We’ve been reporting on the case of Zhiguo Wang, the Montreal Heart Institute researcher who was dismissed earlier this month for scientific misconduct. In the announcement about Wang’s dismissal, the institute said it had requested the retraction of three papers other than the two that Wang had himself retracted earlier this summer, making a total of five.
We’ve been following up with journals that published Wang’s work, with the help of eagle-eyed Retraction Watch readers, and last week reported on the first of those three additional retractions, in the Journal of Cell Science. Late last week, we heard from Juan Carlos Lopez, the chief editor of Nature Medicine, which had published a paper by the group. Lopez had earlier said he was waiting for a Montreal Heart Institute report on their findings. He tells us it’s unlikely the Nature Medicine paper will be among those retracted:
We have now heard from the Montreal Heart Institute. Their investigation has found that there is no evidence that the data in our paper that was generated at that institution is fraudulent. There may be grounds for a corrigendum, but it does not look like it will be necessary to retract the paper.
We’ll continue to follow this case.
What will be the corrections?
“There is no evidence that the data in our paper that was generated at that institution is fraudulent”. But the first author and the correponding author of that paper was Yang Baofeng from Haerbin Medical University. Does it mean that the data generated in the Haerbin Medical University could be fraudulent?
Almost certainly
The editor must request the authors to show the original data and figures. Since for any published experiment, the authors have to keep the original data for at least 15 years. It is very important.
Otherwise, if they cannot show the original data, how can they prove that the data are real？How can they get to the conclusion？
The recent evidence from the Chinese Blog: http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=51597&do=blog&id=492774
indicates this Nature Medicine article contains the fabricated data by playing figure images with those published in J Cell Physiol, J Cell Science (retracted), etc. e.g. (J Cell Physiol) NF-kB Cx43 (Nature Medicine); (J Cell Science) HSP60 Kir2.1 (Nature Medicine).
Therefore, the conclusion of this article with the fabricated data may not be real and may be misleading, even it is not retracted by the Journal.