Debatt ● Filippo Berto
«Facts and not opinions»: Statement by Filippo Berto as response to the final report
Now that the final conclusions have been reached about the case I will only speak once and here with this letter.
Publisert
Denne teksten er et debattinnlegg. Innholdet i teksten uttrykker forfatterens egen mening.
I have been completely silent for more than two years since this farce started. Now that the final conclusions have been reached about the case, I will only speak once and here with this letter.
The rest will be done by my lawyers taking specific actions on individuals and players who have violated laws during the entire process.
I was employed by NTNU for 6 years from October 2016 to October 2022. My main goal in NTNU was to revitalize a dead laboratory dealing with mechanical characterization of materials and especially dealing with fatigue and fracture mechanics.
When I arrived in the department of Mechanical Engineering at NTNU only one old not calibrated machine was working and nothing else.
From the first days I put all my efforts to get financial support to build up a competitive laboratory aligned with the standard of other laboratories present in NTNU and with the expectation of my employer. For doing that I also built up from zero a group aimed to help me in this challenging renovation process.
My energies were completely addressed to the growth of the group, to enlarge and create international collaborations and to build up this new competitive laboratory which is now one of the largest and most equipped in Europe, probably in the world dealing with multiaxial fatigue.
It contains unique machines able to perform any kind of fatigue test at low and high frequency that are now available to all the colleagues still working there, to the students of any level and to international visiting professors who want to spend a visiting period in NTNU.
The teaching part was also very important and fundamental for attracting good students. The course Fracture Mechanics I was teaching the first year with around 20 students has reached over 130 students in the last years I was in Norway. When I was moving back to Italy despite the huge amount of teaching here, I decided still to help the transition of that course in NTNU with colleagues organizing the lectures and even correcting the final exams.
Together with Professor Alexei Vinogradov we also strongly improved the course fatigue design attracting more than 80-90 students per year which are many at the master level.
I served NTNU in my role with my best respect and support to colleagues, students, technicians working hardly together to create research projects, activities etc.
The group reached a huge dimension including permanent staff, visiting professors, phds, postdocs, Erasmus students. In some periods we were surely more than thirty people working together. We had peaks with forty people.
In some periods we were surely more than thirty people working together. We had peaks with forty people.
Filippo Berto
I have dedicated all my time in Norway to the growth of the group and the laboratory following daily the research of the group, the tenders for buying the new machines, the teaching activities etc.
I am not saying I did not make mistakes in this process but only that the amount of work and its quality was high and the outcomes were also qualitatively high.
Only if you do nothing you cannot make mistakes. If you do not collaborate with anyone you can only avoid mistakes by others.
In February 2024, an internal investigation into my scientific activity was initiated by a committee of the university, based on an anonymous and not anonymous reports referring to comments posted on the online forum «PubPeer».
Before receiving any official communication from NTNU, I was informed of the investigation by a journalist in March 2024 and the defamation of my work as researcher, mentor, lecturer started immediately on the media without any respect of confidentiality and before any real understanding and clear evaluation of the case. For export control cases more critical than this case, confidentiality was fully maintained as an example.
I first contacted the ethics committee before they had been contacting me which seems to be surreal. But these are the facts I can easily document having kept full track all the exchange of emails and communications.
The first real formal and unpleasant (unpolite) contact by the secretary from the committee was received only on 12 August 2024 (during Italian summer holiday and this was not a case) after I tried again to contact the responsible of ethical committee in NTNU.
In the meantime, co-authors and journal editors were informally, persistently and insistently contacted by members of the committee, who disclosed allegations that had not yet been formalised.
Although labelled «preliminary» and confidential, the information was shared freely and openly or described to third parties, causing tangible reputational damage and obvious breach of confidentiality of all the process.
The final report contains assertions that lack objectivity and are framed in a suggestive and accusatory tone.
By way of example, the following expressions are of particular concern dealing with some conference papers: «Intentional or grossly negligent scientific misconduct»; «Deliberate attempts to hide the recycling by changing titles, introductions, co-authors and references»; «Raises serious questions… without violating basic publication ethics rules»; «Unusual co-authorship pattern.»
These statements are unsupported by a solid evidentiary basis and clearly reflect bias in the assessment of the facts, in violation of the principles of technical and scientific neutrality.
At the time the investigation was launched, I was no longer employed by NTNU.
According to the university’s internal regulations, investigations may only concern active employees. Furthermore, NTNU’s Faculty had already deemed such proceedings inappropriate. The committee therefore acted beyond its legal mandate and outside the limits of the applicable regulatory framework.
I explicitly received suggestions and recommendation by NTNU key people at the management level to not collaborate to the investigation and to avoid any contact with the nominated committee (I have exchange of emails, text messages, etc. proving what I am saying).
I am not using them because confidentiality and respect of people is the first non-written ethical standard to respect especially among colleagues that trusted me and my work despite that they now are declaring opposite versions to local newspapers.
Despite these suggestions, I sent a very detailed report to the investigative committee in full transparency to clarify my position giving all the necessary explanations.
The modus operandi has been typical and probably worse than the darkest Mediaeval inquisition age.
Filippo Berto
Numerous communications were sent to scientific journals, co-authors, colleagues and other parties without informing me and in the absence of any lawful basis for doing so.
This conduct constitutes a serious breach of data protection legislation, of the duty of confidentiality in investigative proceedings, and of the right to personal and professional reputation.
The modus operandi has been typical and probably worse than the darkest Mediaeval inquisition age, forgetting that all the papers were also co-authored by other colleagues, in many of them I was not the corresponding author or the main author.
But the full responsibility was again given only to me which is again insane and without any logic. This is a clear persecutory attempt to damage only my reputation but considering all other actors as ‘not informed’, ‘not experienced’, ‘not responsible’ and so on.
As regards the quality of the investigation, it must be noted that the committee members lack completely of any necessary technical and disciplinary competence and background.
In particular: a bibliometrics expert with no background in engineering; a professor of philosophy, who is unqualified to assess subject-specific scientific matters; and a third member who presents a limited technical profile (almost an average PhD profile with H-index 6, 215 citations, only 19 publications over 25 years, with duplications in her profile too).
After many useless and unfounded stating confirming that there have not been citation manipulation and data manipulation, the report focused on the only ‘critical’ point which were the alleged duplications of my own text, data and figures mainly from conference procedia to journal papers published more than eight years ago, in editorial contexts where such practices were commonly accepted and tolerated.
No evidence has emerged to suggest intentional misconduct or gross negligence regarding data manipulation, citation cheating, etc.
Filippo Berto
All the data of those papers were mainly produced by me, and the idea was to promote the results at different events without any intent of manipulating the Norwegian publication system based on points and journals divided in levels. I did not receive any personal advantage from publication points.
In addition, I have never plagiarized works by others because I have enough original, groundbreaking ideas to develop my own research.
No evidence has emerged to suggest intentional misconduct or gross negligence regarding data manipulation, citation cheating, etc.
The journals involved did not identify any substantive violations and, in some cases, raised concerns about the Report itself, deeming it defamatory and unfounded. Furthermore, the committee secretary's conduct was marked by non-transparent, aggressive communication and clear partiality.
The final report should have been confidential, in agreement with the last communications I received by NTNU on 5th of May (again from the secretary). However, apart the main public conclusions which are also written in a very denigratory way, the entire reports have been made public and openly accessible to the journalists of Khrono who reported it in their second article on the case.
All these last events of course occurred during the weekend of the 1st of May 2025 (and this was not a case again) where usually Norwegian enjoy their ‘hytta’ and good weather denoting again a clear persecutory intent of damaging my profile and reputation without giving the time to properly instruct a structured reply and defence.
These are the facts and not opinions, and I am happy and proud of being Filippo Berto a real researcher, a real person and not a fake journalist.
My questions are then the following:
1. Do you really think an ‘ethical’ and fair approach has been used evaluating my contribution as person and as researcher in NTNU? The facts, the order of actions and the timing answered themselves to the question.
2. Why also not opening an investigation on fully paid 'stone professors' producing zero publications, managing no projects, directing no laboratories? Why are they well paid from the system? No mistakes can come from a stone and probably this is the reason they are still fully paid.
Finally, I want to thank Professor Øystein Grong a role model as scientist and gentleman. He provided the correct description of my real profile and of my real attitude toward colleagues in NTNU and outside NTNU.
I will be always indebted to him for helping me as mentor, friend and colleague. I want to thank him for standing with me now when all the other are sitting forgetting how much I did for them, their families and their careers.
