By april 1999, B.Perbal sent an e.mail to C. Martinerie in which : - he asks her to prepare the figures and write the first draft of a manuscript to be submitted. - he gives her some ideas about additional experiments to be done, - he proposes a title for the manuscript. - By june 1999, C.Martinerie sent the first draft of the paper with figures and photos. In september 1999, C.Martinerie and M.Laurent began to act strangely : - they always found different excuses not to show their results to B.Perbal - they refuse to provide the datas that he was supposed to present at the 5th International Symposium on Insulin-like groth factors (october 1999) where he had been invited to give a talk. In october 1999, B.Perbal is advised on a phone call from Y. Le Bouc that C.Martinerie and M.Laurent decided to leave B.Perbal’s group and to join Y.Le Bouc’s team without changing subject. They wished to continue in Le Bouc’s group the work they were performing under the direction of B.Perbal. Thus, they became by the way the direct competitors of the students they previously worked with. B.Perbal, initially, thought that he could obtain Y.Le Bouc’s support. He sent him a letter in which he explained that : - the 2 researchers were free to leave their previous group if they wanted to do so, - they had, in that case, to find an original research program to avoid the competition with the students who were preparing their thesis. B.Perbal also reminded Y.Le Bouc that C.Martinerie was in his group for 17 years and had been officially requesting to stay with him when B.Perbal’s group moved from the Curie Institute. M. Laurent had been in B.Perbal’s team for 5 years and asked also to stay with him. On the contrary, Y. Le Bouc seemed to accept this strange situation and by beeing completly mute, he let this unethical misconduct going on. The situation became worse and worse : - The students were complaining that the two senior scientists harrassed them and did not let them use equipment that had been paid on B.Perbal’s grants (they sent a lot of mails to denounce what they were enduring) - When they asked for clones constructed in B.Perbal’s team, wrong biological material was given to the students. Several official complaints were sent to the INSERM and the CNRS, nothing was done to stop the misconduct. In order to protect his students, B.Perbal decided to leave the St Antoine Hospital and go to the Paris7 university where he is a professor since 1988. The president of the University supported him and helped him to start a new group by providing lab’s space and funding.
		HOME		BACK		NEXT