A university in Japan has revoked the doctoral degree of a former student found to have manipulated images and graphs in a dissertation and two published papers.
“Although our university has been working to raise awareness of research ethics in order to prevent research misconduct, it is extremely regrettable that such a situation has occurred,” Tohoku University President Hideo Ohno said in an announcement made on March 30 (translated from the Japanese using Google Translate).
The school did not name the former student, who was first author on both papers. But details mentioned in its investigation report (in Japanese) point to a researcher called Nan Li. Li was also named on a blog in Japan that covered the case (in Japanese).
Continue reading Researcher loses PhD after admitting to fudging images