The next several blog postings will provide examples where Dr. “Kennedy” stole ideas from other investigators and/or students and/or published research that is almost identical to his peers within the exact same time frame. Because I did not purposely set out to find such examples this list will be limited to about 10 instances of this pattern of behavior, each being presented in reverse chronology with “Kennedy’s” stealing of my invention (see previous blog postings) being the starting point. On the other hand, since I do routinely discover new cases where this person has been engaged in this behavior my intention is to update this portion of the blog series in the future as time permits. In some of these cases the reader will find the most damning admissions to such theft of other people’s ideas come from no other than “Kennedy” himself!
Circa 1999-2002
As I have described earlier in this blog series a cohort‡ of mine, Dr. P.V. Kurian, had been assigned to work on ampiphilic networks for use in an artificial pancreas.* These consisted of networks of a hydrophobic polymer (PIB) in conjunction with a hydrophilic polymer {e.g. polyethylene glycol (PEG)} and a third hydrophobic but oxygen permeable polymer, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS).1-6 Somewhere along the way hydrosilation was attempted as a method for linking α,ω-diallylic PIB to other polymers (e.g., α,ω-diallylic PEG) and as I recall, D5H (polypentamethylcyclopentasiloxane) was investigated as a crosslinking agent. During these investigations it was discovered that gas was being evolved during hydrosilation effected crosslinking using Karstedt’s catalyst. Again, no one in the “Kennedy” group with the exception of Dr. Zhengjie Pi had any real understanding of silicon chemistry (Pi’s work will be discussed in the next blog posting). As such, Kurian discovered the origin of the mysterious gas evolution in part from the one “in lab” guide to silicon chemistry, the Gelest catalog. Dr. Kurian subsequently conceived the idea that Pt catalyzed aqueous crosslinking of D5H would result in network polymer and he subsequently discovered that this polymer had high thermal stability.7-9 I can state these facts since not only was I privy to his work on a day to day basis but I am also the individual who witnessed the invention in his laboratory notebook. In previous blog postings you can see Kurian’s signature witnessing ideas that I had conceived while in the “Kennedy” group.
Thus, both concept of the invention as well as reduction to practice were solely due to Kurian and not “Kennedy”. Sometime after “Kennedy” fired me from his research group for not falsifying data on Yb(OTf)3 coinitiated aqueous polymerization of IB, Kurian approached me on his way out of U. Akron and informed me that he had found a company (based in Colorado I seem to remember) who had interest in the polymer he had invented and was able to entice them to travel to U. Akron to secure the intellectual property rights. At that stage of the game not only did U. Akron lock him out of discussions relating to his invention but also only gave a royalty check to “Kennedy”! Please refer to blog posting 14 of this series for a photograph of “Kennedy” accepting this royalty check which is being handed to him by the school president, Dr. Proenza with department head Newkome patting him on the back. For those who want to do some digging I suggest looking at the following papers and patents in the references section of this blog posting.** Unfortunately the story of Kurian is not unique nor is the manner in which he dealt with “Kennedy” either. Several years ago I asked Kurian to come forward with this information and in typical cowardly fashion (as we shall see is dominate in the polymer community) he declined to, telling me that it was no longer of importance to him.***
‡ I use this term in the loosest possible manner in that I do not associate with cowards, bullies, thieves, liars, etc. Unfortunately, in places such as graduate school one does not get to choose coworkers and in many instances you do not know a person’s true nature until it is tested. I can say without exception there are less than a handful of people who I know from this institution who are not pieces of human waste.
* It should be noted that the artificial pancreas concept purportedly was conceived by another scientist(s) than “Kennedy”. I do not have details on this; however, the savvy researcher should easily be able to produce documents that indeed show this is the case. I’m guessing that Kurian devised much of this chemistry (i.e., the amphiphilic tripolymer network) but if he did so he never bothered to admit it to me.
** Please note, that in order to avoid copyright infringement I cannot post the actual PDFs to these documents. Many can be obtained from the publisher {e.g., American Chemical Society (www.pubs.acs.org)} or through search engines at patent offices such as the European Patent Office (www.epo.org). The latter (i.e. patents) are the easiest to obtain for the general public at no charge.
*** As Edmund Burke stated, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” The fact is the sciences have become exceedingly corrupted by evil people because otherwise good men and women have tucked their tail and run instead of confronting such individuals. Such behavior not only damages the field as a whole but allows for further abuses to occur unchecked.
References
(1) Kennedy, J. P.; Kurian, P. Physically crosslinked amphiphilic block polyoxyalkylene-polyisobutylene networks, methods of preparation, and uses thereof U.S. Patent 6555619, 2003.
(2) Kurian, P.; Kasibhatla, B.; Daum, J.; Burns, C. A.; Moosa, M.; Rosenthal, K. S.; Kennedy, J. P. Synthesis, permeability and biocompatibility of tricomponent membranes containing polyethylene glycol, polydimethylsiloxane and polypentamethylcyclopentasiloxane domains Biomaterials 2003, 24,3493-3503.
(3) Kurian, P.; Kennedy, J. P. Synthesis and characterization of novel tri-continuous membranes consisting of hydrophilic/lipophilic/oxyphilic domains Polym. Prepr., Am. Chem. Soc. Div. Polym. Chem. 2001, 42,92-93.
(4) Kurian, P.; Kennedy, J. P. Novel tricontinuous membranes for immunoisolation Polym. Prepr., Am. Chem. Soc. Div. Polym. Chem. 2002, 43,631-632.
(5) Kurian, P.; Kennedy, J. P. Novel tricomponent membranes containing poly(ethylene glycol)/poly(pentamethylcyclopentasiloxane)/poly(dimethylsiloxane) domains J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2002, 40,1209-1217.
(6) Kurian, P.; Zschoche, S.; Kennedy, J. P. Synthesis and characterization of novel amphiphilic block copolymers Di-, Tri-, multi-, and star blocks of PEG and PIB J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2000, 38,3200-3209.
(7) Kennedy, J. P.; Kurian, P. Poly(cyclosiloxane) composition and method of synthesis thereof U.S. Patent 8344170, 2013.
(8) Kurian, P.; Kennedy, J. P. Novel cyclosiloxane-based networks Polym. Prepr., Am. Chem. Soc. Div. Polym. Chem. 2003, 44,33-34.
(9) Kurian, P.; Kennedy, J. P.; Kisluik, A.; Sokolov, A. Poly(pentamethylcyclopentasiloxane). I. Synthesis and characterization J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2002, 40,1285-1292.