Eric Smart, the former University of Kentucky researcher found by the Office of Research Integrity to have faked images in ten papers, has two more retractions, both in the American Journal of Physiology — Cell Physiology.
Here’s one, for a paper cited four times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge:
White J, Guerin T, Swanson H, Post S, Zhu H, Gong M, Liu J, Everson WV, Li XA, Graf GA, Ballard HO, Ross SA, Smart EJ. Diabetic HDL-associated myristic acid inhibits acetylcholine-induced nitric oxide generation by preventing the association of endothelial nitric oxide synthase with calmodulin. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 294: C295–C305, 2008; doi:10.1152/ajpcell.00042.2007.
A research misconduct investigation at the University of Kentucky has determined that images appearing in Figs. 2A, 3A, 6A, and 7A of the paper contain instances of data fabrication. Therefore, this article is being retracted by the American Physiological Society in agreement with the authors.
Please note that effort was made to contact all authors. However, responses were not received from J. White, G. A. Graf, H. O. Ballard, and E. J. Smart.
Here’s the other, for a paper cited 39 times:
Matveev SV, Smart EJ. Heterologous desensitization of EGF receptors and PDGF receptors by sequestration in caveolae. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 282: C935–C946, 2002; doi:10.1152/ajpcell.00349.2001.
A research misconduct investigation at the University of Kentucky has determined that images appearing in Fig. 1B of the paper contain instances of data fabrication. Therefore, this article is being retracted by the American Physiological Society in agreement with the first author.
Please note that effort was made to contact both authors. However, a response was not received from E. J. Smart.
These are Smart’s 7th and 8th retractions. One appeared in PNAS, and five were in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Well, it proves that he may not have been so “smart” as he thought!
Kindly invite Mr Smart to give back all the money from grants awarded on the basis on retracted papers.
If not, then he should follow Steven Eaton (featured on RW April 17, 2013 at 1:34 pm).
This drives me crazy, the figure legend states that the images are representative of 4 independent experiments. Then freaking show all 4 or at the very least the quantified data. This is the issue with this type of research….repeat the experiment a bunch of times and show the best result. Even if this work wasn’t falsified this approach is dubious at best. Authors should be required to give some indication of the variability of the measures.