Category: journal of physiology

Researcher who unsuccessfully sued journal to stop retractions earns another expression of concern

Mario Saad
Mario Saad

A journal has added expressions of concern (EOCs) to four papers about diabetes, including one co-authored by an author who previously sued a different journal when it took a similar action on his papers.

The Journal of Physiology flagged the papers after an investigation “could not rule out the possibility” that they contained duplicated Western blots. Though the three other papers do not include Mario Saad on their author list, he plays a role: The papers include blots duplicated from other papers of Saad’s. And they reveal that Saad may have published those blots multiple times in his own work.

The EOCs all start out with the same statement: Continue reading Researcher who unsuccessfully sued journal to stop retractions earns another expression of concern

“[W]e can learn from these bad actors:” Trail of retractions follows former Vanderbilt researcher’s fraud

JPhysiol_ak15Authors have retracted three papers from the Journal of Physiology because they contained “falsified or fabricated data.”

The papers, which address calcium signaling in heart muscle cells, are among the six pegged for retraction after an Office of Research Integrity (ORI) investigation into one of the authors, Igor Dzhura, formerly of Vanderbilt University. The ORI found that Dzhura had committed an enormous amount of fraud, involving dozens of faked images and more.

Dzhura was fired from a job at Novartis in November after the company discovered that his application had included the fraudulent work.

The three retracted Journal of Physiology papers and their citation figures, courtesy of Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, are: Continue reading “[W]e can learn from these bad actors:” Trail of retractions follows former Vanderbilt researcher’s fraud

Updated: Former Vanderbilt scientist faked nearly 70 images, will retract 6 papers: ORI

ori logoA former Vanderbilt University biomedical engineer committed fraud on a massive scale, according to a new Office of Research Integrity (ORI) report.

Igor Dzhura is banned from receiving federal funding for three years, and is retracting six papers, which have been cited more than 500 times. Since leaving Vanderbilt, he has worked at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and now works at Novartis.

According to the ORI, Dzhura was a busy boy at Vanderbilt, faking images and drastically inflating the number of experiments he conducted by duplicating computer files and saving them in nested folders. The total body count from his work includes: Continue reading Updated: Former Vanderbilt scientist faked nearly 70 images, will retract 6 papers: ORI

Penkowa Journal of Physiology Expression of Concern turns into a retraction

We’ve been trying to follow the complicated case of Milena Penkowa, who resigned her post at the University of Copenhagen in December amidst allegations that she had committed scientific misconduct and misused grant money. Today, we learned that one of the three papers that Penkowa had coauthored and were subject to Expressions of Concern has been retracted. Here’s the notice: Continue reading Penkowa Journal of Physiology Expression of Concern turns into a retraction

Expressions of Concern arrive in Milena Penkowa case

The scientific literature has started to hint at the fallout of a case of potential fraud in Denmark. As Nature reported in January:

A high-profile neuroscientist in Denmark has resigned after facing allegations that she committed research misconduct and misspent grant money. Meanwhile, the administration at the university where she worked has been accused of ignoring her alleged misdeeds for the better part of a decade.

Milena Penkowa, a 37-year-old researcher who was lauded in 2009 by the Danish science ministry, denies all the accusations against her and stands by her work, but left her post as a full professor at the University of Copenhagen in December.

Penkowa has published about 100 papers, many of them focused on neuroscience and a family of proteins known as metallothioneins. While the investigation into her lab continues, two journals have published Expressions of Concern about Penkowa’s work: Continue reading Expressions of Concern arrive in Milena Penkowa case