As the principal investigator in a nanophotonics research I have firm documents about the falsification and fabrication of data and results which is presented in a paper published in Applied Physics Letter 97, 221104 2010 titled Surface plasmon enhanced UV emission in AlGaN/GaN quantum well. To keep the reputation of the department and the university, my complaint was ignored and mistreated by physics chair and office of research integrity.
In this paper, Figure 3a is fabricated and Fig. 4 is not related to the specified sample. At the meantime the sample structure is also falsified.
My reasons for this case of misconduct is as follows;
1- According to my observations all the expeimental data shows consistency from 10K and upward to 300K (room temperature). In fact we studied two hybrid multilayer hetroostructures. A single quantum well (SQW) consisting of a 3 nm wide GaN QW layer sandwiched between Al0.2Ga0.8N cap and buffer layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a c-plane Sapphire substrate. The second sample was a multiple quantum well (MQW) consisting of 20 periods of 4 nm wide GaN QWs embedded in Al0.3Ga0.7N (5 nm) barriers grown on a c-plane Sapphire substrate by MBE technique. We equally divided the surface of the samples into four parts. We kept one part as reference and evaporated 8nm of aluminum, gold and silver separately on three other parts.
Please make note of the followings;
a) Above 200K the PL emission approaches zero due to high defect density in AlGaN crystal which in turn causes the radiative emission to vanish.
b) For AlGaN every measurement is meaningful at low temperature. The efficient luminescence requires that the radiative lifetime should be much shorter than the non-radiative lifetime which is not the case for AlGaN at room temperature.
c) More important, the enhancements shown in Fig. 3a for silver and aluminum are fabricated and falsified. The only enhancement observed in the lab belongs to silver at 20K.
Considering the above facts, Fig. 3a is fabricated and there is no real data for it. This can be easily verified by taking the PL spectrum in the lab at room temperature.
2- Fig. 2 and Fig. 4 shows lifetime analysis of two different samples at low temperature. However they are misrepersented in the paper. Fig. 2 belongs to our multiple quantum well (MQW) sample where Fig. 4 belongs to the single quantum well (SQW) sample which is not even mentioned in the paper. However, by the way it is presented in the paper the raeder will be mislead by the fact that it belongs to the MQW sample.
3- The MQW sample 20 periods of quantum well while in the paper this is stated to be 3 periods.
In conclusion, the paper is falsifying the enhancement of emission for silver and aluminum which has never been observed in the lab especi... [more]
Given that you feel this is a the case. You should contact the Editor of APL and at least two members of the Editorial board. All mis-conduct cases for an article published in the journal are their responsibility.
It is a very serious offence. I wish it would not be truth. It is very sad, because this is a very presitgeous journal. On the other hand it also shows how, sometimes, reviewing process is shallow. Reviewers should even check singular experiments if these are not trustworthy.
Given that you feel this is a the case. You should contact the Editor of APL and at least two members of the Editorial board. All mis-conduct cases for an article published in the journal are their responsibility.
Hi Dr. Morris,
This is acknowledged in the paper about the first author; J.L. is supported by a U.S. Department of Energy research grant, Even this is not true. Please see the email I just received from DOE.
.
Mr. Mohammadizia,
This serves to acknowledge receipt of your message to the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inspector General Hotline. The Office of Inspector General Hotline facilitates the reporting of allegations of fraud, waste, or abuse, concerning Department of Energy programs and/or operations.
We have received your email regarding potential research misconduct at the University of North Texas. We have determined that this project was not funded by the Department of Energy, and as such, this matter does not fall under the purview of the Office of Inspector General.
If you have specific information to identify a DOE nexus please reply to this email and provide this information. Otherwise, you may wish to contact the National Science Foundation Office of Inspector General at http://www.nsf.gov/oig.
Thank you for contacting the Office of Inspector General Hotline.
Hotline Coordinator
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Inspector General.
The contents of the DOE letter may be the case. The research was not supported by DOE by the grant held by one of the authors. I still think my initial suggestion to show the journal that the research is false. They will ask the corresponding author to defend the paper. You can put this in a letter to APL.
Dear Sir,
this story is very confusing, not to say strange! As far as I understand you are accusing your very own paper for scientific misconduct. This implies that you became aware on the "wrong" data after resubmission of the corrected galley proofs.
However, since I am not in the position to decide who is right and who is wrong,
here´s a scenario you may think of:
Obviously, it is too late to come to an agreement with your co-authors,
especially after the dirty linen was aired in public (i.e. at least at RG).
So, an "erratum" or a "corrigendum" in APL is not a real option, because
it has to be submitted via the corresponding author of the original work
(as far as I know). However, even in case that your co-authors would agree, neither a "corridendum" nor an "erratum" would represent appropriate tools for excusing the faking of data.
Therefore, there is only one option left. Submit a comment on this paper
at APL (APL´s article types include comments!!!). This comment will be peer-
reviewed as any other regular submission, and based on the referee reports,
the editor has to come to a conclusion.Concerning publishing ethics
editors take things very seriously, be it plagiarism, duplicate publication or the faking of data.
Similar to the advises given by some other people discussing
your questions on this particular problem:
Be sure to have clear proofs for all the objections you bring in
(irreversible!!!) action ...
Regards, FM
Dear Sir,
You are a contributing author in this paper and if something is false in this paper, you should have noted it before communicating the manuscript. Since you are a contributing authors, you also share this misconduct and if in any case, the corresponding authors has not shown you the manuscript before submission, you can complaint against the paper to editorial board. Since Applied Physics Letters is a very reputed journal, this type of thing should be stopped right away and as a contributing author it is your responsibility.
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