Sometimes, we become part of the story: A play in several acts.
On Jan. 27, 2021, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) issued a report about the work of Ye Zhang, a materials scientist on the faculty. The Institute, as we reported February 2, found that Zhang had committed plagiarism and had fabricated data in a May 2019 paper in Chemical Communications, and suspended her for six months.
Zhang told us on February 3 that she “dispute[d] the conclusion of the investigation on scientific grounds that refute it entirely.” In a comment the next day, a Retraction Watch commenter asked to see the spectra Zhang and colleagues referred to in the paper. Zhang sent those shortly thereafter, and we posted them to the site.
And now, some four and a half months later, comes an expression of concern, signed by the journal’s executive editor, Richard Kelly. The EOC includes Zhang’s full-throated defense, and a link to that PDF:
The Royal Society of Chemistry has been notified about the outcome of an investigation at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology that the results presented in this Chemical Communications article may not be reliable according to the following report: https://groups.oist.jp/system/files/2021-01-27_research-misconduct_en.pdf. The authors dispute the contents of the report and have provided the following statement:
We disagree with the OIST report and have addressed all scientific points raised in our official statement published on Retraction Watch: https://retractionwatch.com/2021/02/03/okinawa-researcher-suspended-for-faking-data-denies-committing-misconduct/#more-121443. We also provided the spectra of the target molecules reported in the article to Retraction Watch which are free to download: https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Compound-1-and-2.pdf.
The co-authors are repeating the experiments as part of an ongoing expanded study that follows up on this Chemical Communications article.
Chemical Communications is publishing this Expression of Concern to alert readers that we are presently unable to confirm the accuracy of the data reported in this paper. An expression of concern will continue to be associated with the article until we receive conclusive evidence regarding the reliability of the reported data.
The paper has been cited eight times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, including once since our publication of the university’s report.
We’d say “Fin,” but there’s likely to be at least one more act in this play.
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