A former PhD student at Auburn University in Alabama relabeled and reused images inappropriately in a grant application, published paper, and several presentations, a U.S. government watchdog has found.
The Office of Research Integrity says Sarah Elizabeth Martin “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally or knowingly falsifying and/or fabricating experimental data and results obtained under different experimental conditions,” according to a case summary posted online.
The published paper, “The m6A landscape of polyadenylated nuclear (PAN) RNA and its related methylome in the context of KSHV replication,” appeared online in advance of publication in RNA in June 2021. The journal retracted the article last year, with the following notice:
RNA is retracting the above-mentioned article because the authors have lost confidence in the validity of some of the data and conclusions drawn from them. This action has been agreed to by all of the authors. The authors regret any inconvenience that this has caused to the scientific community.
The paper has been cited a total of nine times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, seven of the citations coming after the retraction.
ORI’s findings include an extensive and detailed list of images Martin reused and relabeled to represent different experiments, including original gel images in PowerPoint presentations she provided to RNA to support her data.
We sent an email requesting comment to Martin’s Auburn email address and did not immediately receive a response or a bounce back. Martin’s former advisor, Joanna Sztuba-Solińska, was the principal investigator on the grant application ORI said contained fake data. That grant garnered $188,451 in funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Sztuba-Solińska now works in vaccine development at Pfizer.
Martin agreed to a three-year ban from all federal contracting, including grant funding, as well as a two-year supervision period for any federally-funded research to begin after the ban lapses. During the five-year period, Martin may not serve in any advisory or consulting role with the U.S. Public Health Service, which includes the National Institutes of Health.
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How did the grad student get hit with this when the PI is the advisor?
It’s always been easier to blame the subordinates (eg. Grad Student, lab tech) than it has been to go after someone else higher in the food chain (eg. the Principle Investigator) who oversees those subordinates. Because really, what’s a Grad Student gonna do? Engage a lawyer and institute a lawsuit over the matter? Nope. They don’t pay Grad Students that much for their work. They’ll just sign off on any agreement the ORI proposes and hope their careers aren’t totally destroyed at the end of the day.
These continuing ORI reports are clearly just the tip of the iceberg.
I am saddened to think how much of basic science research like this is fabricated to keep grants comings. Totally sad state of affairs. The current incentive structure is broken because it products fraud.
My historical comment on such a many-paged ORI/HHS research misconduct finding report as ORI had published in the Federal Register:
this one for S. Martin, former graduate student at Auburn, is the largest report (4.5 pages of typed text), exceeding a 2005 one for E. Poehlman, Professor at Vermont (4.3 pages), a 2020 one for Z Wang, Professor at Wayne State (4.0 pages), and a 2023 one for K. Subbaramaiah, Professor at Weill Cornell (3.3 pages).
The 346 other Fed.Reg.-published ORI findings were 1 to 2 pages [there were sixteen other 1993 findings that were not published in the Fed.Reg. by ORI/HHS, which was created in August 1992 from the NIH OSI]. [see my 2013 paper on the early history of OSI/ORI at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08989621.2013.822238#.UkmnjZ0o5eU ]