Authors affiliated with a federal health sciences university have lost three papers this year for image duplication following an investigation by the institution. And another journal has confirmed it will retract a fourth paper by some of the same authors.
The “internal research misconduct investigation” conducted by the Uniformed Services University, or USU, in Bethesda, Md., found “several falsified or inappropriately duplicated images” and “images from previously published articles,” according to two of the retraction notices. USU, an institution focused on military medicine and part of the U.S. Department of Defense, acknowledged our multiple requests for comment about the investigation but did not provide a statement.
In January, Retraction Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request about the investigation. The Department of Defense acknowledged our request on January 7, noting the agency has 4,552 open requests that are processed in the order in which they are received.
All four studies were funded by the same $36 million award, which USU granted to the Department of Defense Gynecologic Cancer Center of Excellence in Bethesda. G. Larry Maxwell, co-principal investigator of the research center, is a common author on all four papers.
The December retraction of a paper published in Apoptosis in 2021 seems to be the first casualty of USU’s investigation. It has been cited 28 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. The retraction notice referenced “image overlaps” between figures in that paper and two previously published papers, one from PLOS One and one from Biomedicines. Those articles have no common coauthors with the Apoptosis paper.
The notice says the journal was “unable to find the current email address of the corresponding author,” Viqar Syed. Syed was an associate professor at USU and is a coauthor on all four papers. Emails to Syed’s USU affiliation bounced back, and messages on LinkedIn went unanswered.
Kevin Patrick, a sleuth who goes by “Actinopolyspora biskrensis” on PubPeer, flagged the Apoptosis paper and others in a string of comments in November 2022. He confirmed he reached out to the journal when he posted the comment.
Melania Ruiz, executive publisher for Springer Nature, which publishes Apoptosis, told us a reader first alerted the journal to concerns raised on PubPeer in 2022, after which the journal “immediately commenced a thorough investigation” separate from USU’s inquiry. (Ruiz did not confirm whether the reader was Patrick.)
Among the papers Patrick flagged was a 2019 paper in AME Publishing’s Translational Cancer Research, which was retracted in May. According to the notice, USU alerted the editors about “several falsified or inappropriately duplicated images” in the work. The paper has been cited nine times.
Eric Chuang, the editor in chief of TCR, did not respond to our request for comment.
Patrick commented on PubPeer in November 2022 noting similarities between the TCR paper and four others, one of which was a 2017 paper in Oncotarget with Syed as a coauthor.
Patrick told us he contacted the university and journals that published each of the papers, including TCR and Oncotarget, when he discovered issues in the papers in 2022. Although he didn’t flag the 2017 Oncotarget paper in his emails, he flagged two others coauthored by Syed.
According to emails seen by Retraction Watch, USU did not respond to Patrick until he followed up in 2024; the institution redirected him to Toya Randolph, USU’s assistant vice president of research administration. When Patrick followed up again in April of this year, Mitchell Woodberry, deputy research integrity officer at the school, told Patrick “maintaining confidentiality is paramount to ensure a thorough, competent, objective, and fair research proceeding.” Woodberry did not confirm whether the university had initiated an investigation.
Elena Kurenova, the scientific integrity editor at Oncotarget, told us the 2017 paper, which now bears an expression of concern, will be retracted. She also noted the journal is investigating another paper by Syed, but did not specify which one.
Kurenova told us the journal became aware of Patrick’s PubPeer comments in November 2022 and notified Syed that same month. She said Syed responded two weeks later promising to investigate, but the journal hasn’t heard from her since.
Last July, the journal sent a message to all authors and heard from Maxwell informed them of an ongoing investigation at USU. All other coauthors on the paper support the forthcoming retraction, Kurenova said.
Kurenova also told us Randolph, USU’s assistant vice president of research administration, contacted the journal to request the article be retracted after an investigation “found several falsified or inappropriately duplicated images.”
Maxwell directed our request for comment to Randolph, who acknowledged our message but has not responded to follow-up emails. When Patrick reached out to her office last year, they acknowledged his concerns but didn’t provide any additional information.
The most recent retraction came in June on a 2020 paper from MDPI’s Biomedicines. The notice said an internal investigation “with input from” USU found instances of image duplication. The study has been cited eight times. Lauren Calvert, junior press officer at MDPI, told us “another article connected to this paper” was under review.
Aside from the papers retracted or under investigation, Patrick and others have raised concerns on PubPeer for Syed’s papers regarding image duplication, “reuse” and “unexpected” similarities.
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