A chemistry journal has retracted a 2020 review article by a nanotube researcher who fabricated and falsified data in dozens of studies.
The latest retraction for Naohiro Kameta brings his total to 40, earning him a place on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard.
In a 2020 review article in Chemical Reviews, 24 of the 610 works Kameta and his coauthors cited had themselves been retracted following the publication of the paper, according to the retraction notice. Because these references were “important components” of the review article, “the narrative and claims presented can no longer be upheld,” the notice reads. The review has been cited 164 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
All 24 of the works mentioned in the retraction notice were among 42 papers identified as fraudulent in a 2024 investigation by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), where Kameta worked in the Nanomaterials Research Institute until his dismissal last year. The retraction notice does not mention the inquiry.
A coauthor on the review was Kameta’s AIST colleague Toshimi Shimizu, who the institution’s investigation stated was responsible for the content of the papers but was not involved in any misconduct.
Around the same time as the retraction, French computer scientist Guillaume Cabanac posted on PubPeer warning readers to “reassess the reliability of the document” since it contained 23 references flagged by the Problematic Paper Screener, a tool that identifies suspicious papers.
Cabanac also flagged another article containing references to 18 of Kameta’s retracted works. Shimizu is the sole author of that paper, published in Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan. Shimizu could not be reached for comment via his institutional email. Editors at the journal have not responded to a request for comment.
As AIST wrote in its report about the investigation, Kameta repeatedly altered electron micrographs and misrepresented scale bars in the 42 papers they found linked to misconduct so he could publish as many papers as possible. The investigation also found his research records were incomplete and that his samples had been discarded.The misconduct was evident across nearly two decades of Kameta’s work, according to AIST.
In an announcement of their findings, AIST warned researchers to “please be careful when citing [the flagged papers], as the content is factually incorrect.” In an email this week, the institution’s media office wrote that individual researchers would not be responding to our questions about other papers citing Kameta, nor would the institution.
Since our earlier reporting on this case, all of Kameta’s articles in journals owned by the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry mentioned in the investigation have now been retracted. The six remaining unretracted papers appear to be published in Japanese language journals or are conference proceedings.
Most of the recently retracted papers contained problems with scale bars, with one reported as being 46 times longer than it should have been. Many also included manually manipulated images and some where the original images couldn’t be found. The retraction notices cite these errors as examples of the scientific misconduct identified by AIST, which recommended the retractions. They also make clear Kameta was responsible for the misconduct, while his coauthors were not implicated.
Kameta, who does not appear to have published any new articles since 2024, could not be reached for comment via his institutional email.
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