A former cancer specialist sanctioned for “recklessly falsifying data” admitted during an investigation interview that he periodically altered images, documents obtained by Retraction Watch show. He also stated “he may have inadequately or improperly labeled and organized” image files, increasing the chances the images were confused or misidentified.
Alan Lichtenstein, previously a staff physician at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and faculty member at UCLA, engaged in research misconduct, according to a November 2024 notice in the Federal Register. Documents we obtained through a public records request revealed his admissions, made during an inquiry that preceded the misconduct ruling.
The documents also reveal a relatively swift process: The initial inquiry by a joint UCLA-VA GLA committee took from June to August 2023 to determine a full investigation should follow. The investigation committee, formally tasked in October of that year, finished its assessment in March 2024. The inquiry committee looked at 18 allegations across 12 papers, and the investigation considered 31 allegations in 13 papers.
As we reported at the time, the investigation focused on about a dozen papers with evidence of image similarities. Three of those papers had been retracted when the Federal Register notice was published.
A fourth paper has now joined that list: Blood, the flagship journal of the American Society of Hematology, retracted the 2003 article, “Downstream effectors of oncogenic ras in multiple myeloma cells.” The retraction notice published March 12 states:
An institutional investigation found falsified data in Figures 2, 3, and 4. Images in these figures include reused panels that create false representations. The Editors concur with these findings.
Jung-hsin Hsu, Joseph Gera, and Brian Van Ness approve the retraction. No response was received from Liping Hu, Yijiang Shi, or Alan Lichtenstein.
The article has been cited 116 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
The director of the VA GLA initiated a misconduct inquiry on June 23, 2023, after the research integrity officer at the institution received 10 emails in April of that year from an anonymous source, according to the documents we obtained. As we reported in November, that source was scientific sleuth Kevin Patrick, who also had called the papers out on PubPeer.
The committee interviewed Lichtenstein on Aug. 10, 2023, as part of that initial inquiry. By that point he had retired from UCLA and VA GLA. A memo from the research misconduct inquiry committee to the VA director, dated Aug. 18, 2023, summarized the interview.
The inquiry report said Lichtenstein told interviewers all original data and lab books were discarded when he closed his lab when he retired. The report stated the researcher told interviewers he “had no knowledge of the present whereabouts of any of the gel images or other original data.”
The documents note that, as part of the investigation, the VA research integrity officer searched Lichtenstein’s network drives but “was unable to identify any files that were material to the investigation.”
Lichtenstein told interviewers the first author of the publications “was always the person who cast and ran the gels in the laboratory,” according to the inquiry report. Lab staff would email the original images to Lichtenstein as a PowerPoint file, which he would save “according to the protein probe used and were formatted and arranged into the figures that were eventually published.”
The later investigation report stated those images were formatted and arranged “exclusively” by Lichtenstein.
The interview summary in the inquiry report stated Lichtenstein admitted to altering images, and that poor labeling could have led to wrong files getting used:
The Respondent admitted to altering the contrast, brightness, and aspect ratio of the images at times, claiming that he did not know this was inappropriate. He admitted that since many of the files may have been inadequately or improperly labeled, there is a chance that some of the files may have been confused or misidentified, with consequent multiple use and mislabeling.
When asked about specific allegations, including duplicate band pairs and duplicated images, he did not challenge them, the documents state:
The Respondent attributed all of these alleged errors to “sloppiness” and not to any systematic modification of the data intended to alter their interpretation; indeed, he stands behind all of the conclusions stated in every publication in which he was senior author and further states that many of the conclusions drawn from his publications have been confirmed by other publications.
Lichtenstein also stated the 10 papers in the investigation on which he was the senior author “represent a small fraction of the 60 or so publications published under his name within the same time period, for which no such duplications have been alleged,” the interview summary states.
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If 10% of the checks I write bounce, or 10% of the meals I cook make diners sick, the fact that it’s “a small fraction” is not much of a defense. I don’t think it should be here, either.
I am also not clear how duplicate bands get into a photo by accident. Using the wrong image is one thing. Cutting and pasting is quite another.
A researcher who changed his field of research from Cancer Research to Cancel Resarch