Sergent-Suicide-Montreal-Gazette-Coverage

IDNUMBER	199703210134
BASNUM	2613522
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	970321
PDATE	Friday, March 21, 1997    
EDITION	Final
SECTION	News
PAGE	A5
LENGTH	387 words
LKW	UNIVERSITIES; QUEBEC; MCGILL UNIVERSITY; SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY;
ETHICS; JUSTINE SERGENT, SUICIDE; 1994
HEADLINE	McGill ends 2nd inquiry of Sergent suicide: Estate
objected
BYLINE	JOHN KALBFLEISCH
SOURCE	The Gazette

A hunt for possible scientific fraud in the research of a McGill
University scientist who killed herself three years ago has
suddenly been shut down by the university.

The scientific audit was set up following the April 1994 death of
neurological researcher Justine Sergent, who had been accused in
an anonymous letter of unethical behavior.

McGill sent out a tersely worded notice yesterday about the end of
the audit. There will be no report.

The Sergent estate has objected to the audit continuing because
one of its two members resigned last fall.

This means all official inquiries into the matter have been
canceled without any public light being shed on Sergent's death or
research.

Claude-Armand Sheppard, the lawyer for the Sergent estate, said he
called for the audit to be canceled because he was unhappy with
the way the matter was handled. He said he tried for two months to
find out why Pierre Bois resigned from the audit.

The former dean of medicine at Universite de Montreal quit on Oct.
26 for health reasons. That left only Marcus Raichle, a
neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

"It's not that we were challenging Raichle's competence," Sheppard
said in an interview. "But transparency demanded a two-man
inquiry. The rules were changed without us being told. Don't try
to tell me that an inquiry done by one person is as good as one
done by two.,.

He said the estate had agreed with McGill on Jan. 15 to wind up a
second inquiry - into disciplinary measures launched against
Sergent and other difficulties she faced at the university - on
the understanding that the scientific audit would proceed.

Yet it was only in The Gazette's report of that development, he
said, that the estate learned of the resignation.

The January agreement, he said, "contemplated a two-person
committee headed by Dr. Bois." He said the process had become
hopelessly flawed, and accused McGill of being "not serious - if
it ever was - about the audit and about protecting the scientific
reputation of Dr. Justine Sergent.

Sergent and her husband committed suicide several days after a
Gazette article reported about the anonymous letter and of
administrative disputes over her failure to get proper
authorization for certain experiments. But McGill was quoted
saying there was no fraud in the case.

DOE	19970321
UPDATE	970321
NDATE	19970321
NUPDATE	19970321

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IDNUMBER	199701160201
BASNUM	2581510
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	970116
PDATE	Thursday, January 16, 1997
EDITION	Final
SECTION	News
PAGE	A3
LENGTH	512 words
LKW	UNIVERSITIES; MONTREAL; MCGILL, UNIVERSITY; SCIENCE &
TECHNOLOGY; DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS; JUSTINE SERGENT ; SUICIDE;
LAWSUITS
HEADLINE	McGill, estate for researcher end hostilities 
BYLINE	JOHN KALBFLEISCH
SOURCE	The Gazette

McGill University and the estate of neurology researcher Justine
Sergent, wearied by years of confrontation, have laid down their
arms.

Citing the passage of time and the mounting expense of litigation,
McGill has agreed to end its inquiry into disciplinary measures
the university had launched against Sergent, as well as into other
aspects of her career there.

For its part, the Sergent estate is dropping its assertion before
the courts that McGill's inquiry was inherently flawed because of
the university's involvement in the affair.

Sergent, of the McGill-affiliated Montreal Neurological Institute,
was recognized as a world leader in cognitive neuroscience. In
April 1994, she committed suicide in her north-end home, to be
followed several hours later by her husband. She was 42.

It was the extraordinary climax to a series of events that began
with an internal complaint in July 1992 about some experiments on
brain functioning that she was conducting.

- In January 1993, McGill reprimanded Sergent for conducting the
experiments without proper ethics-committee approval, even though
her volunteer subjects had given their informed consent. At no
time was the subjects' safety or the soundness of Sergent's
scientific procedures in question. Sergent appealed, and the case
went to arbitration.

- In April 1994, The Gazette, among others, received an anonymous
letter implying scientific fraud by Sergent. In a Gazette story
April 9 that described McGill's reprimand, university officials
and Sergent alike dismissed the allegation of fraud. Sergent told
The Gazette that she herself had invited a scientific audit of her
work. The article represented the first time the affair was widely
publicized.

- In a suicide note dated April 10, Sergent wrote that the Gazette
story blew her troubles with McGill out of proportion and threw
"discredit on myself, my work and my career, which I cannot
tolerate." Two days later, she and her husband were found dead of
carbon-monoxide poisoning.

- Later that month, McGill set up its inquiry. It also
commissioned Pierre Bois, a former dean of medicine at the
Universite de Montreal, and neurologist Marcus Raichle of
Washington University in St. Louis to conduct a scientific audit
of Sergent's work.

Almost from the outset, the first McGill inquiry, led by Montreal
lawyer Caspar Bloom, was hobbled by wrangling. Sergent's estate
complained that Bloom was compromised because the university
itself had commissioned him to investigate its actions.

The estate won an injunction suspending Bloom's inquiry, and the
protracted manoeuvring that followed failed to get the process
started again.

Yesterday's settlement affirms that Bloom acted competently and
objectively.

The settlement does not affect the scientific audit (from which
Bois has withdrawn, for private reasons).

Yesterday, Richard Murphy, the Neuro's director, acknowledged that
questions will always remain in the mind of the public about what
happened between McGill and Sergent.

"But knowing what I know," he said, "I am confident that if the
Bloom inquiry had been allowed to continue, it would have shown
that McGill acted properly. It was a tragedy to lose her and her
husband.

"But I agree that the time has come to close this unfortunate
chapter." 

DOB UPDATE NDATE NUPDATE

19970116
970116
19970116
19970116

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BASNUM	2094095
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	941124
PDATE	Thursday, November 24, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	News
PAGE	A4
LENGTH	842 words
LKW	SUICIDE LETTER MCGILL UNIVERSITY
HEADLINE	No end to our nightmare in sight, suicide note says 
BYLINE	JUSTINE SERGENT
SOURCE	(Freelance)

Following is the text of the suicide note written by McGill
University researcher Justine Sergent:

When you read this letter, I will be dead. My husband and I have
chosen to retire from life, as we can no longer bear the nightmare
that our lives have been for more than two years.

The publication in Saturday's Gazette (April 9) of an article,
triggered by an anonymous letter, suggests that we cannot expect
any improvement in our current situation and, if newspapers are
ready to take anonymous and unsubstantiated accusations seriously,
there is no end to our nightmare in sight.

I have been accused of breaking rules. The ethics committee of the
Montreal Neurological Institute (MI) considered that I did not
abide by the rules because I carried out a study on reading
musical notation with positron emission tomography (PET).

Because similar studies requiring subjects to look at faces or to
read letters or words with the same technology (PET) had been
approved, I did not consider putting subjects at more risk by
exposing them to a different type of visual information.

In addition, the ethics committee itself is not competent to
decide as to whether or not I broke the rule because it does not
abide by the guidelines of the Medical Research Council (MRC) of
Canada. According to these guidelines, at least one expert in my
research either cognitive neuroscience or positron emission
tomography, should have sat on the committee evaluating my
research, but no expert in neuropsychology, nuclear medicine, or
positron emission tomography was a member of the ethics committee
in this evaluation.

I have also been accused of altering the telephone numbers of some
subjects. I did admit doing this for the following reasons. The
consent forms signed by the subjects stipulate that everything
about the participation in a study is confidential. Yet, I had
received complaints from subjects participating in earlier studies
that someone, claiming to be either from "security at McGill" or
from the "director's office" was calling them and asking them
questions about the various tasks they had been performing during
my PET studies.

I therefore decided to ensure the confidentiality of the subjects
by altering the telephone number on the official form, which I did
in their presence, while keeping the correct number in my files.

Although I mentioned this to the chairman of my department, my
subjects were still being called six months later.

In the context these events took place, I then thought these were
the best way of acting. The university thinks differently, and we
are therefore in arbitration about this. This, however, did not
have to be exposed in a newspaper and blown out of proportion, and
it allows a discredit on myself, my work and my career, which I
cannot tolerate.

Before seeing this article, I had hoped that having my research
data being investigated and audited would at least clear my name,
as the anonymous letter raises doubts about my honesty as a
scientist.

I love research too much to even consider tampering with data or
making false claims, and anyone working in my research field or
participating in my experiments could testify that I have always
paid much attention to the quality and rigor of my studies and to
the welfare of the subjects or patients participating in them.

Unfortunately, I cannot even have the assurance that the MI and
its director would proceed fairly and honestly. No later than 10
days ago, I found out, by accident, that the director of the MI
had withheld information which I had sent to him for promotion
consideration, and had not forwarded this information to the
members of the committee responsible for evaluating my dossier.

He instead sent to the committee a curriculum vitae different from
the one I had submitted for promotion consideration and that
comprised only six lines on my teaching activities compared to
three pages and a half in the curriculum vitae I had sent for
promotion consideration. As a result of the missing information, I
was denied promotion.

Although this looks like falsification of information, (I) just
received a letter from the director whereby he finds nothing wrong
with what he did and justifies his action by putting the blame on
me for not updating the information when I was given the
opportunity, but I had no significantly new information to update.

This attitude reflects my work situation during the last two years
and a half which has consisted of a continuing form of harassment
which recent events suggest are likely to be getting worse. I was
a young, successful, woman scientist, and this may not be welcome
attributes in the scientific world or at least in the mind of some
people.

I had a rich and intense life, but there comes a point when one
can no longer fight and one needs a rest. It is this rest that my
husband, who has supported me in all aspects of my activities and
my life, and myself have decide to take.

Montreal, April 10, 1994

* Justine Sergent

DOB	19941125
UPDATE	960708
NDATE	19941124
NUPDATE	19960708

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IDNUMBER	199407120028
BASNUM	2026528
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	940712
PDATE	Tuesday, July 12, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	News
PAGE	Al/FRONT
LENGTH	512 words
LKW	MEDICAL RESEARCH ETHICS MCGILL UNIVERSITY SUICIDE
HEADLINE	Sergents died separately, note indicates 
BYLINE	CAROLYN ADOLPH
SOURCE	GAZETTE

A letter written by the husband of McGill University researcher
Justine Sergent indicates that when the two committed suicide in
April, they may have ended their lives separately.


"It is 3:30 a.m. on April 11, Justine is dead, and it will soon be
my turn," says the letter, written by Yves Sergent and quoted from
in the coroner's report. "I've just spent the most horrible hours
of my life, seeing to the fulfilment of Justine's last wish."

The letter concluded, "My hour has come, I will join Justine for
ever and I hope this attempt does not fail." The Sergents
committed suicide two days after The Gazette reported that Justine
Sergent had been disciplined for failing to get ethics-committee
approval for some of her experiments and was appealing the
reprimand.

Despite Yves Sergent's letter, coroner Teresa Sourour listed the
official time of death as 11:40 a.m. on April 12, That was when
they were pronounced dead, shortly after both bodies were found by
police. The report was completed June 22 and was recently
released.

A spokesman for the coroner's office, Francois Houle, said Sourour
was unable to establish the exact time of death from examination
of the bodies. Justine and Yves Sergent died of carbon monoxide
poisoning in their car, and levels of the substance in their
bodies were roughly the same.

"It's impossible to tell who died first and when, but the
difference in hours cannot be great - a few hours," said Houle.

Letters left by the couple indicate that publication of the
disciplinary action had a "devastating effect."

Letters written April 10 indicate that Sergent "could not tolerate
what she believed to be public humiliation and an attack on her
personal and professional credibility," Sourour said.

Both complained of the "odious anonymous letter" which sparked the
newspaper story, Sourour said.

The coroner also stated that The Gazette published this anonymous
letter. However, the letter was not published: the newspaper
reported on the official reprimand and published Sergent's
comments on the matter.

Justine and Yves Sergent were found April 12 lying in their car,
which was parked in the garage of their home. Both had taken
sedatives before their deaths, and there were knife slashes on
Yves Sergent's neck and the insides of his elbows.

Sourour said the cuts were probably self-inflicted. However, none
of the cuts pierced the main veins or arteries, and they were not
the cause of death.

Two knives were found on the dashboard in front of the driver's
seat, where Yves Sergent's body was found. Justine Sergent's body
was in the front passenger's seat.

McGill University is proceeding with an independent investigation
of the tragedy, led by lawyer Casper Bloom. That inquiry is
expected to finish Sept. 30, but Bloom said yesterday that he
intends to ask for an extension to his deadline. He said he has
had an office on campus for only 10 days and has just begun his
interviews.

Bloom said he will study "all the circumstances surrounding her
death, with emphasis on her relationship with McGill (and) what
lessons can be learned."

DOB	19940713
UPDATE	960708
NDATE	19940712
NUPDATE	19960708

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IDNUMBER    199405300060
BASNUM    2005060
PAPER    Montreal Gazette
DATE    940530
PDATE    Monday, May 30, 1994
EDITION    Final
SECTION    Editorial/Op-Ed
PAGE    B3
LENGTH    1047 words
LKW    SUICIDE MEDICAL RESEARCH SCIENTIFIC ETHICS MCGILL
UNIVERSITY
HEADLINE     Agonizing case; Sergent story was not based on
anonymous letter
BYLINE	ROBERT WALKER
SOURCE	GAZETTE

Few of the people in the newsroom of The Gazette will ever forget
the shock and grief they felt when they learned on April 12 that
Justine Sergent and her husband Yves had killed themselves.

Several days before the double suicide, the fortunes of The
Gazette and of Justine Sergent had become entwined. The newspaper
received an anonymous letter dated April 3, a vicious attack on
Dr. Sergent.

She was a brilliant, 42-year-old scientist at the Montreal
Neurological Institute and a professor of neurology and
neurosurgery at McGill University.

The letter alleged, among other things, that colleagues "had long
suspected (Dr. Sergent) of scientific fraud." The letter was
signed simply, "A member of the Montreal academic community."

The anonymous writer indicated that he or she had sent copies of
the letter to nine people, including department heads at McGill,
the heads of fundgranting institutions and the editor of the
professional journal Science. This almost certainly meant that
dozens of people had seen or at least were aware of the letter.

On Saturday, April 9, The Gazette published a 14-inch story on
Page A3 that set the record straight. The story said Dr. Sergent
had been reprimanded in January 1993 on a purely procedural,
technical matter, which had nothing to do with the validity of her
research or the safety of her human test subjects.

In any case, as the story said, she was in the process of
appealing the reprimand. Dr. Sergent was quoted extensively. So
were officials at McGill and the Neuro. The story pointed out that
a joint statement on April 8 from the two institutions said that
"none of the facts suggested scientific fraud." The story
mentioned the anonymous letter only once and did not quote one
word of it.

In other words, contrary to what you might have heard on a few
radio stations, The Gazette did not "publish an anonymous letter."
(No responsible newspaper would dream of publishing such a
letter.) We did not publish a story "based on an anonymous
letter."

Did the opposite

We did almost exactly the opposite. We demolished the malicious
gossip of the letter, which was merely a starting point - a tip
that might be worth checking. The story was based entirely on our
own investigation and what we learned from credible people.

But why do we take any action on anonymous letters? We usually
don't. Newspapers receive them all the time and nearly always
throw them on the floor. Typically, they are semi-literate scrawls
from fanatics.

The letter attacking Dr. Sergent was literate, three pages of
clean, singlespaced typing, from someone who obviously knew
something about life at the Neuro. (But not everything. The writer
apparently did not know about the reprimand in 1993.)

Reporters and editors hear tips constantly, some of them from
anonymous sources. The newsroom people have to decide whether a
given tip is worth the time and effort that will be needed to
check it.

Sometimes we check a tip and find nothing worth publishing.
Sometimes we find a newsworthy story such as the one about Dr.
Sergent - not earth-shaking, not worth the front page, but
information of legitimate public concern.

In a letter to a reader on April 29, Joan Fraser, the editor of
The Gazette, observed that she personally had decided to look into
the letter about Dr. Sergent. Following is a passage from Miss
Fraser's letter:

"Dr. Sergent was a world-famous researcher. She had received very
large sums of public money to conduct her research, in a publicly
funded institution of higher education. To that extent, she was
not a private person in her professional life.

"Furthermore, the subjects of her work were human and one of her
tools was radioactive isotopes. And McGill University is an
important part of the Montreal community. All of these things made
it impossible for us simply to ignore the story."

Bodies found

Which leaves us with the agonizing, probably unanswerable question
of why the Sergents committed suicide. Their bodies were not found
until Tuesday, April 12, but police believe they died on Sunday,
April 10, the day after the story appeared in The Gazette.

The man who wrote the story was John Kalbfleisch, a highly
experienced reporter and editor, who specializes in science,
higher education and related areas. He told me last week that he
spoke by telephone to Dr. Sergent on the Friday night before the
story appeared.

Mr. Kalbfleisch said she seemed composed and matter-of-fact, but
was emphatic and vigorous in defending her points of view -
particularly her opinion that the reprimand had not been
justified. He quoted her as saying, "It's a technical dispute,
only that. It's now a matter for arbitration."

Some friends of the Sergents have suggested that she was shocked
on Saturday morning because she had not expected The Gazette to
print anything. I asked Mr. Kalbfleisch if she seemed to be
unaware that we would run a story. "For example," I asked, "did
she try to persuade you not to write anything? Perhaps on the
ground that a reprimand normally is kept confidential?"

"No, not at all," he replied. "Maybe I missed something, but she
seemed to me to understand that I was asking all those questions
for the purpose of writing a news story."

The people in the newsroom at The Gazette, like those of the
Montreal academic community, are still shaken and heartsick at her
suicide. Nevertheless, the reporters and editors remain convinced
that our action was perfectly ethical.

Let me give the last word to Miss Fraser. This is a second passage
from her letter of April 29:

"One of the reasons why constitutions guarantee the freedom of the
press is that we have a duty to report upon problems that arise in
great public institutions. We try to do that job as fairly as we
can, but it does have to he done."

If you have a question, comment or complaint about fairness or
accuracy of news coverage in The Gazette, write to the ombudsman,
Robert Walker, at 250 St. Antoine St. W., Montreal H2Y 3R7, or
telephone 987-2560. If you leave a telephone message or write a
letter, please if possible give a phone number where you can be
reached during the day. our fax number is 987-2399. 

DOB	19940531
UPDATE 	960708
NDATE	19940530
NUPDATE	19960708

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IDNUMBER	199404290063
BASNUM	1989563
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	940429
PDATE	Friday, April 29, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	Editorial/Op-Ed
PAGE	B2
LENGTH	370 words
STOTYPE	LETTER

HEADLINE	Researcher broke rules, was not fraud 
SOURCE	GAZETTE

I am angered and disgusted by the lack of both judgment and
integrity exercised by The Gazette in its coverage of the Dr.
Justine Sergent incident.

The Gazette brought attention to Dr. Sergent's infringement of
McGill University ethics committee rules under the alarming
headline "Researcher disciplined by McGill for breaking rules." I
refer to this headline as alarming, because it immediately gave me
the impression that another researcher such as Dr. Roger Poisson,
who intentionally falsified patient records in his research, had
been discovered in Montreal.

Indeed, the article states that The Gazette's attention was drawn
to the Sergent incident by an anonymous letter seeking to draw
parallels between Dr. Sergent's case and Dr. Poisson's.

However, nothing in the article led me to conclude that Dr.
Sergent's alleged violations of McGill ethics committee rules was
comparable to the misconduct displayed by Dr. Poisson. Dr.
Sergent's subjects were never placed at risk in her experiments,
and she never deceived fellow researchers regarding her results.

I therefore found the headline grossly misleading. The headline
was doubly infuriating because The Gazette's implicit analogy
between Dr. Sergent and Dr. Poisson diminished the seriousness of
Dr. Poisson's misconduct, which potentially harmed some of his
patients, and almost ruined some of North America's most important
studies for breast-cancer patients.

I was further shocked and saddened to learn that Dr. Sergent
committed suicide with her husband after the appearance of The
Gazette article. Although the appearance of the article alone
probably did not lead Dr. Sergent to take her life, the proximity
between the two events is left staring us all in the face.

It appeared from the article that Dr. Sergent was already under a
great deal of stress; yet at this time The Gazette's headline
likened her predicament to Dr. Poisson's.

I cannot help but believe that The Gazette's article unjustly
added to the pain and distress that finally led Dr. Sergent to
commit suicide.

The Gazette's expression of distress over Dr. Sergent's suicide is
not enough to absolve the paper of its deplorable behavior in this
tragic incident.

Dr. Sergent did not deserve to be held up in the public eye to
seem to be a fraudulent researcher comparable to Dr. Poisson.

VIVIAN HAMILTON

Montreal

DOB	19940430
UPDATE	960708
NDATE	19940429
NUPDATE	19960708

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IDNUMBER	199404210109
RA=	1985609
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	940421
PDATE	Thursday, April 21, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	News
PAGE	A3
LENGTH	645 words
LKW	MEDICAL ETHICS SUICIDE INQUIRIES MCGILL, UNIVERSITY MONTREAL
NEUROLOGICAL INSTITUTE
HEADLINE	McGill sets up two inquiries in Sergent affair 
BYLINE	JOHN KALBFLEISCH
SOURCE	GAZETTE

McGill University is setting up two separate inquiries following
the death of Justine Sergent last week.

Sergent was a researcher in neuropsychology at the Montreal
Neurological Institute, a McGill affiliate. Together with her
husband, Yves, she committed suicide after a story in The Gazette
described circumstances surrounding a reprimand she received from
the university in January 1993 for conducting experiments without
ethics committee approval.

One inquiry, to last two or three months, will be a scientific
audit of her work. It will be conducted by Dr. Pierre Bois, a past
president of the Medical Research Council of Canada and formerly
dean of medicine at the Universite de Montreal, and Dr. Marcus
Raichle of Washington University in St. Louis, a recognized
authority in positron emission tomography, a technique central to
Sergent's experiments.

The other inquiry, headed by Caspar Bloom, batonnier of the
Montreal bar, will examine McGill's internal procedures,
specifically in relation to Sergent's career. Bloom's inquiry,
expected to take three months, will start in may when his term as
batonnier ends.

The reports of both inquiries are to be made public.

At a service for Sergent and her husband Tuesday at St. Albert le
Grand Church, neuropsychologist Yves Joanette of the Universite de
Montreal said she was a scientist respected as were few others in
Canada, indeed in the world.

Sergent asked for audit

"She was completely dedicated to her research," he said.

Sergent had in fact asked McGill to conduct a scientific audit
shortly before her reprimand became public knowledge earlier this
month. At the time, she told The Gazette that there was nothing
questionable about her science, and Dr. Richard Cruess, McGill's
dean of medicine, said he seriously doubted the audit would reveal
anything untoward.

Positron emission tomography is a well-established procedure in
which radioactive isotopes enable researchers to plot how the
brain handles certain functions. Sergent told The Gazette she
believed the ethics committee approval she obtained for testing
subjects' reactions to one sort of stimulus, human faces, extended
to precisely the same sort of experiment using another stimulus,
musical notation.

She added that her subjects gave fully informed consent to being
tested and that their health was in no way compromised, positions
with which McGill concurs.

Cruess emphasized that Bloom will have access to all relevant
documents, including confidential ones, and will be free to
interview a broad spectrum of people.

Dr. Peter Fox, director of the research imaging centre at the
University of Texas Health Science Centre and a researcher in
Sergent's field, drew attention in The Gazette Tuesday to several
difficulties Sergent was facing.

Felt singled out

He mentioned gender equality, the fact that Sergent, though part
of the medical faculty, had been trained in psychology, her
struggle for professional respect in an institution where she had
once been a student, and personality conflicts.

"She felt singled out for criticism," Fox told The Gazette in a
separate interview.

"She lived for her science. She wouldn't be likely to give up a
struggle, but would pursue it as a matter of honor.

"I regard her act not as one of despair but of outrage."

The suggestion of sex discrimination against woman researchers at
the university came as no surprise to one McGill neuroscientist
contacted by The Gazette.

"The climate is inhospitable to female scientists," she said.
"Unfortunately, there aren't many jobs elsewhere, so women grumble
but feel that they can't move."

Another neuroscientist referred to an old-world attitude in
Montreal in which science is seen as essentially a male domain.

"It was clear to many of us that Justine would not take a back
seat to anyone, either as a scientist or as a woman," he said.

Cruess rejected the suggestion of sex discrimination.

"I can absolutely deny even a hint of that in this case," he said.
"Her success in getting funding, in pursuing her research, is
against that suggestion."

DOB	19940421
UPDATE	960708
NDATE	19940421
NUPDATE	19960708

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Wednesday, July 5, 2000 1:00 PM

IDNUMBER	199404200099
BASNUM	1985099
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	940420
PDATE	Wednesday, April 20, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	Editorial/Op-Ed
PAGE	B3
LENGTH	501 words
STOTYPE	COLUMN
COLUMN	OPINION
LKW	SUICIDE MEDICAL RESEARCH ETHICS
HEADLINE	Tragic consequences; Anonymous letter about researcher
was a disgrace
BYLINE	MARTIN ARGUIN; S YLV IE BELLEVILLE; DANIEL BUB; GILLES
CTIARPENET; HOWARD CHERTKOW; YVES JOANETTE; MARYSE LASSONDE; ANDRE
ROCH LECOURS; ISA13ELLE PERETZ; BERNADETTE SKA; PATRICK VINAY;
HARRY
WHITAKER; JOHN MARSHALL; ESTHER STRAUSS
SOURCE	(Freelance)

This opinion was submitted by a group of Montreal
neuropsychologists and other doctors including Martin Arguin,
Sylvie Belleville, Daniel Bub, Gilles Charpenet, Howard Chertkow,
Yves Joanette, Maryse Lassonde, Andre Roch Lecours, Isabelle
Peretz, Bernadette Ska, Patrick Vinay, Harry Whitaker, John
Marshall and Esther Strauss.

On Tuesday, April 12, a fellow neuropsychologist, Justine Sergent,
was found dead along with her husband. According to what is known
at this point, the suicide followed an article published in the
April 9 issue of The Gazette. The article reported, among other
things, that an anonymous letter received by The Gazette cast
doubt on the scientific and ethical integrity of her work.

Those allegations were responded to in the article by Dr. Richard
Cruess, McGill's dean of medicine, and Dr. Richard Murphy, the
director of the Montreal Neurological Institute.

As part of the Montreal neuropsychological and scientific
community, we would like to express our revulsion at the writing
of an anonymous letter as a means of putting allegations into the
public sphere.

We are all concerned that a newspaper can publish such allegations
without waiting for the results of an official investigation. Any
of us could in fact be victimized by such anonymous allegations
merely by having them exist in print. But over and above our
sadness and our indignation, the neuropsychological community of
Montreal has without a doubt lost one of its most world-renowned
figures.

Over the last decade or so, as a grantee of the Canadian Medical
Research Council of Canada - by which she was attributed the
prestigious title of "scientist" - and of many other funding
agencies, Dr. Sergent was certainly among the most productive and
widely read neuropsychologists in Canada and one of the major
figures of the international co mmu nity.

Dr. Sergent was highly intelligent, insightful as well as most
original and creative in her work. She was totally devoted to her
research activities. Her multiple contributions to the field, both
in terms of empirical facts and theories, were read by the
scientific community around the world. She was known for her
scientific contributions which, at times, were deliberately pro   
vocative in order to generate collegial reactions.

Among her contributions, she submitted to the community an
original approach to the origins of the functional lateralization
of the brain, based on some of the elementary characteristics of
visual stimuli, an hypothesis which was known throughout as the
Sergent hypothesis. Recently, she had recourse to the most
powerful brain-imaging techniques in order to unveil the
cerebrum's mysteries.

Dr. Sergent's numerous publications were to be found in the most
widely respected scientific journals, including Science and
Nature. They are widely considered to represent a very high
standard of sophistication in the field of neuropsychology and her
work has had wide influence.

We profoundly regret the events that were at the origins of the
desperate choice of our colleague. On her demise, lies a profound
message to the scientific milieu and the media. We mourn the
passing of our colleague and the unfinished opus of her
contribution.

DOB	19940420
UPDATE	960708
NDATE	19940420
NUPDATE	19960708

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IDNUMBER	199404190008
BASNUM	1984508
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	940419
PDATE	Tuesday, April 19, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	Editorial/Op-Ed
PAGE	B3
LENGTH	1002 words
STOTYPE	PROFILE; COLUMN
COLUMN	PETER T. FOX
LKW	SUICIDE MEDICAL RESEARCH ETHICS
HEADLINE	WHY DID A BRILLIANT RESEARCHER CHOOSE TO TAKE HER OWN
LIFE? BYLINE	PETER T. FOX
SOURCE	(Freelance)

Reports of the self-inflicted deaths of Professor Justine    
Sergent and her husband, Yves Sergent, have shocked and puzzled
the city of Montreal and the scientific community at large. This
desperate action was precipitated by an anonymous letter from a
colleague accusing Sergent of scientific fraud (The Gazette, April
9).

Neither the report of that accusation nor Wednesday's report of
the dual suicide (April 13) begin to resolve the questions
surrounding this tragedy.

Who was Justine Sergent? Was she guilty of scientific fraud? If
not, why did she choose to end her life?

As a scientific colleague, a collaborator, and a personal friend
of Justine and Yves Sergent, I offer my answers, admittedly
incomplete, to these troubling questions.

Sergent received her undergraduate and doctoral degrees in
psychology from McGill University. At McGill, as elsewhere, only
truly outstanding students are offered academic posts; Sergent was
such a student. Appointed to the faculty, Sergent progressed
rapidly through the academic ranks.

To further her studies, she visited often with outstanding
scientists in other countries, establishing long-standing, highly
productive collaborations. In the past decade, Sergent published
extensively, typically in well-respected international journals.

Sergent's work centred on the functional differences between the
two cerebral hemispheres. Most recently, Sergent had focused on
the mental processes underlying object recognition (especially
recognition of human faces) and music. In these areas, Sergent was
a world authority.

At the time of her death, Sergent was under review for the final
step up the academic ladder: full professor at one of the world's
most eminent institutions. The fundamental criterion for such
nomination is internationl stature. International reputation is
not easily won. Yet, in every sense of the phrase, Sergent was
internationally acclaimed.

What are we to make of an anonymous accusation that "Sergent has
built a scientific career on the basis of what colleagues at
McGill and elsewhere have long suspected was scientific fraud?',

This is a deliberate and outrageous falsehood. I have attended
many of Sergent's lectures. I have engaged in discussions of her
work with colleagues from around the world. As an active
collaborator with scientists at the Montreal Neurological
Institute, I have viewed first-hand the workings of its
laboratories.

Never once have I received the slightest indication that any
scientist within or outside of McGill suspected Sergent. of
falsifying data. Colleagues with whom I have spoken over the past
few days are shocked and outraged by this accusation, just as they
are grief-stricken by the tragedy of her death. The international
scientific community supports McGill University officials in
giving no credence to this accusation.

Why, then, did Sergent not face down her accuser and vindicate
herself? Why isn't her action an admission of guilt?

Sergent was more than a brilliant intellect; she was utterly
dedicated to science. Childless and having no family on this
continent other than her husband, she lived for her work. The
standards of excellence that she set for herself surpassed the
reach of all but the very finest of scientists. Little wonder that
she was a woman of strict honor and ferocious independence,
prizing both her reputation and her scientific freedom.

The accusation of fraud struck at the heart of her concept of
selfworth, clearly the intent of her accuser. Nevertheless, an
isolated accusation, however grievous, is not a sufficient
provocation to make a rational person choose to die. What else had
transpired?

Academic success is a Darwinian process: only the strong survive.
The competition is intense and highly stressful, In this
competition, being a member of the majority is a distinct
advantage.

As remains true in many fields, success in academics is less
common for women. While psychology (the field in which she
trained) is approaching gender equality, neurology and
neurosurgery (the field in which she worked) remain male-
dominated.

Similarly, Sergent's PhD degree was an anomaly in a medical
department and could only have made her situation less certain and
more stressful.

Finally, the path is hardest for those who rise from within. Marks
of respect are afforded only grudgingly to one's former students.
Sergent was justly proud of her accomplishments and consummately
professional in her bearing. As was her due, she would not
tolerate personal disrespect in the workplace.

Sergent had privately acknowledged for years that interactions
with some colleagues at the MNI were very problematic. The
disciplinary action by the MNI ethics committee, Sergent believed,
was based on personal grievances, not on scientific misconduct.
These issues hopefully, will be fully explored by McGill
authorities.

Regardless of the outcome of such investigations, I believe that
Sergent was equally a casualty of her own uncompromising standards
of excellence and of an inhospitable work environment.

I spoke on the telephone with Justine on Saturday evening, about
36 hours before her death. The auditors, she said, had just left
her laboratory. If Sergent had wished to conceal a fraud, she
could have destroyed the data. Instead, she requested an audit and
opened her laboratory - her last professional act.

As we spoke, she expressed outrage that her scientific integrity
was called into question. She also voiced bitter disappointment
that she had for many months needed legal representation to
interact with the university to which she had dedicated her entire
adult life.

I encouraged her to leave Montreal, at least for a time. This was
out of the question. McGill University and the MNI were her life
... and her death.

The death of Justine Sergent is a tragedy. Cognitive neuroscience,
a young and fragile field, has lost a leader. Sergent was at the
forefront, showing us the way. Service to the scientific community
- as a journal editor, a grant reviewer, a funding-foundation
program officer, a scientific advisor - was offered with a
generosity seldom seen.

The neuroscience community is grief stricken. We have lost a rare
colleague and a dear friend.

* Peter T. Fox is a professor in the department of radiology,
medicine (neurology) and psychiatry and director of the research
imaging centre at the University of Texas Health Science Centre in
San Antonio<P>.

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UPDATE	960708
NDATE	19940419
NUPDATE	19960708

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IDNUMBER	199404140095
BASNUM	1982095
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	940414
PDATE	Thursday, April 14, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	News
PAGE	Al/FRONT
LENGTH	249 words
LKW	GAZETTE MTL SUICIDE RESEARCH SCIENTIFIC ETHICS MCGILL
UNIVERSITY
HEADLINE	To our readers
SOURCE	GAZETTE

The Gazette was deeply distressed to learn of the deaths of
Professor Justine Sergent, a researcher at the Montreal
Neurological Institute, and her husband, Yves. The newspaper's
editors and reporters were shocked by the couple's apparent
suicide.

As The Gazette reported last Saturday, Dr. Sergent was reprimanded
by McGill University, with which the neurological institute is
affiliated, after she conducted certain experiments on human
subjects without ethics committee approval. All parties agree th

At Dr. Sergent's insistence, the reprimand was submitted to
arbitration, and that process was continuing. In addition, McGill
had agreed to her request that an independent scientific audit be
conducted on her work.

The dispute was the subject of a detailed, anonymous letter
attacking Dr. Sergent that was addressed this month to the editor
of The Gazette, as well as to the heads of the Medical Research
Council of Canada, the Fonds de la Recherche en Sante du Quebec,
Science magazine and six senior administrators of the university.

The Gazette, as was its journalistic responsibility, investigated
the letter's allegations with the parties directly concerned -
McGill University and Dr. Sergent.

Both presented their positions coherently and without rancor, and
these were at the core of The Gazette's report on Saturday. McGill
and Dr. Sergent readily co-operated with The Gazette's requests
for information. At no time did Dr. Sergent express any undue
distress.

The Gazette is profoundly distressed by this week's events, and
extends its sympathy to the families of Dr. Sergent and her
husband.

- The editors

DOB	19940415
UPDATE	960708
NDATE	19940414
NUPDATE	19960708

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IDNUMBER	199404130052
BASNUM	1981552
PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	940413
PDATE	Wednesday, April 13, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	News
PAGE	A3
LENGTH	461 words
LKW	MTL SUICIDE MONTREAL NEUROLOGICAL INSTITUTE RESEARCH
SCIENTIFIC ETHICS AUDIT
HEADLINE	Researcher, husband commit suicide; Bodies found after
woman missed meeting over experiment dispute
BYLINE	JOHN KALBFLEISCH
SOURCE	GAZETTE

A researcher at the Montreal Neurological Institute and her
husband were found dead yesterday morning in the garage beneath
their home, apparently the victims of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

Police were asked to look for Justine Sergent after she failed to
show up for an important meeting Monday morning focusing on a
continuing dispute she has had with McGill University over some of
her experiments.

As described in a Gazette story last Saturday, Sergent was
appealing a January 1993 reprimand by the university for
conducting certain experiments on people without ethics-committee
approval.

While an autopsy is to be held this morning, Montreal Urban
Community police say all signs indicate Sergent and her husband,
Yves Sergent, committed suicide.

Their bodies were discovered in their car, parked in the closed
garage beneath their home. A hose led from the car's exhaust pipe
to the passenger compartment and the car's engine was still
running.

Squad cars and ambulances from north-end Stationl crowded around
the rear alley leading to the garage of the modest duplex where
the bodies were discovered.

About 30 passers-by gathered around the small police cordon to
catch a glimpse of what had happened.

Concerned by Sergent's failure to appear at the Monday meeting,
the university later that day sent an official to her home. No one
answered the door and the bodies were discovered only after police
were notified.

"A matter that was essentially an internal dispute involving her
and her work environment was blown way out of proportion, with the
consequences we know today," Eric Maldoff, Sergent's lawyer, said.

Sergent's experiments at the neurological institute, a McGill
affiliate, used a well-established procedure known as positron
emission tomography to map certain brain processes.

In an interview Friday, Sergent told The Gazette she believed that
permission granted for testing her subjects' reaction to one sort
of stimulus, images of human faces, applied to further experiments
using precisely the same experimental procedures, but with a
different stimulus, musical notation.

Sergent said there was nothing bizarre or improper about the
experiments and that the subjects' health was in no way
compromised. McGill has readily agreed with these two points all
along.

The dispute, though regarded as serious, was entirely a technical
one. In fact, it had moved to arbitration, in which Sergent was
maintaining that the reprimand and the McGill investigation
leading up to it were unfair.

McGill had agreed to Sergent's request that an independent audit
be set up to establish the integrity of her work and Maldoff said
that in order to establish her scientific legacy he hoped the
audit would proceed.

Principal David Johnston of McGill confirmed yesterday there was
no intention of suspending the audit.

"The results will be released when it is completed within the next
two or three months," he said.

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UPDATE	960708
NDATE	19940413
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IDNUMBER	199404090097
13ASNUM	1979597

PAPER	Montreal Gazette
DATE	940409
PDATE	Saturday, April 9, 1994
EDITION	Final
SECTION	News
PAGE	A3
LENGTH	574 words
Ly1W	MCGILL UNIVERSITY MEDICAL SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ETHICS
HEADLINE	Researcher disciplined by McGill for breaking rules 
BYLINE	JOHN KALBFLEISCH
SOURCE	GAZETTE

McGill University has taken disciplinary measures against a
researcher at the Montreal Neurological Institute who broke the
university's rules during some of her experiments.

Dr. Justine Sergent, 42, a professor of neurology and
neurosurgery, failed to get ethics-committee approval to use a
procedure called positron emission tomography.

Sergent insists her subjects were never at risk and her work has
not been negated by the reprimand.

"It was always conducted in an ethical and proper manner," she
said yesterday.

"That my data are not valid has never been at issue. The safety of
the subjects who volunteered isn't an issue, either."

The Neuro is a McGill affiliate.

The complaint against Sergent was laid in July 1992 and an
investigation was launched shortly thereafter.

It led to an official reprimand for academic misconduct by McGill
principal David Johnston in January 1993.

Sergent waited until last summer before appealing the reprimand.
Arbitration proceedings have begun.

In Sergent's experiments, radioactive isotopes were used to
explore how the human brain functions when volunteer pianists read
sheet music and translated that information to a keyboard.

Dr. Richard Cruess, McGill's dean of medicine, agreed that Sergent
got proper consent from her subjects and that nothing has been
found questionable in the actual science she practiced.

An anonymous letter received by McGill and The Gazette this week
seeks to draw parallels between Sergent's case and the fraudulent
practices of Dr. Roger Poisson of St. Luc Hospital, who altered
patient records in his breast- cancer research.

A joint response yesterday by Cruess and Dr. Richard Murphy, the
Neuro's director, says, "While the investigation carried out was
not mandated to look into the issue of fraud in either fabricating
or interpreting data, it should be pointed out that none of the
facts suggested scientific fraud.

"All subject consent forms were in order, and specific questions
about the validity of data were constantly answered in the
affirmative."

Their statement deplored the anonymous accusations that could harm
someone's career.

Positron emission tomography is a well-established procedure in
modern neurobiological research. Radioactive isotopes injected
into the brain enable researchers to track how the brain functions
during certain activities.

Sergent obtained ethics-committee approval to use the procedure in
her investigation of how the brain is involved in recognizing
human faces. But she didn't seek approval for her work on music,
believing it simply to be an extension of the work on faces.

"I believe the approval covered the use of precisely the same
technique for the music experiment," she said. "Everything else
was the same. The only things that changed were the stimuli on the
screen. The subjects were simply shown musical notation instead of
faces.

"It's a technical dispute, only that," she said. "It's now a
matter for arbitration."

Sergent has invited McGill to investigate the way she actually
conducted her experiments, and Cruess confirmed that a scientific
audit has been launched. He added, however, that nothing leads him
to expect irregularities will be found.

The original McGill investigation also found that Sergent had
flouted the rules by altering the telephone numbers she kept in
the written files of some of her subjects. She maintains this was
done to shield the phone numbers from rival researchers, but adds
that the true numbers were never changed in her computerized
files. That matter is also the subject of arbitration.

Sergent said that apart from the reprimand, she has not been
disciplined in any way. She continues her work at the Neuro. 

DOB 19940410 
UPDATE 960708 
NDATE 19940409 
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