Karel Bezouška, the Czech biochemist who was caught on hidden camera breaking into a lab fridge to fake results, has turned it up to eleven with two new retractions.
Both retractions appeared in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, one in October 2014 and one in January 2015. His story began two decades ago in 1994, when he published a paper in Nature that couldn’t be reproduced, and was eventually retracted in 2013.
The best part of the story, of course, is that when his university was attempting to recreate his experiments, Bezouška broke into a lab fridge to tamper with the experiments. Unbeknownst to him, he was caught on hidden camera.
There are two versions of the notice (1, 2) for “Toward an optimal oligosaccharide ligand for rat natural killer cell activation receptor NKR-P1”, one of which mentions us:
The authors of the paper have requested retraction of this paper. Investigations by a joint ethical committee established by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Charles University in Prague, show that Karel Bezouška, one of the co-authors, manipulated experiments. Therefore, the advisory board of the Institute of Microbiology decided to retract publications with doubtful data. Several journals from different publishers have received retraction requests; two of them affect BBRC. This specific paper has been identified to contain tampered data and appeared on a blacklist of papers suggested by the Institute of Microbiology Advisory Board for full retraction (IMIC intranet, http://10.150.120.30/rada/Seznampubretrakci.htm, link not accessible from abroad). Official texts related to this case are in Czech (http://www.biomed.cas.cz/mbu/doc/VyjadreniEK.PDF, and press report available at http://www.natur.cuni.cz/fakulta/pro-media/tiskove-zpravy/2013/tiskova-zprava-1). Retraction Watch also reports on this case, in English, with links to original sources: https://retractionwatch.com/2013/07/04/retraction-of-19-year-old-nature-paper-reveals-hidden-cameras-lab-break-in-evidence-tampering/ with translation describing the case.
There are also two notices (1,2) for “NKR-P1A protein, an activating receptor of rat natural killer cells, binds to the chitobiose core of uncompletely glycosylated N-linked glycans, and to linear chitooligomers,” one of which again mentions us (and seems to have some extra text included in the end accidentally):
The authors of the paper have requested retraction of this paper. Investigations by a joint ethical committee established by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Charles University in Prague, show that Karel Bezouska, one of the co-authors, manipulated experiments. Therefore, the advisory board of the Institute of Microbiology decided to retract publications with doubtful data. Several journals from different publishers have received retraction requests; two of them affect BBRC. This specific paper has been identified to contain tampered data and appeared on a blacklist of papers suggested by the Institute of Microbiology Advisory Board for full retraction (IMIC intranet, http://10.150.120.30/rada/Seznampubretrakci.htm, link not accessible from abroad). Official texts related to this case are in Czech (http://www.biomed.cas.cz/mbu/doc/VyjadreniEK.PDF, and press report available at http://www.natur.cuni.cz/fakulta/pro-media/tiskove-zpravy/2013/tiskova-zprava-1). Retraction Watch also reports on this case, in English, with links to original sources: https://retractionwatch.com/2013/07/04/retraction-of-19-year-old-nature-paper-reveals-hidden-cameras-lab-break-in-evidence-tampering/ with translation describing the case. I also attach a translation of the press release, which I do not know if it’s considered official.
Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge clocks 48 citations for the first paper, and 29 times for the second.
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