The journal Haematologica has retracted two papers by José Román-Gómez, both of which involve image manipulation, bringing his total to four.
Here’s the first notice, for a 2007 article titled “Epigenetic regulation of human cancer/testis antigen gene, HAGE, in chronic myeloid leukemia” that has been cited 20 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge:
The authors wish to retract the paper cited above (Haematologica 2007 Feb;92(2):153–62). Figure 2 in that paper was inappropriately reproduced from previously published paper, namely Toyooka S, Toyooka KO, Harada K, Miyajima K, Makarla P, Sathyanarayana UG, Yin J, Sato F, Shivapurkar N, Meltzer SJ, Gazdar AF. Aberrant methylation of the CDH13 (H-cadherin) promoter region in colorectal cancers and adenomas. Cancer Res. 2002 Jun 15;62(12):3382–6. The manipulation of the figure was performed by Dr. Román-Gómez. None of the other authors were involved in or were aware of these events. The authors apologize to the readers, reviewers, and editors of Haematologica for publishing this erroneous image.
And the second (which came out in the journal’s Spanish-language edition), “Metilación del ADN en oncohematología” (or DNA methylation in oncohematology) from 2005:
The authors wish to retract the above cited manuscript. Figure 5 in the published manuscript was inappropriately reproduced using figure 1 in a previously published paper from Shinichi Toyooka, Kiyomi O. Toyooka, Kenichi Harada, Kuniharu Miyajima, Prakash Makarla, Ubaradka G. Sathyanarayana, Jing Yin, Fumiaki Sato, Narayan Shivapurkar, Stephen J. Meltzer, and Adi F. Gazdar. Aberrant Methylation of the CDH13 (H-cadherin) Promoter Region in Colorectal Cancers and Adenomas. Cancer Research 62, 3382–3386, June 15, 2002. The manipulation of the figure was performed by Dr. Román-Gómez. None of the other authors were involved in or were aware of these events. The authors apologize to the readers, reviewers, Sociedad Española de Hematología and editors of Haematologica for publishing these erroneous images.
Román-Gómez has 58 papers listed on Medline since the first appeared in 1995. To our knowledge, only the four retracted articles and a 2003 paper in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that is the subject of an expression of concern have been implicated in the imaging misconduct.
OK: progress – but what actually happened is still hidden.
Why was he ‘poaching’ these figures from other papers? The only logical answer is that the data were never generated at all, and that therefore the entire body of work was fabricated.
Which means others must have known.
In my view the university / co-authors are trying to say this was just image manipulation by one crazy guy. In fact this was systematic fraud on an institutional scale. Did the patients referred to actually exist? And do those entering more recent work involving this university exist?
There are also many more papers from this group waiting to be retracted…
Totally agree. And this is from someone (the supposed crazy guy) who received a Health Services Prize for Research only 2 years ago, which appeared in all local newspapers. No news on the retractions, though.
I am a bit surprised at the lack of reaction from the University at this group’s dealings that have occurred repeatedly. It is not like splicing a gel to make it look more impressive, or enhancing immunolocalisation pictures so they look more convincing. This is pinching other people´s work and presenting it as yours to make a good story! This is plagiarism, but in addition it is a gross adulteration of experimental results done with premeditation and in a cold-blooded manner.
Agreed.
It is a big story that has not generated much interest.