Fired OSU postdoc charged with forgery admitted to faking data, feds say

A cancer researcher who was terminated from one postdoc position and resigned another faked data in multiple papers and grant applications, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity. 

ORI found that Yiorgos (Georgios) I. Laliotis “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally and knowingly falsifying and/or fabricating data, methods, results, and conclusions” in three published papers and two applications for grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings were based on Laliotis’ own admissions as well as reports from The Ohio State University and Johns Hopkins University. 

As we’ve previously reported, Ohio State terminated Laliotis from his postdoc position in November of 2021, and he apparently resigned from another postdoc position at Johns Hopkins University that same month. Whether both universities employed him at the same time is unclear. 

Laliotis has also been charged in Franklin County, Ohio – home to Ohio State –  with forgery, identity theft, and telecommunications fraud in connection with allegations he created a fake email address in the name of Philip Tsichlis, his PI at Ohio State, and used it to send letters of recommendation purportedly from Tsichlis to prospective employers. Laliotis has pleaded not guilty to all charges. 

Issues with Laliotis’ work came to light after researchers who attempted to replicate the findings of a Nature Communications paper on which he was the first author contacted Tsichlis and shared that they could not confirm the results, according to emails we obtained through a public records request. 

As Tsichlis looked into the matter, he discovered “evidence of data manipulation,” as he put it in an email to the editor of Communications Biology requesting the retraction of a related paper. 

The Communications Biology paper was retracted in December 2021, less than one month after Tsichlis contacted the editor. He also contacted Nature Communications around the same time, but that paper was not retracted until June of 2022, two weeks after we published our initial story. 

Besides the two retracted papers, ORI identified data fabrication in a bioRxiv preprint, which has since been withdrawn, two unpublished manuscripts, and two NIH grant applications, one of which garnered Tsichlis and co-PI Vincenzo Coppola $626,476. Laliotis’ misconduct affected research funded by five grants from the National Cancer Institute, ORI said. 

ORI’s finding states that Laliotis “knowingly and intentionally” faked sequencing data in the Nature Communications paper “by splicing two sequencing chromatograms together to falsely represent a novel identification of a previously undescribed” RNA transcript, and subsequently falsified conclusions about the fabricated variant. He also falsified experimental conditions and methods, as well as additional data and conclusions in the other identified manuscripts and grant applications. 

Laliotis has not immediately responded to our request for comment. He agreed to a three year period of supervision for his research, which began on June 12, according to ORI. 

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