Researcher formerly of OSU and Taiwan’s Academia Sinica gets 10-year ban

After a 20-month investigation, Taiwan’s leading science institution has hit a former star cancer researcher with a 10-year ban for research misconduct. 

Academia Sinica (AS) said its inquiry found that Ching-shih Chen, formerly a distinguished research fellow at the center, was guilty of fabricating or falsifying data in several of the nearly two dozen papers he’d published while affiliated with the institution from 2014 to 2018. AS said Chen was being directed to retract one of the affected papers and correct three others. 

A 2018 article in the Taipei Times quoted an AS official, Henry Sun, saying that Chen, who resigned his post there that year, admitted that his staff had “beautified” his results and that he kept loose reins over this lab. 

Chen also held the Lucius A. Wing chair of cancer research and therapy at The Ohio State University, in Columbus, but resigned in 2017 as concerns about the validity of his data grew, as we reported in Science two years ago.  

As with the AS inquiry, Ohio State officials found that Chen had falsified data and manipulated images in at least 14 papers, eight of which required retraction. Since May 2018, Chen has had nine papers retracted.

Chen, whom Ohio State had once called an “Innovator of the Year,” had received more than $8 million in federal U.S. grant money for his research. Some of that money had gone to support a clinical trial of a compound he’d been developing  — a study Ohio State shut down in 2017. 

According to a statement from AS, issued January 17: 

Both the Divisional Ethics Committee and the Academia Sinica Ethics Committee concluded that Ching-shih Chen violated research ethics pursuant to Article 5 of the Code of Ethics for Academia Sinica Research Fellows and Research Specialists, with 4 of the 22 research papers published during his tenure at AS being linked to data fabrication/falsification. As punishment for these actions, he shall be banned from the following pursuits for 10 years: applying for or collaborating with any AS academic activities and research projects, using AS academic and administrative resources, and engaging in concurrent employment at AS. In addition, Academic Performance rankings during his tenure from August 2014 to March 2018 shall be rated no higher than Second Level, and AS will reclaim all grant and award funding made during this time period. He should also withdraw one published paper and make corrections for the other three with the journals.

One retraction, three corrections

According to AS, Chen has been told to retract a 2016 article in Oncotarget titled “Non-epigenetic function of HDAC8 in regulating breast cancer stem cells by maintaining Notch1 protein stability,” which includes 16 instances of manipulated images. 

The corrections involve a 2017 article in Oncogenesis titled “Role of integrin-linked kinase in regulating the protein stability of the MUC1-C oncoprotein in pancreatic cancer cells,” and a 2015 paper in ChemMedChem, “Development of potent adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase (AMPK) activators.” Both articles contain reused images.

AS also told Chen to correct “Regulation of oncogenic KRAS signaling via a novel KRAS-integrin-linked kinase-hnRNPA1 regulatory loop in human pancreatic cancer cells,” a 2016 paper in Oncogene:  

The Academia Sinica investigation has concluded that Figure 2d in this paper should be corrected because of five (5) image/figure alteration issues.  Most critically, it was determined that, Dr. P.-C. Chu, the first author, is principally responsible for these image issues, whereas Dr. Ching-shih Chen, the corresponding author, should bear the responsibility for the lapse of supervision.  In other words, for this fourth paper, Dr. Ching-shih Chen was judged not to be directly responsible for the said image issues.

In an email to Retraction Watch, AS officials said: 

The corresponding author [of the papers], Dr. Ching-shih Chen, has been fully informed about this decision, to which Dr. Chen is expected to comply.

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