August 13, 2004:

Initial Bailey Investigation Concludes Soon -

Stay Tuned for Results

 

by Lynn Conway

Copyright © 2004, Lynn Conway

 

 

In discussions on July 6, 2004, Northwestern University administration sources finally provided us with some basic information about the Bailey investigation committee's formation, meetings and timeline.  These sources informed us that the initial Bailey investigation committee had concluded its meetings, and expected to submit a draft report to the Office of Research Integrity in mid-July. However, that date has slipped and the report is now not expected to be submitted until late this month or early September. It will then take some weeks of additional processing before the results are announced - perhaps sometime in mid-to-late September.  This page is an interim report on this new information.

 

Contents:

 

Formation of the initial investigation committee and activities so far.

Committee timeline so far, and schedule for processing of their final report.

Which complaints did the committee consider? 

Which complaints did they not consider?

What key questions did this committee investigate?

What evidence and other information was forwarded to the committee?

How did the committee learn about transsexualism?

Who did the committee meet?

Stay tuned!

 

Updates:

 

October 3, 2004:  Update regarding delays in the completion of the initial Bailey investigation.

October 26, 2004: Update.

 

 


 

 

Formation of the initial investigation committee and activities so far:

During the "Initial Inquiry" phase in the summer and fall of 2003, Northwestern officials received a number of early complaints of research misconduct against Mr. Bailey:

C-1: Anjelica Kieltyka files formal complaint with Northwestern University, 7-03-03

C-2: Second research subject, "Victoria", files misconduct complaint, 7-14-03

C-3: A third research subject files research misconduct complaint, 7-23-03

C-4: Deirdre McCloskey and Lynn Conway file a formal complaint, 7-29-03

C-5: A fourth research subject files a formal complaint against Bailey, 7-30-03

C-6: Anjelica Kieltyka files key evidence with Northwestern's OPRS, 10-07-03

A three-person ad-hoc committee studied those complaints to determine whether any/all of them should become the basis for a "formal investigation".  The ad-hoc committee found that a subset of the complaints clearly fell under University jurisdictions, and NU officials announced on November 12, 2003 that there would be a formal investigation.

That investigation was delayed until Timothy J. Fournier came on board in early 2004 to head up the new Office of Research Integrity (the office that among other things was tasked to oversee this investigation).

Three faculty members and one outside person were then recruited to form the committee that would conduct the actual "formal investigation". The members of this committee were Sheldon Miller (Chair) (past Chairman, NU Dept. of Psychiatry), David Clarke (Dept. of Psychiatry and Director of Research Compliance, Rush Medical College, Chicago), Carol Heimer (NU Dept. of Sociology) and Laurie Zoloth (Medical Ethics, NU Medical School). Mr. Fournier oversaw the meetings and established the ground-rules for conducting the investigation. He was also positioned to vote as a "tie-breaker" on committee decisions, if needed.

 

 

Committee timeline and schedule for processing of their final report:

 

The committee met for the first time on March 17, 2004, for about 90 minutes. They then met once every two to three weeks for a total of about 5 or 6 meetings, usually meeting for 2 to 3 or more hours. Anjelica Kieltyka and "Juanita" met with the committee for 2 hours and 1/2 hour respectively on the 20th of May. They declined to meet with any of the other complainants.  The final meeting of the committee apparently was on June 30, 2004.

 

The committee was then scheduled to submit their "draft report" on the investigation on July 16, 2004 (this would be their final report).  However, they failed to meet this scheduled date. We have since learned that many people at NU (including some committee members) are on vacation in August. Therefore, the draft report is now not expected to be completed and submitted to Mr. Fournier’s office until late this month or perhaps early September.

 

We had held off filing and posting this news until now, in hopes that we could inform you that the report had been submitted and provide you with a better estimate of when results might be announced. However, due to the ongoing delays we are posting this interim news now, so that the trans community will at least have some idea of what is happening at NU.

 

When completed, the committee's overall report will contain their combined “draft report” of findings, plus individual comments that individual members may add if they wish. (We believe that it is these individual comments that are holding things up).

 

Once received by the Office of Research Integrity, the report will then submitted to Mr. Bailey, who can take whatever time he wishes to respond (he is expected to take a couple of weeks, plus or minus).  In his response he can make corrections to any factual errors he finds in the draft report (such as incorrect names, dates, etc.), but he cannot modify any of the content in the report.  He can also add his own comments to the package.

 

The report then proceeds to C. Bradley Moore, Vice President for Research.  Dr. Moore will study the report and, if it contains findings of wrongdoings involving possible sanctions, will add his recommendations for what those sanctions should be. Finally, Lawrence B. Dumas, the Provost of Northwestern University, will review the whole package. 

 

If the Vice President for Research has recommended that sanctions be imposed, Dr. Dumas will determine what they are to and how they are to be imposed. He will then notify Mr. Bailey of the results of the initial investigation.

 

This process may be completed by the mid or late September.

 

There is no formal procedure for making public the results (and/or the full report) of such an investigation. There will likely be some kind of announcement by the Northwestern Administration.  The administration could simply make an announcement summarizing their findings and the sanctions (if any). Or they could release summaries of the report, or even release the full report itself.  We recommend the latter, so the public can understand exactly which complaints were considered, what evidence was studied, and what logic was used by the committee to reach their conclusions. This would help us all gain some sense of closure on this phase of the investigation, and it would help NU avoid any second-guessing and charges of a secret "whitewash".

 

 

Which complaints did this committee consider? 

 

The ad-hoc "initial inquiry committee" decided which complaints and evidence were to be forwarded to the initial "investigation committee".  The administration informs us that the committee was only charged to investigate certain narrow aspects of the complaints submitted during the summer and fall of 2003 (C1-C6, above), before the official investigation began. 

 

The questions they considered only related to whether Mr. Bailey had violated Institutional Review Board (IRB) regulations regarding having gained the proper approvals for using human research subjects, and having obtained the informed consent of those research subjects. 

 

A number of additional complaints were submitted during the winter and spring of 2003-4 (C7-C9, below).  However, those complaints were apparently never even forwarded to the committee, being considered as not having fallen under the initial “investigation charges” of November 18, 2003.  This seems very strange to many of us, since even if not  investigated as complaints per se, those later complaints contain considerable important evidence regarding the initial charges too.

 

Moreover, the NU administration never told any of the complainants that our additional ongoing complaints were not being forwarded to the committee, but simply let us go on submitting complaints while assuming that they were reaching the committee..

 

Furthermore, the NU administration never even told any of the complainants what procedures they were using, the schedule they were on, how they were learning about the overall context and background on the case, or the evidence they were looking at.  The only communication any of us received was a request for Anjelica and "Juanita" to appear before the committee only one time, on May 20, 2004.

 

Beyond that, we were all given the “silent treatment”.  We never received any replies to our many complaints and or requests to meet with the administration and/or the investigating committee – other than indications that the administration had received a few of the complaints.

 

 

Which complaints did they not consider?

 

The ad-hoc committee held back the early complaint regarding Bailey's having sex with his research subject "Juanita", apparently because it was dependent on whether or not "Juanita" had been Mr. Bailey's research subject.  Thus that complaint may yet go forward if the initial investigation finds Juanita to have been a research subject. Here is information about that complaint:

C-7: Documentation of complaint about Mr. Bailey's sexual exploitation of a research subject, 12-11-03
 

Furthermore, the initial investigation committee was not charged to investigate the complaints regarding Mr. Bailey acting as a clinical psychologist without a license, nor his release of confidential case-history information obtained from transsexual women during clinical psychological interviews with him. These are very serious complaints which may still go forward in the future.

 

Here is a link to those complaints and the evidence that supports them:

C-8: Complaints filed against Mr. Bailey for practicing as clinical psychologist without a license,

and for publishing confidential clinical case-history information without permissions, 4-06-04

 

For a further discussion of the complex ethical issues involved in those complaints, see the following page:

Ethical lapses in the use of pseudonyms to protect individual’s identities in clinical and research case-study reports.
 

Finally, the administration did not forward the confidential "May 10th Complaint" to the initial investigation committee. That complaint is now being studied in detail by the administration. It is being taken very seriously by the administration, and will likely be the subject of a follow-on investigation:

C-9: Lynn Conway files the "May 10th Complaint, 5-10-04

 

 

What key questions did this committee investigate?

 

It now appears that the only questions considered by the initial investigation committee were (i) " Was the work behind Mr. Bailey’s book “research”? ", (ii)  " If so, did Mr. Bailey inform the right offices at NU? ", (iii) " And if so, did he gain informed consent from the human subjects? " 

 

Note:  Since (ii) and (iii) are slam-dunks (there is no evidence that Mr. Bailey ever informed NU or the human subjects about this research), only question (i) seems to be at issue.  If the committee finds that Mr. Bailey was not doing scientific research on which to base his book,  it possible that he may face later charges that the book is fraudulent, because he made many direct claims, right in the book that it was scientific research and that it involved transsexual research subjects (See the evidence of this in "The Smoking Gun").

 

 

What evidence and other information was forwarded to the committee?

In the discussions on July 6, 2004, I asked NU officials what other key items had been forwarded to the committee beyond the initial "formal complaints" of last summer and early fall.  I was especially interested in whether they had the "Smoking Gun", the "UCLA tape incident report" submitted later in 2003.  I also asked if they had studied the "practicing clinical psychology without a license" and "release of clinical case-history information without permission" complaints of April 2004, and the May 10th Complaint too.

The NU officials said that the committee had seen the "smoking gun" and had talked about the "UCLA tape incident".

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Bailey/The%20Smoking%20Gun.html

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Anjelica/Complaint.html#anchor601714

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Anjelica/Bailey-UCLA-Lecture.html

 

They thought the committee might have seen the complaints about Mr. Bailey's practicing clinical psychology without a license and his subsequent release of confidential information, but were not sure of that.  Therefore, I gave them hardcopies of those complaints - and they said that they’d be sure that the committee got it too.

 

This raises the possibility that some of this new information led to the delays in completion of the report.  It also raises the possibility that the committee might recommend follow-on investigations regarding Mr. Bailey having sex with a research subject, practicing clinical psychology without a license, releasing confidential clinical information, etc. Only time will tell.

 

However, the officials reported to us that the initial investigation committee definitely did NOT see the May 10th complaint. They indicated that the NU administration is now studying that complaint and is taking it extremely seriously, and that it will likely be the subject of a follow-on investigation.

 

 

How did the committee learn about transsexualism?

  

Unfortunately, the committee continued in the long-established tradition of the institutional “silent treatment” of transsexual women, excluding them by inaction from participation in major events that affect them.  Others such as doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, religious leaders, "ethicists", and various academic pundits are instead called on to speak for us in such situations, since they are presumed to be the "experts".  

 

In particular, the committee specifically refused to meet with Andrea James, Deirdre McCloskey and Lynn Conway, all of whom were complainants against Mr. Bailey and had requested meetings with the committee.

 

This committee, being dominated by medical, psychiatric, religious and ethics “experts”, apparently assumed that their expertise covered transsexualism. And of course they had the Bailey book as a source of information on that topic. 

 

 

Who did the committee meet?

 

There are reports that two "outsiders" were called to meet with the initial investigation committee, but we have not confirmed those reports nor do we know any outsiders’ identities at this time.

 

The only trans women known to have met in person with the committee are Anjelica Kieltyka and "Juanita".  These were two of the women who had been Mr. Bailey's research subjects, and about whom he’d written highly defamatory and prurient things in his book (without their permission).  The committee had to meet with at least these two women, if for no other reason than to “cross-examine” them regarding the veracity of their complaints. 

 

It is important to note, however, that these two women were presumed to be marginalized by circumstances (Anjelica lives on disability, and “Juanita” was reported by Mr. Bailey to have once been a prostitute). Perhaps the committee felt that it could “control” these women in ways that it could not control other trans women.

 

We note a curious coincidence here: This investigation committee's interviewee selection process followed the same pattern that Mr. Bailey used when researching his book!  The committee interviewed the presumed socially marginalized women amongst the complainants, but studiously avoided interviewing other women who presumably might have been able to clarify the evidence, ask hard questions, and later on effectively report on their detailed interactions with the committee.

 

Even so, "Juanita" reports that, among other things, she was able to confront the committee members with commentary on various details of her sexual encounters with Mr. Bailey. She also reports that committee members were quite taken aback by her forthright discussion of those events. (Recall that this committee was never given the complaint and evidence regarding Mr. Bailey's sexual misconduct with "Juanita" (see C-7, above)).

 

 

Stay tuned!

 

We're now awaiting news of the results of the initial Bailey investigation, which will likely be announced sometime in September. Will this very limited initial investigation find Mr. Bailey guilty of anything?  After all, they only addressed such a small subset of the complaints against him, interviewed only two of the complainants on one occasion, and avoided any and all contact with most of the women who formulated the case against him.  And if this initial investigating committee does find Mr. Bailey guilty of something, will Northwestern University then actually sanction him?  Who knows?

 

Stay tuned!  And stay tuned too for follow-on investigations of the other as-yet unresolved complaints against Mr. Bailey

 

 

Lynn Conway

August 13, 2004.

 

 


 

This page is part of Lynn Conway's

"Investigative report into the publication of
J. Michael Bailey's book on transsexualism
by the National Academies"