Two years after a psychology researcher in The Netherlands was found guilty of misconduct, including manipulating data and cutting co-workers out of publications, a new report says she deserves more retractions.
In November 2019, as we reported, Lorenza Colzato was found guilty by an investigation at Leiden University of having failed to obtain ethics ethics approval for some of her studies, manipulating her data and fabricating results in grant applications.
At the time, the institution – which Colzato had left for TU Dresden – called for the retraction of two of the researcher’s papers. Both were pulled, and we spoke to the three whistleblowers about lessons of the case.
However, the Leiden University weekly newspaper Mare has learned that a subsequent inquiry – a report on which appeared without announcement in November 2021– concluded that 15 of Colzato’s articles appeared to contain evidence of misconduct:
This concerns changes in the study design, the addition of a control group afterwards or the omission of data without justifying or even reporting this.
In seven of the fifteen articles, the manipulations are ‘so serious that it is recommended to request the journals concerned to withdraw them’ because the conclusions are incorrect due to fraud, or it is plausible to conclude this. Since the report has been anonymized, it remains unclear which articles are involved and who are involved as co-authors.
According to Mare:
In the other eight articles, malpractice weakened the conclusions, the committee said. However, the manipulations ‘are of such a nature that a journal editor must be informed of this, so that they can decide how the readers will be informed, or whether to proceed with retraction ‘ .
The committee also recommends that:
the authorities involved (including subsidy providers and the current employer of the researcher concerned) be informed about the scientific misconduct. The committee also recommends that all articles of the person concerned be subject to a further investigation into possible violations of scientific integrity. The [committee] only examined the publications about which complaints were made by third parties.
Colzato did not respond to a request for comment.
Hat tip: Daniël Lakens
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