A researcher in Canada whose once-brilliant career in kinesiology went from plaudits from his peers to criminal charges of horrific abuse of his wife has notched his third retraction.
As we reported in 2018, Abdeel Safdar, formerly of McMaster University and Harvard, where he was a postdoc, was the subject of an institutional investigation over concerns about the integrity of the data in a pair of his published studies. At the time, journals had flagged only two of his articles, both written with a frequent co-author, Mark Tarnopolsky, of McMaster. Tarnopolsky is considered a leading figure in kinesiology, and together he and Safdar had written some 30 papers.
The newest retraction involves a 2016 article in Skeletal Muscle titled “Exercise-induced mitochondrial p53 repairs mtDNA mutations in mutator mice.” Safdar was first author and Tarnopolsky the senior and corresponding author.
According to the retraction notice:
The Editors-in-Chief have retracted this article. Following concerns raised by the corresponding author, an investigation by McMaster University confirmed concerns with Figs. 3 and 4 of this article, specifically:
Figure 3b: the VDAC band appears to be identical with the Actin band of Fig. 3b of the original article
Figure 4d overlaps with Fig. 4b of the original article
The Editors therefore no longer have confidence in the reliability of the data reported in the article.
Adeel Safdar, Konstantin Khrapko, Ayesha Saleem, Michael De Lisio, Adam P. W. Johnston, Imtiaz A. Samjoo, Yu Kitaoka, Daniel I. Ogborn, Jonathan P. Little, Sandeep Raha, Gianni Parise, Mahmood Akhtar, Bart P. Hettinga, Glenn C. Rowe, Zoltan Arany and Mark A. Tarnopolsky agree to this retraction. James M. Flynn, Yevgenya Kratysberg and Tomas A. Prolla have not responded to correspondence about this retraction.
The charges against Safdar — who was last seen serving biscuits at a Popeyes restaurant to pay down more than $1 million in legal fees and other expenses related to the case — are revolting. According to a 2020 article in The Hamilton Spectator, the researcher, his mother and brother were accused of mental and physical torture of his wife, Sara Salim, a physician to whom he was wed in 2015 in an arranged marriage.
As the Spectator reported in 2019:
There was evidence Sara was branded with a clothes iron, her jaw broken, her ear disfigured and a death threat against her child carved into her leg.
The 14-month trial against the Safdars — believed to be Hamilton’s longest criminal trial — ended when the judge, Andrew Goodman, threw out the charges on the grounds that the legal action had violated the defendants’ right to a speedy trial.
However, the Spectator reported that an Ontario family court verdict found that Adeel Safdar “confined, abused and tortured” his wife, and ordered their daughter removed from his home to the custody of her mother.
Tarnopolsky told us:
I was informed that there were concerns about 2 papers (the ones you reported on initially) that I was senior author on. I immediately reported to our Academic Integrity office and I notified the journals with an expression of concern (these 3 were published). An investigation ensued by the University as per my request and the third paper that is now retracted (as below) was uncovered during the deep dive into the publications. … the University/I sent letters to the journals after the investigation concluded and supported my concerns that these needed to be retracted. To date, I have not found solid evidence for issues in any of my other publications but I am vigilant and if I discover anything I will of course immediately report to the office as I did with these papers.
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https://pubpeer.com/search?q=authors%3A%22Tarnopolsky%22
Tarnopolsky currently has 5 papers on PubPeer. I’ll look for more issues.
Well, nothing jumped out at me.
I also pinged McMaster on an unaddressed matter I reported over a year ago. I got the polite but uninformative: “The University does not publicly provide information that may or may not pertain to an investigation under the Research Integrity Policy.”
May or may not? They might as well delete the entire dependent clause: “The University does not publicly provide information”
Actually what is the relation between the abuse case and the retraction notice? it is by the same people, but maybe not related to the retraction case.
I was surprised about that, too – the blog entry leaves a substantial amount of space to the abuse case. Wouldn’t it have been more succinct to limit the part of that case to a single phrase or sub-clause (e. g., “A. S., who is currently charged with having abused…, etc.”) with links to external sources? This would have left the emphasis entirely on the professional aspect (i. e., the retraction), while still providing information about the personal side of things.
That being said, a reader may expect this kind of personal information if this blog covers misconduct by scientists in general, i. e. also misconduct unrelated to academic publishing, e. g. as part of a general dedication to promote socially acceptable (or to point out socially unacceptable) behaviour, but I haven’t found any information about such aims on this website.
By the way, the interview transcript linked in the FAQ (“Why do you guys do this?”, link to digitalgrip.de) cannot be accessed. The source is no longer available at the indicated location and cannot be found elsewhere on the linked website either.
I agree with both above, the details of the abuse case seemed unnecessary and as such had a voyeuristic feel that made me quite uncomfortable. That woman’s horror shouldn’t be the idle gossip of passersby.
Been reading some these comments with interest and it is now a fact that Adeel Safdar was sentenced to 4 years in prison for torturing his wife. Safdar and his family (and in extension his legal team) clearly lied in criminal and family courts as per the judges’ final rulings (loss of custody and 4 years in prison).
https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2021/08/27/adeel-safdar-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison-in-hamiltons-longest-domestic-violence-trial.html
McMaster University is concluding their investigation on the topic of fraud and academic misconduct within the next 1-2 months.
Theoretically, if Safdar has attempted to lie, distract and cover-up to the same extent as he apparently did for his criminal/family court cases, and adding religion/being a minority into the mix at a prestigious university in a liberal country, well its certainly a ‘complicated issue’ to say the least. My guess is that the university officials did not want to touch this case with a 10-foot pole, especially if Safdar pulled a race/religious card and ‘lawyered up’.
My own opinion is that credibility matters and that may be the easiest way of understanding how the two seemingly unrelated cases in fact are related. What a shame for everyone involved.