The retraction notices for papers by Silvia Bulfone-Paus continue to appear. Yesterday, the Journal of Immunology posted notices for these three previously acceptedretractions by the researcher, work at whose Borstel Centre lab is under investigation for misconduct.
There was more news today about papers co-authored by Silvia Bulfone-Paus, whose lab at Research Centre Borstel has been under investigation for scientific misconduct.
The EMBO Journal, which we reported last month had accepted the retraction of a 2005 Bulfone-Paus paper that has been cited 37 times, published the retraction notice for the study today:
Eight of the authors (ZO, LT, UM, PB, CB, DA, RP and SB-P) wish to retract this paper, following an independent formal investigation initiated by the Research Center Borstel into scientific misconduct (see http://www.fz-borstel.de/cms/index.php?id=1). The investigation concluded that multiple figures contained PCR and western blot duplications and possible other manipulations (Figures 2A, 3A, 4A, 5, 7A and 7C, Supplementary Figures S1A, S2A and S2B, unconfirmed: Figure 1C). The above signed declare that Vadim Budagian and Elena Bulanova conducted these experiments and generated the figures. The authors declare that key experiments presented in the majority of these figures were recently reproduced and that the results confirmed the experimental data and the conclusions drawn from them. However, due to these unacceptable irregularities, the listed authors retract this paper in its entirety and regret any adverse consequences that may have resulted from its publication. Vadim Budagian and Elena Bulanova declined to sign the retraction.
A journal has accepted the sixth retraction of a paper co-authored by Silvia Bulfone-Paus, the Research Centre Borstel announced late last week. Borstel has been investigating allegations that two of Bulfone-Paus’s former postdocs manipulated images.
About two weeks ago, we reported on the first retraction of a paper co-authored by Silvia Bulfone-Paus, whose work at her Research Center Borstel lab is being investigated for misconduct. On Friday, Borstel announced that journals had accepted four more retractions of papers by Bulfone-Paus’s group.
According to an article in the Weinheimer Nachrichten, that incident occurred when Boldt was at the University Hospital Giessen. Officials there told us there was an investigation into the matter but declined to comment further.
We have an update on the case of Olav and Axel Gressner, a father-son (or, in this case, son-father) pair of German liver researchers caught up in a fraud investigation. The inquiry focused on Olav, who left the University of Aachen under a cloud of suspicion. A 2008 research letter on which he was a co-author (his father was senior author) was retracted earlier this year by the Journal of Hepatology.
The journal Cell has retracted a paper on fruit fly genetics over concerns that the first author, a postdoc in a German laboratory, might have manipulated dozens of electron micrographs in the manuscript.
