It’s official: Anil Potti faked cancer research data, say Feds

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Anil Potti, via Duke

Following five years of scrutiny, more than ten retractions, multiple settled lawsuits, and medical board reprimands, we may finally have some resolution on the case of Anil Potti, the once-rising cancer research star who resigned from Duke in 2010.

While there have been numerous allegations of misconduct in Potti’s work, and strong comments to that effect by Potti’s former mentor, Joseph Nevins, there has been no official finding. Today, that changes. Potti “engaged in research misconduct,” the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) concludes in a report to be published in the Federal Register on Monday.

Potti — referred to as “respondent” in the report — included “false research data” in reports of research from six different NIH grants, according to the ORI: Continue reading It’s official: Anil Potti faked cancer research data, say Feds

Malpractice case against Duke, Anil Potti settled

pottiA lawsuit filed in October 2011 against Duke University and Anil Potti, who has retracted 11 papers and corrected a number of others amidst investigation into his work, has been settled, Retraction Watch has learned.

Potti resigned from Duke in 2010 following questions about his work, and revelations that he had lied on grant applications about being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. He now works at a cancer center in North Dakota.

The lawsuit was filed by subjects in clinical trials based on Potti’s work. Plaintiff’s attorney Thomas W. Henson, who confirmed the settlement, tells Retraction Watch: Continue reading Malpractice case against Duke, Anil Potti settled

RIP, Ed Rickards: Duke watchdog who covered Anil Potti case dies at 72

dukeIt’s unusual for us to post obituaries on Retraction Watch — we’ve published just one so far in three-and-a-half years — but we wanted to pause for a moment to note the passing of a tireless crusader for transparency and accountability whose electronic path crossed with ours a number of times since 2012 because of our shared interest in the case of Anil Potti.

We learned of the death of Ed Rickards this weekend while Ivan was attending ScienceOnline 2014. The Duke Chronicle, the university’s student newspaper, reported on February 5: Continue reading RIP, Ed Rickards: Duke watchdog who covered Anil Potti case dies at 72

Anil Potti posts restored to Retraction Watch following false DMCA claim

automattcAs expected, ten Retraction Watch posts about Anil Potti that were mistakenly removed for a false Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice have been restored.

Automattic, which runs WordPress, notified us tonight of the move, which comes two weeks after the original notice. The claim against Retraction Watch was ridiculous, of course; a site in India plagiarized our posts, then claimed we had violated their copyright. That site, perhaps not surprisingly, has been taken down.

In the meantime, another site has been hit with a DMCA notice for a post about Potti, and Potti has told us that he had nothing to do with the takedown notice filed against us.

If you missed those posts — one of which is an accounting of Potti’s retraction record so far — here they are: Continue reading Anil Potti posts restored to Retraction Watch following false DMCA claim

Anil Potti tells Retraction Watch he wasn’t behind DMCA takedown notices of posts about him

pottiWe have an update on an evolving and puzzling story involving our posts about Anil Potti that have been temporarily removed from Retraction Watch.

Someone claiming to be Anil Potti — and whom we have good reason to believe is actually him, for reasons we’ll get into — emailed us tonight to say that he had “no part whatsoever” in the takedown of Retraction Watch posts about him: Continue reading Anil Potti tells Retraction Watch he wasn’t behind DMCA takedown notices of posts about him

Another site hit with DMCA takedown notice for post about Anil Potti

nanopolitanRetraction Watch readers may recall that earlier this month, WordPress removed ten of our posts about Anil Potti — the former Duke oncology researcher who has retracted or corrected 19 papers — after a false DMCA copyright claim against us. The site which claimed the copyright violations — and which no longer exists — actually plagiarized our posts, not the other way around.

We’re still waiting for those posts to be reinstated; our understanding is that they’ll be back later this week. In the meantime, Nanopolitan, another site that wrote about Potti has been hit with what looks like a false DMCA claim.

Blogger, Nanopolitan’s host, has taken down one post. One of the owners of Nanopolitan, Abi, writes: Continue reading Another site hit with DMCA takedown notice for post about Anil Potti

WordPress removes Anil Potti posts from Retraction Watch in error after false DMCA copyright claim

If you went looking for ten of our posts about Anil Potti today, you would have seen error messages instead. That’s because someone claiming to be from a news site in India alleged we violated their copyright with those ten posts about the former Duke University cancer researcher who has had 19 papers retracted, corrected, or partially retracted.

The truth of the matter, as is often the case, is exactly the opposite of the allegations. Here’s the email we received from Automattic — which owns WordPress, our blog host — earlier today: Continue reading WordPress removes Anil Potti posts from Retraction Watch in error after false DMCA copyright claim

Another retraction for Anil Potti, with an inscrutable notice

We’ve seen a lot of retraction notices for work by Anil Potti — 10, to be precise, along with 7 corrections and one partial retraction notice. As notices go, they tend to be pretty complete. So when we saw one in CHEST for this 2008 abstract, we were expecting something similar.

Instead, we were confused.

Here’s the notice: Continue reading Another retraction for Anil Potti, with an inscrutable notice

Anil Potti resurfaces with job at North Dakota cancer center

Anil Potti, the former Duke cancer researcher who has now retracted or corrected 18 papers amidst investigations into his work, is now working at a Grand Forks, North Dakota, cancer center.

The Grand Forks Herald reports that Potti has worked at the Cancer Center of North Dakota since May. His new boss, William Noyes, told the paper that Continue reading Anil Potti resurfaces with job at North Dakota cancer center

Lead author of major breast cancer study announced at ASCO co-authored two corrected papers with Anil Potti

One of the biggest stories so far out of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting that just ended in Chicago was that of T-DM1, which, according to Ivan’s Reuters colleagues, “extended the length of time breast cancer patients lived without their disease getting worse.” (The news was even the subject of an embargo break.)

The widely-hailed study of Roche’s drug was led by Duke’s Kimberly Blackwell, who told The New York Times: Continue reading Lead author of major breast cancer study announced at ASCO co-authored two corrected papers with Anil Potti