Northwestern researcher has four more papers retracted, making five

A pathologist in Chicago has lost five papers for image manipulation and other problems. 

The first retraction for Yashpal Kanwar, of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, appeared in 2013, for a review article published earlier that year in the American Journal of Physiology Renal Physiology. According to the notice: 

This review article contains a number of passages that are similar or identical to that of an excellent review by Mélanie Métrich et al. in Pflügers Archiv-European Journal of Physiology 459(4): 535–546, 2010, and to that of other reviews. We also did not reference all of the sources for these passages.

We offer our formal apologies for this error and for any inconvenience assoeiated [sic] with the publication of this article. The paper is therefore being retracted by the American Physiological Society, at the request of Drs. Yang and Sun, with the approval of the other coauthors.

(Praise and euphemism, we’re afraid, don’t wallpaper plagiarism.)

Then, this past June, the Journal of Biological Chemistry removed four more of Kanwar’s articles, including one from 2002 titled “High glucose stimulates synthesis of fibronectin via a novel protein kinase C, Rap1b, and B-Raf signaling pathway.” According to the notice: 

This article has been withdrawn by the authors. Fig. 1F was flipped horizontally and reused in Fig. 9D. Fig. 1G was rotated 180 degrees and reused in Fig. 3D. Fig. 2B was flipped horizontally and reused in Fig. 2F. A portion of Fig. 6C was reused in Fig. 6D. Fig. 7A was inappropriately manipulated.

That’s similar, if more extensive, than the notice for another 2002 paper, “Isolation and functional analysis of mouse UbA52 gene and its relevance to diabetic nephropathy”:

This article has been withdrawn by the authors. In Fig. 1, clones 6 and 9 were duplicated. 

The citation counts for the five articles range from six to 38, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. 

Kanwar in an email told us that the work is solid:

JBC informed me regarding the retraction. As far as I know there are no more papers slated for retraction. The conclusions of all the four articles remains unchanged.

Of note: The auto-fill settings on Kanwar’s electronic CV mean his academic highlights now lead with the retractions.

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