University of Newcastle investigating top melanoma researchers

The University of Newcastle in Australia is investigating the work of two prominent skin cancer researchers, Retraction Watch has learned. 

Commenters on PubPeer have posted questions about the data in 42 papers by Peter Hersey and Xu Dong Zhang, both well-known in Australian melanoma research. So far, two of the papers have been retracted and four corrected. 

The University of Newcastle’s head of research and innovation confirmed that the university has launched an investigation into both experts, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch. That official has a complex history of her own: a paper of hers was retracted in 2013, leading to the return of a substantial amount of grant funding. 

Neither Hersey, who was at Newcastle until 2010 and is now at the University of Sydney, nor Zhang, who appears to still be employed at Newcastle, has directly responded to our requests for comment. The pair have addressed a handful of the allegations on PubPeer, at times disputing the claims or attributing the issues to a research assistant, and promising to seek corrections that are mostly yet to appear. 

One paper, ‘Selection for TRAIL resistance results in melanoma cells with high proliferative potential’, published in FEBS Letters in 2005 and cited 23 times, was retracted in September following “concerns raised by a third party, which revealed inappropriate duplications,” according to the notice. The authors, who included both Hersey and Zhang, couldn’t provide a satisfactory explanation for the problematic images, and “given the extent of the identified issues, the editors have lost confidence in the data presented and the article’s conclusions can no longer be considered reliable.” Three months earlier, an anonymous commenter had noted several suspected duplications in the paper on PubPeer. 

The second retraction also followed a series of comments on PubPeer which pointed out image similarities. ‘Suppression of endoplasmic reticulum stress-induced invasion and migration of breast cancer cells through the downregulation of heparanase’, a 2013 paper published in International Journal of Molecular Medicine and cited 30 times, was retracted for overlapping data and several duplications. Again the authors, including Zhang, “did not offer a satisfactory response to account for the various issues identified in these figures,” according to the retraction notice. 

On PubPeer, in response to suspected data duplication in two other papers flagged by a user in October, Hersey claimed he was unable to contact the first author in both cases, but that the papers seemed “well-supported” by other studies. In another instance, Hersey admitted a mislabelled error bar was “an oversight on our part”, although no correction to the paper appears to have followed. 

For a 2013 paper in Nature Communications flagged for image similarities in June, Zhang wrote their own “intensive investigation” found no errors in the paper, but the authors did find a microphotograph from the study was “mistakenly used” in a 2013 paper published in Oncogene. 

Similarly, in June this year, Zhang thanked an anonymous commenter for bringing attention to the “alarming issue” of suspected image duplication in a 2013 paper published in Cell Death & Disease, but claimed there were no errors in the work. The authors “mistakenly used” microphotographs from the Cell Death & Disease paper in a later work published in Oncogene in 2014, he said. 

In both instances, Zhang wrote that he would contact the journal to seek corrections “as soon as possible,” but so far neither has been corrected for those issues. 

The 2014 Oncogene paper received a correction in 2016, after image integrity expert Elisabeth Bik found duplicated images while undertaking a systematic screening of biomedical research papers. According to Zhang’s post on PubPeer, when the journal editors informed the authors of the issue, they “immediately” carried out an internal investigation. Zhang blamed a research assistant for “inappropriate manipulation” of the data. He wrote in the post that the assistant worked with the first author, Chen Chen Jiang, and that both himself and Jiang “did not carefully check the figure and did not note the manipulation.” 

Jiang, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle, is a frequent co-author with Hersey and Zhang on the papers flagged on PubPeer. She did not respond to our queries about the papers.  

In response to another comment in June regarding suspected image duplication, Zhang wrote the authors had spotted the error years prior, but he mistakenly thought he had sent it to the journal for correction. He said he would contact the journal for a correction as soon as possible, but to date, no correction has been posted.

Similarly, in 2021, Zhang agreed “the images were misused” when a commenter pointed out duplicated Western blots and other rotated images. He promised to follow up with the journal for “the necessary next steps.” No correction appears to have been made on the paper. 

Hersey, who had a paper retracted in 2006 because of “substantial overlap” with an earlier article from the same authors, has not responded to our requests for comment. Zhang referred us to the university’s media office when we asked him about the suspect papers. The office responded with a statement from Juanita Todd, the pro vice-chancellor for research. 

“The University of Newcastle is committed to the responsible and ethical conduct of research. When questions are raised about our research, we have robust processes in place to manage and investigate any research-related concerns,” Todd told us. ”We can confirm the University is currently reviewing concerns raised regarding the matter in question. However, we cannot comment until the review is complete.”

In emails seen by Retraction Watch, Zee Upton, the deputy vice-chancellor of research and innovation at Newcastle, wrote the university is investigating both Hersey and Zhang. Upton herself has previously been in the spotlight for the return of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of government grant funding at Queensland University of Technology in 2014, where she then worked, after a graduate student spotted errors in her now-retracted paper on stem cells. 

In an email response to our questions about how her past might inform her work now, Upton demurred. 

“I am fully focussed on my current role, working to build and enhance research and innovation capacity at the University of Newcastle, to deliver on our strategic goals and serve our community,” she wrote.

“I do not intend to comment further on the work associated with my time at a previous institution, which was fully assessed at the time and in the public domain.”

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