In 2021, the provost of the University of Maryland, Baltimore sounded the alarm about a troubling batch of papers from the lab of Richard Eckert, the former chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the institution.
The provost sent letters to the editors of seven journals calling out a string of serious issues. Based on the university’s investigation, the papers contained duplicated, fabricated and falsified data, according to emails obtained by Retraction Watch.
But more than three years later, the results of those alerts are mixed: Of the 11 papers the university flagged in 2021, editors corrected three and retracted two. Six still await resolution, with no apparent action taken by the journals.
Maryland’s internal investigation into Eckert wrapped up in January 2020. Based on that investigation, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) last month found Eckert committed research misconduct by faking data in 13 published papers and two grant applications.
Through a public records request, we obtained a redacted copy of the investigation report, as well as the university’s correspondence with the journal editors. The records show that two years after the university initially alerted the journals, they followed up with some journals that had yet to act. The university also sent emails recommending retraction or correction of five more problematic papers.
But the second attempt didn’t change much: Collectively, 10 of 17 suspect papers await action.
After receiving an anonymous allegation through a reporting hotline, Maryland began the process of investigating Eckert’s work in January 2019. According to a redacted version of the report, dated Jan. 7, 2020, and forensic evidence, the university found Eckert had engaged in several deceptive practices, among them: fabricating data to purportedly show gene expression, splicing and duplicating Western blots while using a paint brush tool to mask the alterations, and using empty areas of film to fake control conditions.
A year after the investigation concluded, Roger Ward, the provost and executive vice president of the university, wrote letters to seven journals about the compromised papers. In response, two were retracted and three corrected:
- Retracted: Inhibition of YAP function overcomes BRAF inhibitor resistance in melanoma cancer stem cells, Oncotarget
- Retracted: Suppression of AP1 transcription factor function in keratinocyte suppresses differentiation, PLOS One
- Corrected: Bmi-1 helix–turn and ring finger domains are required for Bmi-1 antagonism of (−) epigallocatechin-3-gallate suppression of skin cancer cell survival, Cellular Signalling
- Corrected: Suppressing AP1 factor signaling in suprabasal epidermis produces a keratoderma phenotype, Journal of Investigative Dermatology
- Corrected: Transamidase site-targeted agents alter the conformation of the transglutaminase cancer stem cell survival protein to reduce GTP binding activity and cancer stem cell survival, Oncogene
The documents we obtained reveal a series of delays and inaction.
The university reported deleted data in a paper published in Molecular Carcinogenesis, ‘Combination cisplatin and sulforaphane treatment reduces proliferation, invasion, and tumor formation in epidermal squamous cell carcinoma’, and recommended the journal retract the article. Independent experts recruited by Wiley, the journal’s publisher, couldn’t determine whether the error was honest. They requested additional evidence that the university was unable to provide, citing confidentiality. The article does not yet have any published notice. When asked about the matter, the journal editor deferred to a representative from Wiley, who did not respond to our queries.
The university called out three papers published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry for containing falsified Western blots. One of these was doctored using a paintbrush tool “in order to support the data presented in the article.”
For one article, the university’s investigators concluded “either the actual experiments have never been performed or the western blots never showed the results described in the article.”
According to a log of email exchanges, the then-editor of the journal responded the same day, promising to “follow up in terms of action” regarding the three problematic articles. None have yet been retracted or corrected.
In February 2023, Stephan Vigues, the university’s research integrity officer, followed up with the current editor-in-chief of JBC, Alex Toker. Toker wrote back, “Rest assured we take these cases with the utmost seriousness.”
When Vigues followed up again in April 2023, a data integrity manager at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which publishes the journal, said the investigation was still ongoing.
Vigues inquired again in January of this year, stressing his institution had “investigated the entire lab” and had “gathered enough information to ask for retraction because the published data was manipulated and does not represent accurately the raw data.”
A response from the director of publications, Isabel Casas, revealed the data manager handling the case had left, and the investigation was still unresolved. Neither Toker nor Casas has responded to requests for comment.
In another instance, the Journal of Investigative Dermatology had corrected a paper, ‘Suppressing AP1 factor signaling in suprabasal epidermis produces a keratoderma phenotype’, following a letter from the university in 2021. In February 2023, Vigues notified editor-in-chief Erwin Tschachler about another two problematic articles. One figure contained a Western blot that had been replicated three times, using a paint brush tool to conceal the splices, and copy-and-pasted data modified to make the bands look slightly different.
Tschachler responded a few days later, saying the editorial team “will publish the respective retractions/corrections in one of the up-coming issues of our Journal.” While neither article appears to have any published notice, Tschachler told Retraction Watch he had also been contacted by the US National Institutes of Health Office of Research Integrity, and said the journal would pursue retractions for the articles “given the pattern of misconduct.”
These 10 articles are still awaiting action:
- Methylosome protein 50 and PKCδ/p38δ protein signaling control keratinocyte proliferation via opposing effects on p21Cip1 Gene Expression, Journal of Biological Chemistry
- p38δ regulates p53 to control p21Cip1 expression in human epidermal keratinocytes, Journal of Biological Chemistry
- Protein Kinase C (PKC) Suppresses Keratinocyte Proliferation by Increasing p21Cip1 Level by a KLF4 Transcription Factor-dependent Mechanism, Journal of Biological Chemistry
- Localization of the TIG3 transglutaminase interaction domain and demonstration that the amino-terminal region is required for TIG3 function as a keratinocyte differentiation regulator, Journal of Investigative Dermatology
- PKC-delta and –eta, MEKK-1, MEK-6, MEK-3, and p38-delta are essential mediators of the response of normal human epidermal keratinocytes to differentiating agents, Journal of Investigative Dermatology
- Combination cisplatin and sulforaphane treatment reduces proliferation, invasion, and tumor formation in epidermal squamous cell carcinoma, Molecular Carcinogenesis
- The Bmi-1 polycomb protein antagonizes the (2)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate-dependent suppression of skin cancer cell survival, Carcinogenesis
- NRP-1 interacts with GIPC1 and α6/β4-integrins to increase YAP1/Δ Np63α-dependent epidermal cancer stem cell survival, Oncogene
- Transglutaminase is a mesothelioma cancer stem cell survival protein that is required for tumor formation, Oncotarget
- Transglutaminase interaction with α6/β4-integrin stimulates YAP1-Dependent ∆Np63α stabilization and leads to enhanced cancer stem cell survival and tumor formation, Cancer Research
Editors for Carcinogenesis, Oncogene and Oncotarget do not appear to have responded to alerts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The editor in chief at Carcinogenesis said the editorial team is still investigating the university’s claims.
The Office of Scientific Integrity at Oncotarget said they “do not have records that anyone from the University contacted us about the papers in 2021,” though we obtained a letter addressed to the journal’s EIC, Andrei Gudkov, dated January of that year. Oncotarget’s scientific integrity office wrote that an image forensic team is checking the paper, and would contact the authors if they found anything. After we shared that letter with the office, they said they would take “immediate action.”
The EIC at Oncogene referred us to the publisher, Springer Nature, who hasn’t yet responded. The Cancer Research article was included in ORI’s findings, but not in the documents we obtained. The editor there has not responded to our queries.
According to the ORI, Eckert is also required to request retractions himself. Eckert has not responded to requests for comment.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
Compare these long retraction times or refusals to retract (despite knowing that the data were fabricated) with the retraction time requested by the editor of Cureus, which was only a couple of WEEKS. More power to Cureus.
There seems to be a bad kink in the retraction pipeline.
Can we get some reporting on why it is taking so long?
Are the journals understaffed for this purpose?
Do the decision pathways have chokepoints that slow down the whole process?
It seems to me that it would be an unalloyed benefit to a journal to resolve retraction issues as soon as possible.
Why aren’t they?
All of the above. Plus, retractions are the worst nightmares of journal editors. I don’t know why, but journals and publishers do almost anything they can to evade a retraction. If they can’t dodge it, they will try to postpone it. But again, all the reasons you counted are simultaneously at play. When the reason for the retraction is fraud, the journal needs to investigate the matter, sieve through claims of multiple people, find the culprit, etc. The COPE flowcharts for these matters are very bad, and most of the time rely on the answers of the authors. Now imagine some authors who refuse to answer! Most of the time, I think COPE is incompetent but other times I think COPE has intentionally made these flowcharts so stupid, because honestly I can’t think of some organization be such stupid. Perhaps they fear legal complaints from authors and thus have made a very watery and ineffective flowchart to give a lot of wiggle room to fraudsters in the hope that they don’t retaliate. But apart from the COPE’s ineffective guidelines, journals and publishers just fear and hate retractions.
Here Pubpeer could be helpful, as this makes the retraction requests by the University public. Not only would this put extra pressure on the journals, it also means there are comments linked to the article when people have the PubPeer plugin installed and decide to cite a paper – they will get a warning there are comments.