Doing the right thing: Co-authors of researcher who covered up data fakery retract paper

A group of researchers in Canada who’d collaborated with a one-time rising star in the bone field have retracted a 2014 article after determining that the data were unreliable.

They did so even though the paper was not a focus of the investigations into the work of Abida Sophina “Sophie” Jamal, whose once sparkling career in endocrinology crumbled after an investigation found that she had fabricated data and took elaborate steps to cover her deception — from doctoring patient records to changing the temperature of a freezer at a government blood facility to damage samples that might reveal the fraud. 

Jamal was stripped of her license to practice medicine in Canada — a decision that was subsequently reversed in a controversial decision — and banned for life from receiving funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which also ordered her to pay back more than $260,000 to the agency. 

The new retraction — Jamal’s fourth — involves an article titled “Bone Mineral Density Predicts Fractures in Chronic Kidney Disease,” which Jamal and her colleagues published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research (JBMR), a leading journal for the bone field. According to the notice: 

The above article, published online on 15 November 2014 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Professor Roberto Civitelli, the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. In 2016, the Women’s College Hospital, University of Toronto, undertook an investigation into studies conducted by Dr Sophie Jamal. The investigation concluded that there was evidence of data manipulation. Whilst the investigation and resulting finding were not related to the above article, out of an abundance of caution, the authors undertook a thorough data quality review, including an independent data analysis, to ensure the integrity of the research. Through this process, inconsistencies in the data were found and it was determined that the results could not be fully replicated. As a result, the authors (except for Dr Jamal) requested retraction of their article. After review of the records, the ASBMR Research Integrity Panel, the Editor-in-Chief, and Wiley concur with the retraction.

We were curious whether there was any back-and-forth between the authors, or the journal, about what to do in this case. The authors haven’t responded to a request for comment, but we will update with anything we learn.

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