Citing a misconduct investigation, the journal Stem Cells has retracted a 2009 article coauthored by a researcher whose work has been under suspicion for roughly five years.
The paper was titled “Cell adhesion and spreading affect adipogenesis from embryonic stem cells: the role of calreticulin.” The retraction notice, which is behind a paywall, states:
The above article published on June 04, 2009 in STEM CELLS has been retracted by agreement between the Journal Editors and co‐publishers, AlphaMed Press and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been agreed following an investigation carried out by McMaster University (Hamilton ON, Canada) and due to major overlap with a previously published article in the Journal of Cell Biology (“Calreticulin inhibits commitment to adipocyte differentiation” by Eva Szabo, Yuanyuan Qiu, Shairaz Baksh, Marek Michalak, and Michal Opas, Volume 182, 2008, pages 103‐16) which the Journal of Cell Biology subsequently retracted (“Retraction of: Calreticulin inhibits commitment to adipocyte differentiation” Volume 208, 2015, page 249‐50).
The paper has been cited 15 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Knowledge.
The retraction is the second for Szabo, about whom we wrote in 2015, when the Journal of Cell Biology issued what remains one of the most detailed notices we’ve ever seen. Commenters to that post noted that Szabo’s work has come under scrutiny on PubPeer, where several of her articles — including, in January 2016, the Stem Cell paper — were flagged as problematic.
Another was a 2010 paper in Nature, “Direct conversion of human fibroblasts to multilineage blood progenitors,” which in 2018 received the following notice:
It has been pointed out that in Supplementary Fig. 3b of this Article, some gel images of individual PCR products were inaccurately compiled, leading to duplication of gel images in lanes where no band was present. Unfortunately, the files containing the original PCR images for Supplementary Figs. 2e and 3b could not be located. We have therefore repeated these experiments using the same human cellular reagents as originally reported to confirm our results and conclusions. We provide the raw images of gel products, as well as the flow cytometry, human embryoid body images, and flowchart of the replication of these experiments, in the Supplementary Information of this Amendment. We thank M. Nakanishi and T. Collins for independently performing these experiments and analysing the results. The original Article has not been corrected.
In 2008, when the JCB article appeared, Szabo had recently completed a PhD at the University of Toronto, where she’d worked with Michal Opas, of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology. According to her LinkedIn page, she was an assistant professor at McMaster between 2013 and June 2019, but now works as a “Medical R&D Consultant.”
We emailed Opas about the latest retraction and the misconduct inquiry. He told us:
I wish to refrain from commenting on those unfortunate events.
Michelle Donovan, the manager of media relations for McMaster, declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality requirements. She referred us instead to the university’s code of conduct.
We also emailed the editor-in-chief of Stem Cells but have yet toreceive a reply.
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