University Head Calls for Firing Scientist
The president of the University of Rochester has recommended firing Ranga Dias, who claimed to have discovered a room-temperature superconductor, for research misconduct. Rochester President Sarah Mangelsdorf made her recommendation to the board of trustees in August. The Wall Street Journal has seen the letter.
“Please accept this as my recommendation that the Board of Trustees act to abrogate the contract of Dr. Ranga Dias as a faculty member of the University to include immediate termination of his employment,” she wrote.
As of Monday, Dias still held appointments in the physics and mechanical-engineering departments, but no longer taught classes or supervised students. A spokesperson for the Rochester, N.Y., university declined to comment on when, or if, the board would act.
Dias’s bold scientific claims about the discovery of new superconductors— rare materials that pass electrical current without loss of energy—drew worldwide media coverage amid allegations from peers of irregularities.
A university investigation completed in February found that he manipulated data in four studies, including in a blockbuster paper published in the journal Nature in March 2023—and retracted a year ago—that claimed the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor, and plagiarized material in a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation. At least five papers in which he is a senior author have been retracted.
Dias sued the university claiming the procedures were biased. A judge dismissed the case in April, stating it was premature for the court to weigh in while university actions, including on Dias’s employment, were pending.
Dias didn’t respond to requests for comment. He has previously denied manipulating or misrepresenting data.
Dias joined the faculty in 2017, after a stint as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. His new lab began publishing papers on novel materials with unusual properties, including a potentially transformative superconductor.
Superconductors have the rare ability to conduct electrical current without losing energy. Materials known to do this require extremely low temperatures, extremely high pressures, or both. A material that behaves like a superconductor at ambient conditions could prompt a revolution in electronics and engineering.
But papers by Dias drew intense and often public criticism from other researchers who scrutinized the data. The protests prompted investigations at the journals that published the work.
In 2023, the Office of Inspector General at the NSF— whose grant money helped fund Dias’s research—asked the university to investigate. NSF and the Office of Inspector General declined to comment.
Three external scientists conducted the probe, interviewing Dias and researchers who collaborated with him and analyzing data from Dias’s lab computers. They concluded that there was evidence of research misconduct for each of 15 allegations, involving four papers.
Junior faculty and students in Dias’s lab were “victims, having been intentionally misled” by Dias, the investigators said, and they didn’t find evidence of wrongdoing by Dias’s collaborators at other institutions.
The Rochester provost at the time, David Figlio, referred Dias’s case to the University Committee on Tenure and Privileges “for potential removal,” saying he accepted the conclusions of the report. The UCTP and a hearing committee formed by that committee both recommended ending Dias’s employment.
In her letter, Mangelsdorf wrote that she concurred with those conclusions. “The Board of Trustees should now decide how it wants to proceed in considering whether to terminate the employment of Dr. Dias,” she wrote.
