Ellie Kincaid

NIH asked to replace a PI on grants after university said she violated policy

An office of the National Institutes of Health requested earlier this year that a university designate a new principal investigator (PI) for two grants after the institution found she had violated its policy in a research misconduct investigation, Retraction Watch has learned.

The NIH’s Office of Extramural Research, which oversees funding granted to external institutions, made the request after SUNY Downstate sent the office a summary of its investigation report that found Stacy Blain, an associate professor in the departments of pediatrics and cell biology at Downstate, had committed research misconduct in 11 instances.

As we reported in August, Blain is suing SUNY for discrimination and retaliation related to the finding of research misconduct, seeking, among other things, reinstatement on the grants.

Meet a sleuth whose work has resulted in more than 850 retractions

Nick Wise had always been “slightly interested” in research integrity and fraud, just from working in science.

Then, last July, from following image sleuth Elisabeth Bik on Twitter, he learned about the work of Guillaume Cabanac, Cyril Labbé, and Alexander Magazinov identifying “tortured phrases” in published papers.

Such phrases – such as “bosom peril,” meaning “breast cancer” – are computer-generated with translation or paraphrasing software, perhaps by authors seeking to fill out their manuscripts or avoid plagiarism detection.

Cabanac, Labbé, and Magazinov had started with tortured phrases in the field of computer science, so Wise decided to try his hand at finding them in his own field, fluid dynamics.

He got a thesaurus widget, started plugging in phrases like “heat transfer,” and Googled the results – “heat move,” “warmth exchange,” etc.

“Up popped a load of papers,” said Wise, age 30, who recently wrapped up his PhD in architectural fluid dynamics at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and will be starting a postdoc there soon.

It was the beginning of a sleuthing hobby that has already resulted in more than 850 retractions.

US federal research watchdog wants your input

A U.S. government watchdog for scientific misconduct has floated the possibility of revising some of its regulations, and it wants your thoughts on what should change.

The Office of Research Integrity recently issued a Request for Information – essentially an email inbox open for suggestions – to help shape its potential revision of the 2005 Public Health Service Policies on Research Misconduct, 42 C.F.R. Part 93 in the federal code.

These regulations define what “research misconduct” means for work funded by the U.S. Public Health Service – the oft-quoted “falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism” – and establish how the government and research institutions respond to these issues.

The current regulations replaced rules issued in 1989, the same year the Office of Scientific Integrity in the National Institutes of Health and the Office of Scientific Integrity Review in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services were created. These two offices were merged into the Office of Research Integrity in 1992.

Here’s the meat of the request:

Paper co-authored by Australian journalist Maryanne Demasi to be marked with expression of concern

Another article co-authored by Australian journalist Maryanne Demasi will be marked with an expression of concern for image duplication, Retraction Watch has learned.

Demasi’s reporting has cast doubt on statins and raised the possibility of a link between wi-fi and brain tumors – controversial claims she and co-authors have previously told us they believe made her scientific publications a target of critique. She has not responded to our request for comment on the forthcoming expression of concern.

Following an investigation by the University of Adelaide into allegations of image manipulation in Demasi’s PhD thesis in rheumatology, one paper that resulted from the dissertation was retracted and another was marked with an expression of concern.

Paper co-authored by sleuth Elisabeth Bik marked with expression of concern

A paper with scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik as a co-author now has an expression of concern. It dated back to her time at the now-defunct startup uBiome and described research that the company used to develop a clinical test of bacteria living in the human gut – and that she raised concerns about some years ago.

The article, “16S rRNA gene sequencing and healthy reference ranges for 28 clinically relevant microbial taxa from the human gut microbiome,” was published in PLOS ONE in 2017 and has been cited 39 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

The expression of concern detailed the journal’s investigation into allegations that some of the samples in the paper weren’t suitable for determining a healthy baseline of the human gut microbiome — being from infants, people who might have recently taken antibiotics, and pets — and the authors’ responses.

It’s a long notice, but this paragraph sums up the concerns:

Former medical school dean earns sixth retraction

A kidney researcher and former dean of a medical school has now had six papers retracted and one marked with an expression of concern in a little more than a year.

The latest retraction for Joseph I. Shapiro, of a 2015 paper in Science Advances, comes two years after PubPeer commenters began posting about potentially duplicated images in the article, and one year after the authors corrected two of its figures.

Shapiro, the corresponding author on the article, stepped down as dean of the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va., on June 30th of this year, but remains a tenured professor at the institution. Neither he nor Komal Sodhi, the first author on the article and also of Marshall, have responded to our request for comment.

Retractions of work Shapiro led began last September, according to our database, following critical comments on PubPeer.

‘Mugged by stealth’: Team finds their paper has been plagiarized not once, but twice

In his career as a psychologist, Andrew Colman had only experienced being plagiarized once: In the early 1970s, an acquaintance tried to take credit in print for a psychometric scale that Colman had developed. Colman wrote to the journal, which quickly confirmed the plagiarism and printed a corrigendum in the next issue.

And in the past year, Colman has learned of two more instances of his work – a 2004 paper on game theory in medical consultation – being stolen. He isn’t finding the journals so responsive this time around.

In 1987, the NIH found a paper contained fake data. It was just retracted.

Ronald Reagan was president and James Wyngaarden was director of the National Institutes of Health when a division of the agency found 10 papers describing trials of psychiatric drugs it had funded had fake data or other serious issues.

Thirty-five years later, one of those articles has finally been retracted.

A 1987 report by the National Institute of Mental Health found that Stephen Breuning, then an assistant professor of child psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, had made up results in 10 papers purportedly describing research funded by two grants the institute had funded.

The recent retraction came through the efforts of psychologist Russell Warne, who unearthed the report with the help of a couple librarians, posted it on his blog, and contacted journals about its findings.

In a blog post about the report, Warne summed up the case:

Concussion researcher Paul McCrory earns nine more retractions, nearly 40 expressions of concern

A prominent sports medicine researcher who earlier this year had an editorial from his time as the top editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine retracted for plagiarism has lost nine more articles for stealing and recycling text and misrepresenting a reference.

The British Journal of Sports Medicine has also placed expressions of concern on all other articles on which Paul McCrory, who was the journal’s editor-in-chief from 2001-2008, is the sole author, totalling 38 articles, according to a press release from the journal. (We count 78 single author papers for McCrory in BJSM.)

McCrory is a widely cited expert on concussions, and has worked with major sporting agencies and leagues as a consultant.

Paper by gene therapy Zolgensma developer retracted because of discrepancies in mouse survival rates

A paper describing preclinical work that was foundational for the gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy now sold as Zolgensma has been retracted for data inaccuracies.

The article, “Rescue of the spinal muscular atrophy phenotype in a mouse model by early postnatal delivery of SMN,” was published in Nature Biotechnology in 2010. Its corresponding author, Brian Kaspar, was at The Ohio State University at the time. Kaspar went on to become the scientific founder and chief scientific officer of AveXis, which created Zolgensma and was acquired by Novartis in 2018 for $8.7 billion.

The paper has been cited 557 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, and referenced in at least 59 patents, according to Altmetric.

According to the retraction notice, the authors contacted the journal last year about “inaccuracies” in the data. After the journal’s investigation, the editors decided to retract the article over the author’s objections. The notice explained:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: