The journal Nature Synthesis has pulled a high-profile article describing the creation of a new type of carbon after a university investigation found some data were made up.
“The authors of the original paper claimed to have created an entirely new form or carbon, graphyne, which is fundamentally different common diamond or graphite,” said Valentin Rodionov, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, whose team has been investigating the now-retracted work for the past two years.
“If true, this would have been a groundbreaking discovery,” Rodionov told Retraction Watch. His team described its findings in a commentary published on September 2 in the journal.
A retraction notice released the same day stated:
A formal investigation was launched by the Office of Research Integrity at the University of Colorado after concerns were raised about the validity of some of the data reported in this work. From this investigation, it was concluded that the data used to produce Supplementary Figure S10 were fabricated and that the procedures used to produce Figure 2b deviated from standard practices. The investigation committee agreed that the data in Figure S10 are not critical to support the major claim of the manuscript and do not affect the overall scientific advance presented in a significant way. Out of a sense of responsibility, the authors have decided to retract the Article.
The paper has been cited well over 100 times.
The corresponding authors of the study – Wei Zhang at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Yingjie Zhao of Qingdao University of Science and Technology in China – did not respond to requests for comment from Retraction Watch. Asked for comment, a Springer Nature spokesperson referred us to the retraction notice.
Rodionov explained that the authors used a “method called ‘alkyne metathesis,’ which was always expected to be the path to this new material. While this approach failed to work for the last 25 years, in the hands of the authors it has seemingly produced the desired result.”
But the findings didn’t hold up when Rodionov and his colleagues looked more closely. Of the two crystal structures for the synthesized material described in the paper, one “featured a distance between non-bonded carbon atoms which in our opinion is impossibly short,” he said. Furthermore, the reported spectroscopic characterization appeared to disagree with the structure claimed by the authors.”
It turned out that structure “could be generated through a common type of a computer simulation, if the parameters for the simulation were set to incorrect default values.” And that “structure was a perfect match for the reported X-ray diffraction data,” he said, referring to a technique for direct measurement of interatomic distances. Those data “featured an unusual distribution of experimental noise, and overall the noise level was lower than expected.”
Neither discrepancy could be “explained by any reasonable means,” said Rodionov, whose team shared their findings with the University of Colorado and the journal starting in late 2022.
A correction to the paper in July 2022 added a Research Resource ID which had not appeared in the original version.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
“The investigation committee agreed that the data in Figure S10 are not critical to support the major claim of the manuscript and do not affect the overall scientific advance presented in a significant way.”
It really bothers me that when direct, intentional fraud is discovered, the benefit of the doubt continues to be given by these journals. You DO have evidence the major claim is corrupt: you detected intentional fraud in the paper, and if a person is willing to lie about something that doesn’t matter, it is extremely likely there exists fraud you did not detect which does compromise the major claim.
I don’t understand why they keep doing this. Isn’t it irresponsible to assume good faith when you have proven bad faith exists in the article? Is this just me?
I am yet another witness to journals trying their absolute best to avoid retraction at any cost.
It’s troubling when intentional data fabrication are employed to polish and mislead academic world. Uncorroborated data arising from human missteps in procedural methodological diligence or environment are tolerable but not well calculated data falsification.
I do equate this behavior to any professor within academic or research setting that engages in deceptive practices and mentorship to portray a very serious student as weak and incapable of generating excellent academic work. Congress must begin to reflect on these practices that destroy academic credibility, generally, and standardization with the goal of a protective legislation to set high detterence with global replication potential. It’s time to energize and mobilize lawmakers into sweeping action.
Trixie, Absolutely! Your comments are on target.
Thanks for investing the effort to write your comments. Yours and others add much to Retraction Watch.
No, it’s not just you, Trixie. But the omertà is extremely powerful…
I fully endorse this comment. If the data in Fig. S10 (XRD patterns, called “XRD spectra” in the supplementary information file) are “not critical”, what is the purpose to include this figure? Does that mean that any non-critical figure (cats, dogs, canaries, whatever) could be used to pad any supplementary information file? Worse: faked data “do not affect the overall scientific advance presented in a significant way”??? Seriously?
And the same is valid for Figs. S7, S8, S13 (this one is shameful for a “Nature” paper: senseless Tauc plots, called “Tacu plot” in the figure caption, are not even accepted in an undergraduate Thesis), S16, S17, etc.
A compelling rebuttal was released 18 months ago on Pubpeer, but the authors of the paper did not even bother acknowledging the fact that many things (actually, almost all) in their article were puzzling. No answer to the thread, nothing, nothing at all. I suppose they buried their heads in the sand. Now, according to their own University, we learn that “some data were made up”. And what are the consequences for the authors who have been caught red-handed? Probably none. This is frustrating.
Anything is possible, even the suspension of the laws of nature when extremely ambitious authors meet an extremely prestigious scientific journal.
Please excuse a comment from a non-scientific Muppet but did I just read that they couldn’t get the science to come out right (as others had failed for 25 years, so hardly a blot on their efforts) and so they created a computer-modelled version and said, “Yup, that’s it! Honest. Really, really.”…….. and this is considered as bad data handling.
They don’t think it affects the scientific advance presented when the advance presented was made up by a computer and, it seems, would be unlikely to exist in the real world.
I know I’m no scientist but it honestly looks like the retractor speaks with a forked tongue!
The “retractors” must adhere to the rules of political correctness! A lie of this magnitude is simply treated as the closing of an interrogative question with an exclamation mark in lieu of a question mark! Unbelievable!
Everyone who’s name is in the paper should be fired and black-listed from further publishing. If that paper has been referenced 100 times, it means it influenced the direction of 100 research projects. In other words, one fake article like that damages tons of research around the world for years until it is found out.
Right now there is virtually no consequences, so no incentive to stop.
How we can come to know about the validity of the papers before citing them in our papers.
It’s really bad to promote the fake papers.
This speaks volumes to pressures faced by some students/faculties to publish in reputable journals for career advancement. Until peer reviewed publications are not taken as an integral part of academic career advancement, this type of falsification of data will continue to prevail even without repercussions to the suspect’s.
The damage had been done to all the published papers, which would have cited this retracted paper for reference.
Refraction doesn’t have impact except penalty is meted to the authors on the retracted paper for they had shared the paper’s benefits.
Publicising the retraction in the least had tarnished the listed authors on the paper. Kudos to the journals, which further investigate faked-data articles and publicise anyone they come across like this we are treating.
The same first author student and PI published an article in Science earlier this year. The University of Colorado should conduct a transparent investigation into everything this research group has published in the past few years.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj8791