A 2017 paper describing neuroscience research with rats has been retracted after “data mis-management,” including the mistreatment of the animals, came to light.
The retracted paper was the second by Subimal Datta, a professor of psychology and anesthesiology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to receive a flag for data problems.
The article, “BNDF heterozygosity is associated with memory deficits and alterations in cortical and hippocampal EEG power,” was published in Behavioural Brain Research and has been cited 14 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
The retraction notice, published March 31, stated:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief, the Corresponding Author and the Institutional Research Integrity office at the University of Tennessee due to data mis-management of the project, including inappropriate removal of animals from analyses and use of unapproved euthanasia.
The article describes two behavioral experiments using 12 rats, after which the animals were “euthanized via isoflurane overdose.”
In a third experiment, the researchers implanted EEG electrodes in additional rats and took recordings for 1-2 weeks. Afterwards, the rats:
were deeply anesthetized with ketamine-xylazine (100 mg/kg ketamine, 10 mg/kg xylazine) and perfused transcardially with normal saline and 4% paraformaldehyde. The brains were removed and processed for histological localization of electrode track and EEG recording sites.
The paper also stated that “all procedures were performed in accordance with the NIH Guide
for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and approved by the University of Tennessee Animal Care Committee (Protocol Number: 2349-UTK).”
Datta, the corresponding author of the article, has received more than $10 million in NIH grants, with $2 million coming from 2014 through 2018 while he has been at the University of Tennessee. He has not responded to our request for comment, nor has the university. Christine Rabinak of Wayne State University in Detroit, and Christian Müller of Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, the editors in chief of Behavioral Brain Research, have also not responded to us.
Another article with Datta as the corresponding author, “Changes in Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Expression Influence Sleep–Wake Activity and Homeostatic Regulation of Rapid Eye Movement Sleep,” published in Sleep in 2018, received an expression of concern in December 2020. It has been cited 16 times.
The notice stated that a few months earlier, the journal’s editors:
received credible notice of attribution problems with the source of the data in the article. We alert our readers that, pending the outcome of a full institutional investigation, concerns have been raised about this article.
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