Lori Youmshajekian

Journals investigating dozens of papers by leading Canadian urologists

A high-profile Canadian urologist received an editorial expression of concern for one of his papers this month, after anonymous comments on PubPeer flagged suspected data duplication in dozens of his articles.

By our count, sleuths have flagged 30 papers co-authored by Martin Gleave, a professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada and co-founder of the Vancouver Prostate Centre. According to the posts on PubPeer, images in these studies appear “much more similar than expected” based on analyses using the similarity detection software ImageTwin. The issues include similarities within individual papers and across multiple publications, with some comments suggesting the alleged reuse of tumor specimens.

Gleave, an appointee to the Order of Canada for his work developing treatments for prostate cancer, has received more than $120 million (approximately $84 million USD) in funding throughout his career, according to his profile on the Vancouver Prostate Centre website. He is also a co-founder of OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals, with several of the findings from the flagged papers connected to the company and related patents.

Former Harvard researcher, now at Moderna, loses paper following postdoc’s report

PLOS Pathogens has retracted a paper by a former group at Harvard following a postdoc’s allegations the work contained manipulated data.

The retracted paper, “Pseudomonas aeruginosa–induced nociceptor activation increases susceptibility to infection,” appeared in 2021 from the lab of Mihaela Gadjeva, an immunologist previously based at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. It has been cited 22 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Gadjeva had been employed at Brigham and Women’s hospital for 16 years until her departure at some point in 2022. Since then, she has been an associate director of bacteriology at Moderna.

Cancer researcher admitted faking data

A former researcher at Nemours Children’s Health in Wilmington, Del., admitted to falsifying and incorrectly reporting data in at least two published studies, both of which were supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health. The studies have been retracted.

The researcher, Valerie Sampson, reported herself to Nemours, which launched an inquiry into all of her publications, according to a hospital spokesperson. The institution’s findings are under review at the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

Sampson left Nemours in January 2022 after 16 years with the hospital, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also held a position as an affiliated scientist at the University of Delaware, a role that ended in the same month, per the profile. Six months following her departure from Nemours, Sampson took a position as a scientist at WuXi Advanced Therapies in Philadelphia, a company specializing in cell and gene therapies, for a little over a year. She is currently unemployed, according to the profile.

University of Newcastle investigating top melanoma researchers

The University of Newcastle in Australia is investigating the work of two prominent skin cancer researchers, Retraction Watch has learned.

Commenters on PubPeer have posted questions about the data in 42 papers by Peter Hersey and Xu Dong Zhang, both well-known in Australian melanoma research. So far, two of the papers have been retracted and four corrected.

The University of Newcastle’s head of research and innovation confirmed that the university has launched an investigation into both experts, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch. That official has a complex history of her own: a paper of hers was retracted in 2013, leading to the return of a substantial amount of grant funding.

Retractions begin for chemist found to have faked data in 42 papers

A nanotube researcher in Japan has earned 13 retractions, with more to come, after an extensive investigation by the country’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) revealed widespread misconduct in his work.

AIST’s investigation found Naohiro Kameta, senior principal researcher at the Nanomaterials Research Institute located in AIST’s Ibaraki campus, fabricated and falsified dozens of studies. He was apparently dismissed from his role following the findings.

The institute first learned of the problems in Kameta’s work in November 2022, according to a translated version of the investigation report. Initially, they looked into five papers, but eventually expanded their scrutiny to 61 articles on which Kameta was the lead or responsible author.

Exclusive: One university’s three-year battle to retract papers with fake data

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.

First-time scientific sleuths prompt nine retractions for neurosurgery group

Two Dutch researchers were preparing a review of preclinical animal models for hemorrhagic stroke last July when they stumbled across a disturbing pattern in the literature.

First, they found many more papers on the topic than the 50 or so they expected based on their experience: more than 600.

Also, nearly every study proposed a different intervention, which was “very unusual,” said René Aquarius, a neurosurgery researcher at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “Why would you show a very beneficial effect and then say, ‘let’s do something else?’”

Exclusive: Publisher to retract article for excessively citing one researcher after Retraction Watch inquiry

A paper that cited a single researcher’s work in 53 of 64 references will be retracted following our inquiries, the publisher of the journal has told Retraction Watch.

The article, ‘Culturally-informed for designing motorcycle fire rescue: Empirical study in developing country’, published in June in AIP Advances, overwhelmingly cites the work of Muhammed Imam Ammarullah, a lecturer at Universitas Pasundan in West Java, Indonesia, sometimes without obvious relevance to the text.

An anonymous tipster came across the soon-to-be retracted paper on Google Scholar, then alerted the editors at AIP Advances in June to the strange citation pattern. The journal investigated, but didn’t acknowledge a problem with the excessive citations to Ammarullah’s work in their initial response to the complaint. Instead, they identified issues with six other, unrelated citations, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch.

University president faces allegations of duplication, institution says no misconduct

The president of the Kyoto Institute of Technology (KIT) has corrected two of his papers and is set to correct another amid allegations of duplication – sometimes inelegantly referred to as “self-plagiarism” – despite a university committee clearing him of misconduct.

Employees at the university have accused president Masahiro Yoshimoto of duplication between 11 sets of his published papers – implicating 34 papers in total.

The employees submitted the allegations to the institution last October, backing their claims with an analysis by plagiarism detection software iThenticate. Two of these employees spoke to Retraction Watch on condition of anonymity, fearing a loss of support from their colleagues if they spoke publicly. Their concerns triggered an investigation at KIT, which cleared Yoshimoto of misconduct in January. However, the whistleblowers still believe the papers should be retracted.

Indonesian university dean dismissed, barred from teaching, asked to apologize

Kumba Digdowiseiso has been dismissed from his position as dean of the economics and business faculty at the Universitas Nasional (UNAS) in Jakarta, Indonesia, following an investigation into claims he used the names of other academics without consent on papers with which they were not involved.

Digdowiseiso had already announced his resignation from the university on April 19, a week after Retraction Watch reported several researchers from the Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) were accusing Digdowiseiso of using their names on papers without permission.

At the time, the university’s official account on X had reposted Digdowiseiso’s response to our report in a now-deleted tweet from April 11. In the tweet, Digdowiseiso wrote that after an internal meeting with UMT, the institution decided the authorship allegations were “a personal issue” and therefore didn’t need “further intervention/action from both universities or even faculties.” Another UNAS tweet from April 14 that is still online does not include this paragraph.

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