@All

I do appreciate all your help and comments and I have no intention of going down without a fight. I have no real choice than to wait until Christmas to find out what the material is and then rewrite. I will use the time producing another 2 papers, which don't rely on the XRD and I had planned an extended literature review to be published separately.

My papers and thesis will have to wait until the data is available and I will have to apply for an extension, which they will have to give me or I really will document all the things my supervisor has done over the last 4 years, send it to the sponsors and to hell with it!

If it takes me another year, it may not look good on my CV, but at least I will have good papers which will hopefully secure me a good post-doc.

This is something my attitude has hardened to over the years.

I know people have made the odd mistake or things we shouldn't have done and we're all human. If we learn from those mistakes, good. I raise my hands and say I'm definitely not perfect, however, knowing the mistake non-critical then rectifying it now would cause more harm than good.

However, I'm aware of an instance where a senior researcher has produced data showing the protective qualities of a coating system. However, a then-colleague of mine noticed the coating was "failing" at another location and he pointed this out to the senior researcher. The senior researcher indicated he only wanted results from the section of coating which continued to adhere to it's substrate.

The project was high profile. The intended use was power generation. I'm not sure to this day if the results have been taken at face value or another centre involved has tried to replicate the tests. I sincerely hope the latter as if this coating were to fail in service, it could lead to a premature, potentially catastrophic failure.

I'll add that the criticality may have been such, if I had the data and the information in front of me and I was able to prove the above then I would feel obliged to take action force the data to be retracted.

I'm sorry, but "everybody does it" is just not good enough especially if the application is critical.

Ian

I'm quite shocked that a supervisor would say 'everybody does it' in relation to false data! There's a big difference between some undergrads replicating an experiment that's been done 20,000 times already and someone who's actually got a career based on being at the forefront of scientific knowledge. It is a shame we have such a results-driven academic culture in some ways - the studies that show strange, confusing or disappointing results are just as valid as the ones with the big breakthroughs!

Good luck with sorting things out, Albatross1986.