terminated his summer research program. But,  according to the report, the University failed to institute a “meaningful oversight mechanism” to monitor Redmond and ensure the program had closed permanently. In fact, per the report, Redmond recruited at least 20 students between 2001 and 2017 to the program. “

I guess you see the pattern how sexual harassment investigations used to work at Yale. More recent, NBC from 2020 about the anaesthesiology professor Manuel Lopes Fontes:

“Yale University promoted an award-winning doctor to lead diversity and inclusion efforts in a medical school department last summer — despite receiving complaints that he had sexually harassed multiple women he supervised, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

Six female doctors say in the suit that Dr. Manuel Lopes Fontes — a high-ranking professor who was division chief of cardiac anesthesiology at Yale New Haven Hospital and director of clinical research for Yale School of Medicine’s anesthesiology department — behaved inappropriately, including forcibly kissing them, giving them unwanted neck massages at work and making inappropriate comments about their bodies.”

Lopes Funtes was sacked by Yale and sued by his victims. Rightly so, but then again, compare to Simons. As it happens, Lopes Funtes is Black and Simons a WASP.

Harassment and bad science always go hand in hand. Don’t expect anything decent in their research papers either.

Bonus dirty old man: Arnie Levine

I have one more dirty old man, but he is not at Yale. But the cancer research superstar Arnold J Levine is a close friend of Schlessinger (and of Bar-Sagi and Prives)!

Levine is emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, and in fact he used to be professor at Princeton University before he became President and Chief Executive Officer of the Rockefeller University. He kept that job for 4 years. As it happens, Levine’s pre-predecessor, the Nobel Prize laureate David Baltimore also had to resign as Rockefeller president, over research fraud by his close friend Thereza Imanishi-Kari which Baltimore condoned, covered up and whitewashed. Read here:

Over two decades ago, Levine resigned as President of the Rockefeller University because he filled up a 21 year old student with alcohol and then had sex with her. Nature reported in 2002:

“According to the sources, the encounter occurred in the university’s faculty club, a popular meeting place for researchers and graduate students. Both Levine and the participating student were intoxicated, the sources say, and she is said to have told university officials that the encounter was consensual. A male student who was in the faculty club confronted Levine during the encounter, one of the sources says, at which point Levine became angry. This student reported the incident to the Board of Trustees.”

Levine then went to the Rutgers University, where he stayed as a humble professor for 12 years before coming to IAS to Princeton. We don’t know if he continued filling up young women with alcohol to have sex with them, after all we are supposed not to bother about such non-issues but to admire Levine for his immense scientific achievements in cancer research.

Well, there is a lot of fraud on PubPeer for Levine. Like this, flagged 11 years ago by Clare Francis:

Byeong‐Seon Jeong , Wenwei Hu , Vladimir Belyi , Raul Rabadan , Arnold J. Levine Differential levels of transcription of p53-regulated genes by the arginine/proline polymorphism: p53 with arginine at codon 72 favors apoptosis The FASEB Journal (2010) doi: 10.1096/fj.09-146001 

This paper our revered National Academy of Sciences member “contributed” to PNAS:

Sandra L. Harris , German Gil , Harlan Robins , Wenwei Hu , Kim Hirshfield , Elisabeth Bond , Gareth Bond , Arnold J. Levine Detection of functional single-nucleotide polymorphisms that affect apoptosis Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2005) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0508390102 

This was also contributed to PNAS by Levine, featuring a certain Mount Sinai bigwig named Carlos Cordon-Cardo, who has a PubPeer record of fake science of his own:

Zhaohui Feng , Wenwei Hu , Angelika K. Teresky , Eva Hernando , Carlos Cordon-Cardo, Arnold J. Levine Declining p53 function in the aging process: a possible mechanism for the increased tumor incidence in older populations Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2007) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0708043104 

The 2007 PNAS paper shares data with another study published by Levine in parallel, and flagged by Clare Francis years ago:

Zhaohui Feng , Wenwei Hu , Elisa De Stanchina , Angelika K. Teresky , Shengkan Jin , Scott Lowe , Arnold J. Levine The regulation of AMPK beta1, TSC2, and PTEN expression by p53: stress, cell and tissue specificity, and the role of these gene products in modulating the IGF-1-AKT-mTOR pathways Cancer Research (2007) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-06-4149

The highly talented cancer researcher Zhaohui Feng followed his master to Rutgers University and became tenured professor there. Here is that Hu et al 2010 paper by Feng, again “contributed” by his master Levine to PNAS:

Naturally, also Levine’s other talented postdoc, Wenwei Hu, made it to full professor at Rutgers. We can’t know if Levine ever offered her alcohol and if he did, for what purpose, but anyway, here is another one of theirs, with Feng:

Zhaohui Feng , Cen Zhang , Hey‐Joo Kang , Yvonne Sun , Haijian Wang , Asad Naqvi , Amanda K. Frank , Zev Rosenwaks , Maureen E. Murphy , Arnold J. Levine , Wenwei Hu Regulation of female reproduction by p53 and its family members The FASEB Journal (2011) doi: 10.1096/fj.10-180166 

As cancer breakthroughs go, the data from Feng’s, Hu’s and Levine’s 2007 PNAS paper also ended up in their 2012 PNAS paper (also “contributed” by Levine of course):

Zhaohui Feng , Lianxin Liu , Cen Zhang , Tongsen Zheng , Jiabei Wang , Meihua Lin , Yuhan Zhao , Xiaowen Wang , Arnold J. Levine , Wenwei Hu Chronic restraint stress attenuates p53 function and promotes tumorigenesis Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2012) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1203930109 

PNAS is where rotten academy members go to defecate to. Levine also “contributed” this:

Archontoula Stoffel, Mira Chaurushiya , Bhuvanesh Singh , Arnold J. Levine Activation of NF-kappaB and inhibition of p53-mediated apoptosis by API2/mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue 1 fusions promote oncogenesis Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2004) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0402415101

Now, Levine with William N. Hait, who is not only a senior exec at Johnson & Johnson but also the Treasurer and Executive Vice President of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), a learned society which published this:

There is more on PubPeer for Levine. This is the kind of biomedical research academia lets those dirty old men harass women for.

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