A group of researchers at the University of Chicago has asked a Nature journal to retract a paper after PubPeer commenters pointed out numerous duplicated images in the article.
The paper, “Synergistic checkpoint-blockade and radiotherapy–radiodynamic therapy via an immunomodulatory nanoscale metal–organic framework,” was published last month in Nature Biomedical Engineering. According to its senior author, Wenbin Lin, the technology is already in a human trial.
After five different comments on PubPeer, Lin at first said he and his colleagues would correct the paper:
We thank the reader for pointing out these errors in the Supplementary Materials of our recently published paper in Nat Biomed Eng. The first four errors pertain to PBS and H2DBP control groups. For the last error, the lack of organ abnormality and general toxicity is supported by many other lines of evidence in the manuscript. We can assure that the correction of these errors will not impact the conclusions of this paper. We have submitted corrections to the journal and provided detailed explanations to the editor. We apologize to the readers for these errors in our paper.
In a second comment, Lin said his team is “investigating what had happened and will report our findings in due time” and apologized “for the unacceptable mistakes in this paper.” But in a third comment following more than a dozen additional PubPeer comments, Lin blamed first author Kaiyuan Ni, his former graduate student:
After analyzing the problematic images and multiple meetings with other authors, we concluded that these problems were solely caused by the misconduct of the first author. We submitted a retraction note for this paper yesterday. As for the tumor size issue, our protocol has a 2 cm3 size limit and some of the antitumor efficacy experiments were ongoing during the shutdown phase of Covid pandemic in 2929 [sic]. I apologize for our failure to catch the misconduct from the first author.
Ni, now a postdoc at MIT, did not respond to requests for comment from us.
In comments to Retraction Watch, Lin reiterated what he posted on PubPeer, that
…the first author misused images in these papers, particularly in the Nat Biomed Eng paper. I am not in the position to say more as I have requested my institution to launch an investigation into the matter. We have requested to retract the Nature Biomed. Eng. paper and need more time to figure out what actually happened in other papers. I have repeatedly apologized for my failure to catch these potential misconducts and will have to wait until the investigation concludes to make additional comments.
Lin said he “communicated with [Ni] after the initial set of images were posted on Pubpeer.”
In responses to PubPeer comments on four other papers for similar issues, Lin wrote:
We are launching an investigation into this matter and will get to the bottom of this matter. We will report our findings and work with the journals to address the problems. As the corresponding author of these problematic papers, I apologize for my failure to catch potential misconducts of a singular former graduate student in my lab.
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“We thank… the National Cancer Institute (U01–CA198989 and 1R01CA253655), the Department of Defense (PC170934P2), the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center (NIH CCSG: P30 CA014599) and the Ludwig Institute for Metastasis Research for funding support.”
Competing interests:
“W.L. is founder of Coordination Pharmaceuticals, which licensed the nMOF technology from the University of Chicago. R.R.W. is a consultant to Coordination Pharmaceuticals. The other authors declare no competing interests.”
The PI’s response is pathetic. Principal investigators bear responsibility for their work. Blaming everything on the grad student is not a way to slide out of it.
A tenured PI well settled with a private company of his own ought to be more responsible. He can easily weather the blame. He threw his student under the bus. The student has the most to lose from this cowardly PI.
It is possible that this is tip of the iceberg.
That is already not a tip but rather iceberg itself
Or maybe he’s just the standard PI who is too busy or lazy to carefully look at data, or sets up an environment where positive results consistent with the hypothesis are not double-checked. That’s about average for all the academic labs I worked in. PI’s often show little interest in reproducibility, but invariably show lots of interest in becoming a famous person with tons of grant money and a big-ass multi 6 fig salary.
Isn’t this what the NIH has been rewarding for ages? Amazing results published in “ high impact journals”? 😔
Mof world starts to creak as well. look also on other works not only by him but some others dodgy stuff on pubpeer.
Yes it is disappointing from the PI. I also question the co-authors who are prominent researchers in the field. It is PI’s responsibility to send the manuscript to all co-authors at every stage of the process. Not many senior authors practice this. Please do this. As a co-author, i always check everything written and shown in a manuscript whether they are genuine. As co-authors or collaborators in a paper, we do have responsibility and our values need to be counted as well. Now, you see collateral damage just because of a paper in a Nature family journal. This is a request to all collaborators and co-authors, please insist PIs/corresponding authors to follow proper process.
Of course, the PI should take the responsibility of this problem. But, if you check on pubpeer, you will find all the papers from his lab are all from the same person (Kaiyuan Ni).
“Congrats to the 2022 PMSE Future Faculty Awardees”.
https://twitter.com/acspmse/status/1500933841220952072