The Swiss National Science Foundation has stopped funding prominent plant scientist Olivier Voinnet, following months of questions about his work that have culminated in multiple retractions and corrections.
The agency confirmed to us that it has also banned Voinnet from seeking funding from the SNSF for three years.
We asked the SNSF the amount of funding Voinnet was receiving from SNSF at the time of this decision. They told us it was 1.25 million Swiss francs, equivalent to roughly the same in U.S. dollars.
By our count, he’s now at 21 corrections (the latest announced last week) and seven retractions. He’s been the subject of an investigation that found he “breached his duty of care,” and another which found evidence of scientific misconduct. As a result of one of the investigations, he was suspended from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) for two years.
The move by the SNSF was also reported by the Swiss news outlet NZZ am Sonntag.
Hat tip: Irre
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One more correction on January 22, 2016.
http://www.nature.com/nsmb/journal/v18/n3/extref/nsmb.1987-S1.pdf
doi:10.1038/nsmb.1987
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology 18, 323–327 (2011)
Competition for XPO5 binding between Dicer mRNA, pre-miRNA and viral
RNA regulates human Dicer levels
Yamina Bennasser, Christine Chable-Bessia, Robinson Triboulet, Derrick Gibbings, Carole Gwizdek, Catherine Dargemont, Eric J Kremer, Olivier Voinnet & Monsef Benkirane
PubPeer:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/21297638
Voinnet loses his 2009 EMBO Gold Medal:
https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/olivier-voinnet-loses-embo-gold-medal-sonia-melo-investigated-by-embo/
according to the SNSF reporting system (http://p3.snf.ch) Voinnet received
930,000 CHF from 1.8.2011 to 31.7.2014 and
299,820 CHF from 01.08.2014 to 16.09.2015
This is effectively the maximum allowed funding levels (1.5M CHF/5 years see http://www.snf.ch/en/researchinFocus/faq/Pages/faq-foerderinstrumente-starting-grants-maximum-funding-level.aspx), not considering a potential 500,000 CHF for start-up costs, which might or might not have been awarded.