Fired Tsukuba professor’s defense

Hiroshi Mizubayashi’s letter defending the University of Tsukuba’s action against Teruji Cho suggests that we and our nine letter cosigners might not have had a full grasp of the incident and the procedure followed by the university. We did, however, have access to the reports that summarized the university’s evidence and found them seriously wanting in reaching the conclusion of any falsification of data. It seems to us that it is the university that lacks access, since its report fails to consider the subsequent clarifying article published by Cho in Physics of Plasmas. ¹ Mizubayashi observes that following his investigation, 23 coauthors—all at Tsukuba—asked Physical Review Letters to withdraw their names from the paper. Yet Vladimir Pastukhov, one of four coauthors dissenting from the university’s findings and the only one outside the university’s disciplinary influence, stands by the original publication. He believes that it is one of the more significant works of the GAMMA-10 group. In summary, Mizubayashi’s letter does not allay our and our cosigners’ concerns about whether an accurate, fair, and transparent academic procedure has been followed.