Three years after work from his lab was the subject of “serious allegations,” a professor at Deakin University in Australia has left his post, Retraction Watch has learned.
In an October 6, 2020 letter to staff at Deakin’s School of Medicine obtained by Retraction Watch, Dean Gary Rogers writes that Jagat Kanwar, who joined the school’s faculty in 2006, would be leaving effective October 16. Rogers continues:
Professor Kanwar first commenced in 2006 as an Associate Professor in Immunology/Cell Biology with the Centre for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Sciences, within the Faculty of Science. He was later appointed to the position of Professor of Nanomedicine with the School of Medicine, within the Faculty of Health, a position he has held for the past 7 years.
Rogers forwarded our request for comment about the reasons for Kanwar’s departure to Deakin’s privacy officer, who told us:
Deakin University is subject to the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2012 and has obligations under that Act. We are therefore unable to release personal information collected by the University outside the application of the Information Privacy Principles (IPP’s) specified in the Act.
Kanwar has corrected several papers in the past year for image issues, including one in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) – Molecular Basis of Disease, one in Experimental Eye Research, and another in the International Journal of Nanomedicine.
In 2017, Frontiers in Pharmacology retracted a 2015 paper by Kanwar and colleagues for image duplication, and subjected another to an expression of concern while it investigated “serious allegations.” That second paper was corrected in 2018. A 2015 paper in Biomaterials received a correction in May 2017, also for image issues.
Kanwar was a middle author on a 2013 paper retracted because of a mislabeled chemical bottle, according to the notice.
We were unable to find non-Deakin contact information for Kanwar.
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Kanwar was a middle author on a 2013 paper retracted because of a mislabeled chemical bottle, according to the notice.
This reminds me of Jaio et al (2017), who were unable to replicate their their original positive results, apparently because these had been obtained using expired curcumin. Evidently the mutations in the materials caused by the passage of time could not be reproduced.
http://retractionwatch.com/2017/12/04/caught-notice-find-paper-relied-expired-material/
Dr Jeckell encountered the same phenomenon, of course, and then the same plot device found its way into Machen’s “The Novel of the White Powder”. So it’s a well-established tradition by now.