@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni I'd like to expand on my claims of scientific misconduct, for this manuscript and for others of Mike's lab. Suffice to say for now that all other authors on this paper were entirely uninvolved in misconduct, as @rvrikhye discovered it after it was sent out.
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni When I worked for Mike, he knowingly published falsified data (ask him for the raw recordings used to generate figures in https://t.co/SoyDYR8qRQ … they don’t have it, because they deleted it so no one could check!
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni Receipt for the van Mike instructed us to rent to sneak animals from NYU directly into MIT's main animal facility, and doctor the surgical records for them to be newly implanted mice (since the protocol had been approved by then and we could pretend surgeries were at MIT).
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni Here was a heartwarming follow-up text from a tech that worked under the table their first summer out of college, including weekends for 9 weeks. Mike kept telling her he needed more time. I found them silently crying one morning, wondering if they were going to make their loans.
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni They then doctor the surgical records to say that the animal was euthanized, and then keep the animal living in the lab, suffering, while they change its cage after hours to finish their experiments on it.
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni Finally, give CAC/LAR a heads up to be vigilant if he requests to do food and water restriction or moderate pain surgery, since if they recommend that his team euthanize an animal that’s not recovering from surgery, they will just hide the animal in their surgery room.
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni If you’re interviewing with Mike, know that Mohammed Hadi Saiepour aborted his own interview 15 minutes into his job talk in March 2018 because of how toxic he is. Mike’s wife Ana felt so bad for us that she once brought the lab ice cream when he was travelling to apologize.
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni Let me know if you want any recordings of him screaming at and harassing lab members, too. We called him “Mike Harrassa.” As Mike would say, "Just using your brain would be helpful." A crowd favorite was “I’m going to murder you!”
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni Separately MIT might want to make sure they have good documentation on the computers and chairs that they paid for, since he stole several computers from NYU Langone when setting up at MIT (and attempted to take the chairs, but got caught and returned them, ask Andrea Hines).
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni Also be sure to routinely check his lab space when he’s setting up, since he was running experiments at MIT in secret before the protocol was approved, and before CAC/EHS even inspected the space to approve it for use.
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni If he’s bringing animals be careful. When MIT’s CAC wouldn’t approve his transfer of mice into the main vivarium at BCS, he told me to rent a van, pack the animals into it, drive to MIT up I95, and then move them on carts into the BCS vivarium in secret. I still have the receipt!
@NelsonTotah@HiLIFE_helsinki@helsinkiuni If he's hiring, Mike refused to pay two lab techs (Christine Yu and Kristine Liu) after they worked in secret for us under the table (and handled animals without being on the protocol or receiving training) for months. Reach out to Carlos Morales and Nina Gray for more details.