Nearly five months after a graduate student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine spontaneously confessed to cooking data, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said today that she has agreed to exclude herself from receiving government funding for three years.
According to the ORI, Meredyth Forbes:
engaged in research misconduct by intentionally falsifying and/or fabricating data reported in the following three (3) published papers and four (4) meeting presentations
As we reported in April, journals have flagged all three of those papers with notices:
- “Maternal dazap2 Regulates Germ Granules by Counteracting Dynein in Zebrafish Primordial Germ Cells” published in Cell Reports has been retracted, with the agreement of all authors.
- “Dachsous1b cadherin regulates actin and microtubule cytoskeleton during early zebrafish embryogenesis,” published in Development has a correction.
- “The polarity factor Bucky ball associates with the centrosome and promotes microtubule rearrangements to establish the oocyte axis in zebrafish,” published online in Development has an expression of concern.
ORI found that Forbes
intentionally falsified and/or fabricated data for germ-cell development in zebrafish Dazap2 maternal-effect mutants (MDazap2) in one (1) paper and two (2) presentations when the mutants were not produced nor the data derived from them.
And:
that Respondent intentionally fabricated and/or falsified data for zebrafish embryogenesis and oocyte polarity in two (2) papers and two (2) presentations when the data were not obtained from actual experiments.
In April, we reported that Forbes had signed an agreement with the ORI. Today, the ORI announced that for a period of three years beginning on May 6th, Forbes has agreed to neither apply for, nor be supported by, Federal funding.
According to research integrity officer Edward Burns, with whom we spoke in April, Forbes was forthcoming about the misconduct at a meeting in January:
The data was cooked…[Forbes] admitted that she hoodwinked her PI by showing her primary data that was corrupted.
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The student should return the money she was paid by the government.