Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 13, 1995                   TAG: 9505150029
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV14   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                 LENGTH: Medium

CREDIT FOR GENETICS STUDY SPARKS DISPUTE BETWEEN SCIENTISTS AT VCU

The report says studies of Irish families have turned up evidence for a possible schizophrenia gene on a particular human chromosome, designated as chromosome 6.

Scott Diehl, a geneticist who left VCU's Medical College of Virginia in spring 1993 to go to the National Institute of Dental Research, is the senior author of the report that appeared in the May issue of Nature Genetics.

VCU officials contend, however, the report virtually ignores the people who led the larger project from which the finding emerged, especially Kenneth S. Kendler at VCU and his collaborators in Ireland.

``The issue here is not the scientific validity of the article,'' said William L. Dewey, VCU's vice president for research and graduate affairs. Rather, he said the article does not properly credit VCU faculty members or their counterparts in Ireland.

Appropriate credit for a discovery is an important matter for scientists, whose reputations depend largely on their published works.

Diehl said National Institutes of Health officials are fully aware of the dispute that broke out two years ago between himself and Kendler, and that he had ``full NIH approval'' to go ahead with publication of the report.

In 1986 Kendler was awarded a $1.26 million grant - later renewed and extended - from the National Institute of Mental Health, part of NIH, to search for possible genetic components of schizophrenia through studies of families in Ireland. He said the studies were conducted there because the country's Health Research Board maintains an extensive registry of psychiatric diseases.

Kendler said Diehl, who came to MCV in 1988, was involved in one of three phases of the schizophrenia project, which involved interviewing and collecting blood samples from Irish families, searching for possible genetic linkages with the disorder, and a statistical analysis.

Diehl's project, supported by a separate NIMH grant, was to search for possible genetic linkages, using the blood samples.

Both Kendler and Diehl said that shortly before Diehl left MCV to join the National Institute of Dental Research, Diehl and his colleagues made the discovery that's described in the Nature Genetics paper.

Kendler, who is still at VCU, said he offered at that time to allow Diehl to be the first author on a paper about the discovery, with his own name appearing last and the names of the Irish collaborators appearing between. The first author on a paper is the one usually cited when other scientists refer to the work; the last author is regarded as the senior investigator.

Kendler said Diehl refused that offer.

Diehl said he offered Kendler the opportunity to be co-author of the paper he wrote, ``but he never responded positively to our offer.'' The paper, as published, includes the names of Kendler and the Irish scientists in an acknowledgment at the end.

Susan Johnson, chief of communications at the National Institute of Dental Research, said NIH tried to act as a mediator in the dispute last fall. She said the institute came up with a plan stating, in effect, that if they couldn't agree on authorship status, either researcher could go ahead and publish the finding.