Pathology Expert Witness’ Testimony Excluded Due to Rampant Plagiarism

A district judge barred Harvard pathologist from testifying because his report was merely a wholesale adoption of International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (“IARC”) findings under the guise of his own expertise.

In this toxic tort case that is part of a suite of companion cases, more than sixty Plaintiffs allege that Defendant Lockheed Martin Corporation’s weapons manufacturing facility in Orlando gave off toxic chemicals that contaminated the surrounding air, soil, and groundwater, which caused Plaintiffs to suffer various injuries.

The Court decided (1) that this is a McClain category two case requiring a full Daubert analysis; and (2) to take general and specific causation up on the full scientific record.

In support of their resulting strict liability, negligence, nuisance, and other claims, Plaintiffs have marshalled various doctors to opine on general causation— that is, whether each chemical at issue is able to cause the types of injuries at issue.

Lockheed moved to exclude to exclude one such doctor, Dr. Dipak Panigrahy on the grounds that he lacked a reliable methodology, largely because he had plagiarized significant portions of his report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (“IARC”) Monographs publications (and the sources IARC cited).

Pathology Expert Witness

Dr. Dipak Panigrahy, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. Panigrahy was accepted into medical school at Boston University at age 17. He graduated from the combined BA/MD program at Boston University Medical School and earned his M.D. degree in 1994.

In 2015, he was awarded the American Society of Investigative Pathology (ASIP) Cotran Early Investigator Award and a Young Investigator Award at the 14th International Conference on Bioactive Lipids in Cancer, Inflammation, and Related Diseases in Budapest, Hungary. Since 2015, he has held a Visiting Professorship at Khon Kaen University in Thailand. He has chaired over ten symposiums and given over 70 invited lectures at various local, national, and international meetings over the past decade.

Discussion by the Court

Panigrahy’s report indicated a lack of intellectual rigor that one would expect from any expert

The Court observed that Panigrahy extensively plagiarized his report. And his deposition made the plagiarism appear deliberate, as he repeatedly “outright refused to acknowledge the long swaths of his report that quoted other work verbatim without any quotation marks at all—instead stubbornly insisting that he cited over 1,100 references, as if that resolved the attribution issue.” The plagiarism was so ubiquitous throughout the report that it was frankly overwhelming to try to make heads or tails of just what is Panigrahy’s own work—a task that neither he nor Plaintiffs’ counsel even attempted to tackle.

If neither Panigrahy nor Plaintiffs’ counsel nor the Court can parse out exactly what is his own analysis based on his own expertise, the Court cannot expect the jury to do so. The district judge noted that the expert’s “report is – put plainly – a mess” and it simply could not put it in front of a jury.

Plagiarism by itself does not necessarily warrant exclusion of an expert per se, as it typically bears on credibility rather than reliability. But when the plagiarism is so blatant that it represents deliberate lack of candor, it may cause the report to be unreliable enough to justify exclusion.

Because the report indicated a lack of intellectual rigor that one would expect from any expert, the plagiarism itself was sufficient reason for exclusion in this case.

Panigrahy’s report lifted a great deal of its analysis from IARC in particular

But the plagiarism here reflected even deeper methodological problems because the report lifted a great deal of its analysis from IARC in particular.

Research agencies like IARC are, understandably, focused on protecting public health and recommending protective standards, rather than evaluating causation from an expert standpoint in the litigation context.

IARC determines qualitatively whether substances are carcinogenic to humans; its descriptors have “no quantitative significance” such as more likely than not. Troublingly, Panigrahy did not grasp this crucial distinction between IARC’s classifications and the general causation preponderance standard.

Panigrahy copied lengthy paragraphs from IARC verbatim but conveniently left out sentences in which IARC urged caution about the limitations of its findings

The Court held that Panigrahy did not just lift from IARC without alteration. Rather, several times, he copied lengthy paragraphs from IARC verbatim but conveniently left out sentences in which IARC urged caution about the limitations of its findings, misleadingly presenting the science as more definitive than it actually is. Selectively copying to overstate the science made Panigrahy’s methodology even less reliable.

Moreover, since Panigrahy did not use quotation marks around the passages he lifted from the IARC, it would be nearly impossible to find every instance in his 500-page report where he went beyond IARC’s standards by omitting its cautionary language. As a result, the Court cannot identify reliable sections.

In sum, the rampant plagiarism in Panigrahy’s report led the Court to conclude that his general causation methodology as a whole was too unreliable to present to a jury.

Held

The Court granted Lockheed’s motion to exclude the testimony of general causation expert Dr. Dipak Panigrahy.

Key Takeaway:

Plagiarism by an expert does not automatically lead to exclusion; it primarily affects credibility. However, when plagiarism is blatant and suggests a deliberate lack of candor, it can also impact the reliability of the expert’s report and testimony. The Court held that Panigrahy did not just lift from IARC without alteration. Rather, several times, he copied lengthy paragraphs from IARC verbatim but omitted cautionary statements regarding the limitations of its findings. This selective copying misrepresented the science as more definitive than it actually is, further undermining the reliability of his methodology.

Case Details:

Case Caption:	Henderson Et Al V. Lockheed Martin Corporation Et Al
Docket Number:	6:21cv1363
Court Name:	United States District Court, Florida Middle
Order Date:	March 18,2024