In April 2012, we wrote about a case of disputed authorship and misused data involving one Varun Kesherwani, a former postdoc at the University of Nebraska.

As we reported then, Kesherwani was first author of a paper in Cytokine. The second author, Ajit Sodhi, of Banaras Hindu University, claimed to have had no knowledge of the article and had not given Kesherwani permission to use the results. Thus, the retraction.

Since then, we have received numerous messages from Kesherwani objecting to our post — he claims it has hurt his employment prospects — and demanding that we take it down. At one point he even suggested in an email that we pay him to go away:

“If you support me financially and provide me a job, I can take this matter forward.”

But Kesherwani seems to have had a change of heart about that approach. Yesterday we received a letter from an attorney claiming to represent the researcher threatening to sue us for defamation unless we remove not only the post about Kesherwani but, oddly, the retraction notice on ScienceDirect.

Yes, you read that right. Kesherwani and attorney Michael A. Nelsen seem to think that we publish ScienceDirect. Elsevier would find that amusing, to say the least.

The letter, on letterhead from the Omaha firm Marks Clare & Richards, where Nelsen works, maintains that we have posted “inaccurate and defamatory” information about Kesherwani — allegations we humbly reject. Or, to be more precise, we don’t know exactly how to respond to, because neither the attorney’s letter nor an attached incoherent message from Kesherwani says exactly what’s allegedly wrong in the post.

The letter also advises us that we are “amenable” to a lawsuit in Omaha. No disrespect to Omaha, but we’re not particularly amenable to a lawsuit anywhere, thank you very much.

We will quote attorney Ken White, aka Popehat, who has written about other legal threats against Retraction Watch:

[V]agueness in legal threats is the hallmark of meritless thuggery.

We will also note that we have followed the same procedure in responding to this meritless letter as we have to every other such threat:

Responding politely saying that we needed more specific allegations

Posting the letter

Lawyers who are considering vague threats against Retraction Watch are strongly urged to consider this before sending us such letters — and to familiarize themselves with the Streisand Effect. Reading this might offer some good background, too.

Update, 6:30 p.m. Eastern, 12/18/14: We received what we’d refer to as a walk-back from attorney Nelsen today. In a letter, Nelsen said that he wanted to clarify “one thing” in his original letter, namely that the ScienceDirect page “should not be deleted.”

Whether he now realized that we neither control nor own ScienceDirect was left unclear.

What his client objected to, according to Nelsen, and should be “deleted immediately,” were two phrases from our interview with the editor of Cytokine. Elsewhere, however, Nelsen refers to deleting the entire “cite,” so we’re not quite sure what the request is.

Either way, we responded to say that we had no plans to make any changes to the post until he provided us documentation about any errors.

In the meantime, as long as Nelsen is telling us what we should do, we note that the aforementioned Popehat left a helpful comment below with a link we suggest Nelsen should read.

Update, 7 p.m. Eastern, 12/18/14: We have another addendum:

Ken White of Popehat has asked us to convey his greetings and best wishes to Mr. Nelson, and suggested that Mr. Nelson might also find Shlien v. Bd. of Regents, Univ. of Nebraska, 263 Neb. 465, 471, 640 N.W.2d 643, 649 (2002) (“in the absence of fraud or fraudulent concealment, the statute of limitations in a libel action commences to run upon publication of the defamatory matter even if the plaintiff is ignorant of such publication”) to be stimulating, as it was for him.

Share this: Email

Facebook

Twitter

