“We thank Dr. Elisabeth Bik for drawing the irregularities to the authors’ attention.” A sleuth earns recognition.

A trio of researchers in Argentina is up to three retractions, and may well lose even more papers, for doctoring their images. And, in an unusual move, one of the leading data sleuths is getting credit for her work helping to out the problematic figures. 

One article, “Apocynin-induced nitric oxide production confers antioxidant protection in maize leaves,” appeared in 2009 in the Journal of Plant Physiology, published by Elsevier. The authors were affiliated with the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. 

As the retraction notice states: 

This article has been retracted at the request of Cristina Lombardo, Lorenzo Lamattina, Raul Cassia [not in the roster here is Vanesa Tossi, the first author] 

Several figures in the article by Tossi et al. appear to have been intentionally manipulated and therefore, representing results that are not accurate.

The specific concerns are: the substance of the complaint is that the 3 upper-row control images (H2O, Apocynin and Apocynin + L-NAME) of figure 3A (-UV-B), as displayed in the color on-line version, are identical or consecutive exposures of the same sample. The right image appears to be rotated 180 degrees. Thus, these apparent duplications are not the proper controls as outlined in the text.

We thank Dr. Elisabeth Bik for drawing the irregularities to the authors’ attention.

Alrun Albrecht, whose title is “publisher” at Elsevier, told us: 

We were in contact with the authors and the retraction is the result of this communication. Also to thank you Dr. Bik is a standard procedure for us.

It may very well be, although it isn’t something we see all that often. In fact, we frequently hear from sleuths who are less than pleased to be referred to as an anonymous “reader.”

Another paper by Tossi and colleagues, “Nitric oxide and flavonoids are systemically induced by UV-B in maize leaves,” which appeared in Plant Science in 2012, also has been retracted (again, with a hat tip to Bik): 

Several figures in the article by Tossi et al appear to have been intentionally manipulated and, therefore, representing results that are not accurate.

The specific concerns are 1) the NO/-UVB panel in Fig. 1B is an apparent duplication of the Fig. 4 NO/PC panel; 2) the Flavonoid/UVB panel in Fig. 1B is an apparent duplication of the Fig. 4 Flavonoid/U panel; and 3), many of the RT-PCR bands in Fig. 5 are apparently identical.

The apparent duplications of the panels in Fig. 1B and Fig. 4 appears to have been done intentionally. The brightness of the published Fig. 1B NO/-UVB panel was decreased and rotated 180 degrees relative to the NO/PC panel in Fig. 4. The two images are identical when the brightness of Fig. 1B is enhanced and the Fig. 4 panel rotated 180 degrees as shown in the attachment. Likewise, Fig. 1B Flavonoid/UVB panel was manipulated to disguise it from the Flavonoid/U panel in Fig. 4.

We thank Dr Elisabeth Bik for drawing the irregularities to the authors’ attention.

A third paper, “Nitric oxide enhances plant ultraviolet‐B protection up‐regulating gene expression of the phenylpropanoid biosynthetic pathway,” from 2011, was retracted in 2018 by Plant, Cell & Environment.

Together, the three papers have been cited just shy of 100 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

From PubPeer to Twitter

Bik, who told us that neither journal informed her that she would be named in the notices, said she first was alerted to potential problems with the work by a Twitter user, who pointed her to entries on PubPeer about the researchers: 

These 4 papers were already on PubPeer, all posted around 2017/2018 by different PubPeer accounts. 

…

After this person contacted me on Twitter, I found two more papers by this group and posted those on PubPeer. One was the 2009 article, which has now been retracted. 

Bik said she reported the wonky images to the journals on Nov. 30, 2019, which means that the retractions came about four months later — which, although we say with a sigh, is rather quick, as these things go.

Update, 1900 UTC, 4/2/20: Bik wrote us to correct the record about whether Elsevier had mentioned naming her in the retraction notice. She found an email exchange from January in which they had.

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