There's a spat playing out on the nucl-ex (nuclear experimental) part of the arXiv preprint server. I have no special knowledge of what's going on, but the timeline of the papers on arXiv is:
1. Moshe Gai of UConn sent a paper to the arXiv "The Interaction of Neutrons With 7Be: Lack of Standard Nuclear Physics Solution to the "Primordial 7Li Problem"." The paper describes an experiment to look at the capture of neutrons by beryllium–7 nuclei at energies similar to the conditions of the early universe, in order to try to understand if this reaction can account for the disagreement between the observed amount of lithium–7 in the universe compared to models of the big bang in which the lightest few elements were formed. The paper appeared on 24th Dec 2018 and in the submission comments, Prof Gai says
Talk presented on behalf of the SARAF US-Israel, Switzerland Collaboration at Nuclear Physics in Astrophysics (NPA8), 18-23 June 2017, Catania, Italy, that was reviewed by two referees and accepted for publication in NPA6, EPJA, 2017
So it appears to be a paper written for and accepted for a conference proceedings, but that did not appear in the proceedings. The preprint gives results from the experiment in a summarised list, promising that a full paper is planned for publication.
2. On 3rd April 2019 Dorothea Schumann submitted at "Comment to "The Interaction of Neutrons With 7Be: Lack of Standard Nuclear Physics Solution to the Primordial 7Li Problem", published by M. Gai in arXiv 1812.09914v1". Dr Schumann is one of the authors listed as being in the collaboration on behalf of which the original Gai paper was claimed to be written and the comment is also coauthored by 5 other members of the original collaboration list. The comment says that "The Hebrew University PI of this collaboration has dissociated himself together with his team from this experiment and from the collaboration in Fall 2016" though which members of the list given by Gai are from the Hebrew University is not obvious.
Moreover, the comment goes on to say that Gai had no permission from the collaboration to publish the experimental data, and that the cross sections given by Gai as deduced from the experimental data are unreliable for reasons that Dr Schumann will provide "on request". The comment finished with the strongly worded statement
We consider unauthorized release of questionable data an intolerable damage of the scientific reputation of the collaborators personally, the involved research institutions in general and the trustworthiness of published data in the entire scientific field. We fully dissociate ourselves from any scientific content published by M. Gai on the project “The Interaction of Neutrons With 7Be: Lack of Standard Nuclear Physics Solution to the Primordial 7Li Problem" and request the paper currently posted on arXiv immediately to be retracted.
3. Today (why I am now noticing the conversation) Prof. Gai has posted, on the arXiv, "Gai Reply to Comment by Schumann et al. [arXiv:1904.03023]". This is quite lengthy, but the gist of it is given in the abstract:
Statements included in the comment published by Schumann et al.(arXiv:1904.03023) are contradicted by documents that were communicated to one of the co-authors of the comment (Dr. Koester). These documents are reviewed but cannot be disclosed here due to copyright (they are available on request). A summary of the scientific dispute between the collaboration and Dr. Schumann,was submitted on September 24, 2018, to the Directorate Support of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and can be provided on request.
Here the disagreement is characterised as being between Schumann and "the collaboration". Gai goes on to elaborate on his side of the story, though clearly there is more information that the authors have not disclosed (and I have not taken them up on their request, since I don't imagine that I am exactly going to arbitrate on this), but it's rather unfortunate that it is playing out in the arXiv.
I suppose next that either there will be a response on the arXiv from Dr. Schumann or another co-author, or perhaps better, that the institutes involved will convene a panel, if they haven't already, to adjudicate.
[N.B. I've used the titles Prof for Gai as per his institution' website, and Dr for Schumann as for hers. Apologies to either if that is an incorrect title.]
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