Former Mount Sinai postdoc falsified images in grant updates, ORI says

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has sanctioned a former postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York for manipulating images in two grant updates and a manuscript.

Chen-Yeh “George” Ke committed research misconduct by intentionally falsifying images in an unpublished manuscript supported by federal funds and by reporting the fabricated results in two research performance progress reports, according to a summary published March 10 on the ORI website and to be published in the Federal Register.  

Ke, now a manager at Level Biotechnology in Taiwan, according to LinkedIn, did not return messages seeking comment. A spokesperson from Mount Sinai acknowledged our message but did not comment before our deadline. 

ORI’s findings stemmed from an investigation by Mount Sinai that concluded Ke manipulated western blot images and microscopy images to represent different experiments in an unpublished manuscript, according to the ORI’s summary. Ke also falsified imaging in the manuscript and repeated the fabrication in two grant updates submitted to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the agency said.

ORI’s ruling requires a three-year supervision period for any federally funded research and bans Ke from advisory service in the Public Health Service. Ke did not contest the actions, according to ORI’s summary.

According to Ke’s LinkedIn profile, he was a postdoc researcher at Mount Sinai from 2018 to 2022 and has been at Level Biotechnology since 2022.

The research in question was supported by grant R01 DE022363-06A1, the principal investigator on which was Philippe Soriano, a former professor of cell, developmental and regenerative biology at Mount Sinai.

Soriano, who has since retired, told us he and two postdocs discovered the manipulated data while going over a draft of the unpublished manuscript. Soriano said he discussed the issue with Ke, who acknowledged the falsification. Soriano told us he immediately reported the incident to his department chair, and Ke soon resigned from his postdoctoral position. The unpublished manuscript was never submitted for publication, according to Soriano and the ORI’s report. 

Soriano and Ke published a separate study in Genesis, a Wiley title, in 2022 about the Wnt1-Cre2 transgene that was supported by the same grant. The paper was not included in ORI’s report.

Soriano told us Ke only made an initial observation on the recombination events caused by the Wnt1Cre2 line, and that the team felt they should include Ke on the published paper. However, Soriano told us “absolutely none of his data was included in the paper or the figures of the submitted manuscript.”

The finding is the second from ORI in 2026, the same total issued by the office in all of 2025 — which was the fewest the office had released in a year since at least 2006. According to ORI’s 2024 annual report, released on the last day of 2025, the office received 713 allegations and closed 119 cases.

Update, March 13, 2026: This story was updated to include comment from Philippe Soriano, who got back to us after our story was originally published.

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