Last month, we reported that the last three of six promised retractions by Zhiguo Wang, who was a researcher at the Montreal Heart Institute until the results of an Institute investigation forced him to resign in early September — would be in the Journal of Cellular Physiology. They’ve now appeared.
Here are the three notices, which are far more informative than the Journal of Biological Chemistry was — and which make it clear Wang acted alone:
The following article from Journal of Cellular Physiology, 212:137–147, Overexpression HERG K+ channel gene mediates cell growth signals on activation of oncoproteins SP1 and NF-kB and inactivation of tumor suppressor Nkx3.1 by Huixian Lin, Jiening Xiao, Xiaobin Luo, Huizhen Wang, Huanhuan Gao, Baofeng Yang, Zhiguo Wang, published online on February 27, 2007 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor in Chief, Dr. Gary S. Stein and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been made due to the duplicated uses of previously published western blot bands, which violates the editorial policy of Journal of Cellular Physiology. The corresponding author, Zhiguo Wang, takes full responsibility and apologizes to the editors and readership of Journal of Cellular Physiology for any negative impact this may have on the journal.
The following article from Journal of Cellular Physiology, 212:358–367, Transcriptional activation by stimulating protein 1 and post-transcriptional repression by muscle-specific microRNAs of IKs-encoding genes and potential implications in regional heterogeneity of their expressions by Xiaobin Luo, Jiening Xiao, Huixian Lin, Baoxin Li, Yanjie Lu, Baofeng Yang, Zhiguo Wang, published online on April 18, 2007 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor in Chief, Dr. Gary S. Stein and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been made due to the duplicated uses of previously published western blot bands, which violates the editorial policy of Journal of Cellular Physiology. The corresponding author, Zhiguo Wang, takes full responsibility and apologizes to the editors and readership of Journal of Cellular Physiology for any negative impact this may have on the journal.
The following article from Journal of Cellular Physiology, 212:285–292, Novel approaches for gene-specific interference via manipulating actions of microRNAs: Examination on the pacemaker channel genes HCN2 and HCN4 by Jiening Xiao, Baofeng Yang, Huixian Lin, Yanjie Lu, Xiaobin Luo, Zhiguo Wang, published online on May 21, 2007 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor in Chief, Dr. Gary S. Stein and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been made due to the duplicated uses of previously published western blot bands, which violates the editorial policy of Journal of Cellular Physiology. The corresponding author, Zhiguo Wang, takes full responsibility and apologizes to the editors and readership of Journal of Cellular Physiology for any negative impact this may have on the journal.
I have no idea why you think he acted alone. He is the corresponding author. We see nothing in these retraction statements from the other authors. They are silent. What is their opinion? I think that it is extremely questionable that the same research group didn’t notice a thing funny about these pictures. If they didn’t notice, what does THAT say?
This is the privilege and responsibility of being a PI – you stand or fall on your work. If the institution found evidence of wrongdoing specifically by the PI, then really that’s the end of the story.
The other authors can’t be investigated in the same way, since they don’t have that bottom-line responsibility. Besides, it is often impossible or impractical for an institution to investigate every author’s contribution. For sure the authors haven’t ‘got away with it’ – this will follow them around for the rest of their careers.
In my view this is a highly unusual story; it’s very rare for a PI to fall on his sword like this. In most cases the whole truth doesn’t come out – only a watered-down version or a drawn out saga (or else the matter is covered up entirely). It is probably because the issues are so transparent and blatant that things have turned out this way. The sad thing to contemplate is whether this could have been stopped at an earlier stage. Given that the PI, in the end, admitted that he was responsible, one wonders if there was a stage where he could have retracted the earlier paper / papers without having to terminate his career, which is what seems to have happened here.
Dear Paul,
I agree with you. We are given no clue as to who acted (or who made image manipulation, an example posted here http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20110924/_1000_).
In my opinion, three notices make it clear that the corresponding author takes a full responsibility, but do not say anything about who conducted image manipulations or duplication.
Thanks as always for the comments. It’s worth looking at our other coverage of this case, particularly what the Montreal Heart Institute report said, for context:
http://www.retractionwatch.com/2011/09/03/montreal-heart-institute-researcher-dismissed-following-two-retractions-for-image-manipulation/
http://www.retractionwatch.com/category/by-author/zhiguo-wang/
“Over-expression of serially repetitive western blots mediates novel BS factor reactivity, triggering author-specific post-transcriptional repression with rapid extra-institutional transport.”
Probably splitting hairs here, and the writing, while clear, is up for interpretation, in my opinion. The retraction notices state that Wang takes full responsibility. Whether or not that responsibility is for actually duplicating the blots or not spotting them (but not having duplicated them), we do not know.
However, given the previous coverage on this case, I think that the former is probably true.
Wang told the Chinese press that a technician in his lab re-used the western blots.
Well, who is the technician by the way? Nobody knows. Just stupid excuse in my point of view