PLOS Pathogens has retracted a paper by a former group at Harvard following a postdoc’s allegations the work contained manipulated data.
The retracted paper, “Pseudomonas aeruginosa–induced nociceptor activation increases susceptibility to infection,” appeared in 2021 from the lab of Mihaela Gadjeva, an immunologist previously based at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. It has been cited 22 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Gadjeva had been employed at Brigham and Women’s hospital for 16 years until her departure at some point in 2022. Since then, she has been an associate director of bacteriology at Moderna.
The retraction comes after a former postdoc in Gadjeva’s lab reported suspicions about possible data manipulation using photo editing software to the hospital and the journal. We spoke with the postdoc via email, where they shared evidence of their correspondence. They wished to remain anonymous for this story. We also reached out to Gadjeva for comment and got an email from her lawyers, Gelb & Gelb LLP, based in Massachusetts, requesting that we direct any further communication through them. They have not responded to our queries.
The postdoc contacted the editor at PLOS Pathogens in August 2022 with concerns about the article. They alleged some data in figure 5 had been changed to support the claims in the paper.
The retraction notice doesn’t repeat the postdoc’s allegations of manipulation. Instead, it attributes the retraction to “concerns about the reliability of the reported results and conclusions” related to six figures, including figure 5. The authors acknowledged “some data underlying the figures of concern are no longer available,” according to the notice.
The notice also stated the authors told editors they had combined multiple experiments during data preparation and analysis, and noted other factors that may have contributed to errors in the work.
After receiving the postdoc’s report, PLOS launched an investigation into the paper and reassessed the article, identifying additional duplications and errors, David Knutson, the head of communications at PLOS, told Retraction Watch. When we asked whether the journal’s own investigation into the paper addressed the allegations of data manipulation, Knutson responded, “Our publication ethics investigations do not investigate culpability or origin of error.”
To fix the problems, the authors offered updated figures, some original data and repeat data, but the journal’s editorial board concluded the materials “did not resolve the issues,” according to the retraction notice. After the two-year-long process, the paper was retracted this October.
The postdoc had reported the same issues to the hospital’s research integrity office in April 2022, several months before contacting the journal, but told Retraction Watch that they did not receive a response.
When asked if Brigham and Women’s Hospital had looked into the postdoc’s concerns about the paper, a spokesperson for the hospital replied that Gadjeva “is not employed at BWH.” In a follow up email, she added, “We always undertake a robust and confidential process and respond to any claims that are brought to our attention in accordance with hospital policy and federal regulations.”
“We can not comment on the confidential process,” the email continued.
PLOS contacted Brigham and Women’s Hospital to “discuss concerns,” Knutson said. Those discussions “are confidential,” he said.
“Our editorial decision was made independent from the information we received from the institute,” he told us. “PLOS retracted the article because we were unable to resolve the concerns raised in the absence of the underlying data.”
In a separate incident in 2020, the attending veterinarian at Brigham and Women’s Hospital appeared to have suspended Gadjeva’s group from using an animal room — where lab rats are temporarily housed for experimentation — after an inspection found conditions that did not comply with regulations, according to an email describing the inspection report seen by Retraction Watch.
The room where the mice were housed was too cold, and the animals were kept in dirty cages, with little food and water supplies, according to the report. The inspector also found unsealed food, and no records for the animals.
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Every place I’ve worked has people that others avoid as coauthors. All institutions fail to weed these people out.
The conditions described in the animal cages would introduce variables into any study. They would have to mimic the bad conditions to replicate the data.