A researcher at the center of questions about a biotech’s controversial experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s disease has lost five papers in PLOS One.
The journal says it is retracting the articles, by Hoau-Yan Wang and colleagues, over concerns about the integrity of the data and the images in the papers. Wang does not agree with any of the retractions.
As we’ve reported, Wang, of the CIty University of New York, helped conduct the studies that formed the backbone of the regulatory filing for the drug simufilam, which Cassava Sciences — formerly Pain Therapeutics — has been trying to bring to market. Cassava, according to a citizen’s petition to the FDA, has funded Wang’s lab for more than 15 years, and two of the now-retracted papers feature Lindsay Burns, a Cassava employee, as a co-author. (The citizen’s petition, which called on the FDA to halt Cassava’s trials, was filed by a law firm representing Cassava short sellers but eventually denied by the FDA because it was not an appropriate venue.)
According to the Wall Street Journal, the company has been under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for questions about whether it provided manipulated data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the medication.
Wang’s work has come under scrutiny on PubPeer, as well as by Elisabeth Bik, who has been unimpressed with the way journals have handled the case.
Three of Wang’s papers have received expressions of concern but have not been retracted.
Here’s part of the retraction notice for one of the articles, “Prenatal Cocaine Exposure Upregulates BDNF-TrkB Signaling,” which appeared in August 2016:
The corresponding author provided image data to support their western blot results in this [1] and other PLOS ONE articles [2–5]. Per PLOS’ assessment of the data files, the pixel patterns in background areas of blot images provided for multiple panels in [1–5] appear more similar than would be expected for data obtained in independent experiments. The corresponding author stated that the repetitive features in the background noise of the underlying data are likely the result of scanner artifacts.
With the exception of point 1, the data and comments provided to PLOS did not resolve the concerns about the integrity and reliability of the reported data. Therefore, the PLOS ONE Editors retract this article.
HYW did not agree with the retraction and stands by the article’s findings. AS, KPB, and EF either did not respond directly or could not be reached.
The four other papers are:
- Prenatal Cocaine Exposure Increases Synaptic Localization of a Neuronal RasGEF, GRASP-1 via Hyperphosphorylation of AMPAR Anchoring Protein, GRIP
- Naloxone’s Pentapeptide Binding Site on Filamin A Blocks Mu Opioid Receptor–Gs Coupling and CREB Activation of Acute Morphine
- Prenatal Cocaine Exposure Uncouples mGluR1 from Homer1 and Gq Proteins
- High-Affinity Naloxone Binding to Filamin A Prevents Mu Opioid Receptor–Gs Coupling Underlying Opioid Tolerance and Dependence
The last paper was one of those criticized in the citizen’s petition.
These are not Wang’s first retractions. In February, he lost a paper in Molecular Degeneration on which he was second to last author for what the last author said was “an irregularity in one of the figures.” Of note, that retraction is also the 23rd for Stanley Rapoport, who as of 2017 remained at the NIH but was no longer running a lab.
Hat tip: @Adrian_H
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Isn’t it about time for the home institutions to be fined for publishing problematic data?
Loss of money is the metric they understand.
What other mechanism is likely to make the home institutions check the integrity of the data?
In theory that might work, but in practice I fear it would create a major problem for legitimate researchers: institutions will come up with all kind of bureaucracy intended to avoid fraud which will put additional administrative workload on scientists (without actually achieving anything, of course).
Out of interest, what would you suggest? Status quo?
What entity is going to fine the home institution? How would the fines be enforced and collected if the institution refuses to pay? How could you ever force them to pay? How large will the fines be? What would be done with the money if it was ever collected?
For research that was paid for by federal grants, which includes much of Dr. Wang’s work, the US government can demand that grant money is paid back, impose fines, and debar investigators or institutions from applying for additional federal funding. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen in extreme cases.
eg: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/science/duke-settlement-research.html
Those following the Wang saga may also be interested in another “corrigendum” published in Neuroscience (Elsevier) the day after the PLoS one retractions, for a paper (unrelated to Cassava) that came from a collaboration between Wang and Dr. Siobhan Robinson at Hamilton College. The authors claim to correct “two honest human errors have no material impact on the findings of the research (the data analyses are correct) and instead relate to the visual display of representative western blots.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452222001506
original paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452221003584
The “corrigendum” contains many inconsistencies and signs of additional image manipulation, and was quickly and hilariously debunked on PubPeer and twitter.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/C40B664B5CE4DB0328C38182C8B73C
The contrast between the handling of Wang’s work by the PLoS ONE editors and Dr. Juan Lerma at Neuroscience is striking, especially in light of a similar “editorial note” on a Cassava paper published without much apparent scrutiny in Neuroscience a few weeks ago: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452221005789
https://pubpeer.com/publications/5E71DFFFC843817787A90968A16765
Dr. Bik gets the Cassava treatment again: “ Stock investor
@MattNachtrab
is now sending emails to journalists with a story pitch about my “pivotal role” in the insurance fraud that the uBiome founders (not me) have been charged with, and stating I should be sued and ostracized, because I am wasting everybody’s time.”
Maybe Matt wants her to win another Maddox Prize.
https://twitter.com/MicrobiomDigest/status/1728179180150645094