‘Star’ Ohio State Cancer Researcher Loses Defamation Action

Carlo Croce, a leading cancer researcher at the Ohio State University, failed to show a self-described “freelance ethicist” defamed him in newspaper articles discussing allegedly manipulated and plagiarized data in scientific papers, a federal court in Ohio said.

The statements attributed to David Sanders were either substantially true or represented his opinion, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio said Tuesday in granting Sanders summary judgment. True statements and statements of opinion aren’t actionable under Ohio defamation law, the court said.

Sanders is a biological sciences professor at Purdue University. He researches and speaks on ethics in ...