Sanjeeb K. Sahoo, of the Institute of Life Sciences in Bhubaneswar, India, has had four papers retracted from Acta Biomaterialia for what the journal is calling “highly unethical practices.”
All four notices say the same thing:
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
Due to highly unethical practices, which include serial self plagiarism, data manipulation and falsification of results found across multiple papers in Acta Biomaterialia. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.
The four papers are:
- Epithelial cell adhesion molecule targeted nutlin-3a loaded immunonanoparticles for cancer therapy (cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge)
- Antiglioma activity of curcumin-loaded lipid nanoparticles and its enhanced bioavailability in brain tissue for effective glioblastoma therapy (cited twice)
- Transferrin-conjugated curcumin-loaded superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles induce augmented cellular uptake and apoptosis in K562 cells (cited three times)
- Enhanced antiproliferative activity of carboplatin loaded chitosan-alginate nanoparticles in retinoblastoma cell line (cited 15 times)
Here’s Sahoo’s bio:
The primary aim of our research endeavour is in the field of nanomedicine which is the buzz word used nowadays in every sphere of life. Our group is mostly engaged in development of drug delivery system which yield advances in early detection, diagnostics, prognostics of cancer. Our research expertise has resulted in development of different nanocarriers which have shown promising results in a wide spectrum of cancer. Our research activities are not only limited to drug delivery but has also ventured into areas of diagnostics with our magnetic nanoparticles which have resulted in development of realistic practical applicants as the next generation drug delivery system and contrast agents. Our recent formulation i.e. curcumin sponge has been implicated for wound healing purpose which can be a boon for diabetic patients. Moreover the fascinating and unexplored area of polymer bioconjugate chemistry has also been another novel area of research our group has undertaken recently where our pegylated formulations of anticancer drugs and therapeutic peptides have resulted in increasing their in vivo longevity contributing to their enhanced potency. Our futuristic objective remains overcoming the multi drug resistance (MDR) effect as well as crossing the blood brain barrier using our nanocarriers thereby overcoming all the shortcoming of conventional therapy.
We’ve contacted him for comment, and will update with anything we learn.
The arrogance, the pomposity, the bullsh*t. Is this the future of science?? ;-(
Last year, I visited a friend and colleague at an institute near ILS in Bhubaneswar. Even though some of the institutes in India have the faculty, resources and scientific culture to compete internationally, things were rather different in Orissa. The hierarchical structure reminded me of bygone times, and the resources gave me a completely new view regarding what it means to do science on a shoestring budget. At the same time, there is an expectation that one will do brilliant work and publish in high-impact factor journals. The perverse combination of pressure and lack of resources probably underlies a lot of this kind of behavior.
The dude writes like a high school C-student. If his “papers” were at the same level, he should have been sent back to re-take the basic English writing class.
Elsevier has made plagiarism detection software available to all editors. Hopefully the prevalent usage of the software will bring plagiarism to an end. Data reuse will eventually go away too. Data manipulation will be a problem for quite some time.
@Ouch: plagiarism can be detected but I am not sure how one can check data re-use. Data manipulation will be difficult as well.
This person (SKS) in discussion on this issue was supposed to give an invited talk at one of the conferences organised by SA Biosciences. I wrote to the organisers about this in November following the sciencefraud posting on him – fortunately, they removed his name from the list. However, I still doubt their selection of speakers, though.
Ressci
Now do you Acharya et al 2009, Biomaterials 30: 5737-5750
The in vitro stability……..and nanoparticulate formulation.
Mohanty C and Sahoo SK 2010, Biomaterials 31: 6597-6611
Lung circulation of cytotoxicity………pancreatic cancer.
Vandana M and Sahoo SK 2010 Biomaterials 31: 9340-9356
Sustained targeting……….leukemia therapy.
Acharya S and Sahoo SK 2011 Biomaterials 32: 5643-5662
I think, he got used to it and kept doing it on and on! Besides punishment, he should be made to personally reimburse the grant value which he might have used to work this project and publish these plagiarised articles!
Two more things anyone will generally observe and laugh about:
1. No one writes IF in their list of publications. This shows that he’s behind IFs only and not behind the answer to his research problems! What an ethical abuse to science! U should see this: http://www.ils.res.in/sksahoo_publication.htm
2. Don’t miss the gender bias in the lab members
It’s not only shameful, but also frustrating that such people make black mark to Indian Science making it tough for publishing and getting positions in par with the global competitiveness!
Dr. Sanjeeb K Sahoo has been listed as an editorial board member for Scientific Reports (Published by Nature) under Chemical Biology section!