Category: by publisher

University of East London “looking into” Jatinder Ahluwalia’s career

We’re continuing to follow the case of Jatinder Ahluwalia. As we reported on Tuesday, Ahluwalia was dismissed from graduate school at the University of Cambridge years before a University College London (UCL) investigation found had renumbered files to deceive a co-author, and had likely sabotaged his colleagues’ work while manipulating his solutions to improve how his results looked. The results of that investigation came to light as part of a Nature retraction.

Ahluwalia now works — and studies plagiarism, in fact — at the school of health and bioscience at the University of East London. We asked Neville Punchard, the school’s dean, whether the university was aware of Ahluwalia’s past. Punchard replied by email: Continue reading University of East London “looking into” Jatinder Ahluwalia’s career

Exclusive: Researcher found guilty of misconduct at UCL had been dismissed from Cambridge for data fabrication

Here at Retraction Watch, we’ve been following the case of Jatinder Ahluwalia with interest. You may recall that an investigation by University College London (UCL) found “beyond reasonable doubt” that Ahluwalia had renumbered files to deceive a co-author. UCL was also “highly confident” that Ahluwalia had messed with his solutions to make his results look better, and sabotaged his colleagues’ work. The report of that investigation was part of a Nature retraction notice.

We’ve now learned that UCL was not the first scene of misconduct by Ahluwalia. Yesterday, we obtained letters by University of Cambridge faculty and administrators describing repeated — and in the words of of one professor, amateurish — data fabrication by Ahluwalia that led to his dismissal from the university’s graduate program.

In a letter dated November 10, 1997, Martin Brand, then Ahluwalia’s PhD advisor, wrote: Continue reading Exclusive: Researcher found guilty of misconduct at UCL had been dismissed from Cambridge for data fabrication

We wrote what? Breast cancer paper falls to rogue author

Something was fishy at China Normal University. According to the journal Anti-Cancer Drugs, a 2010 paper by researchers at the Beijing school — “3,30′-Diindolylmethane negatively regulates Cdc25A and induces a G2/M arrest by modulation of microRNA21 in human breast cancer cells” — turned out to have suffered from an unfortunate anomaly. According to the retraction notice: Continue reading We wrote what? Breast cancer paper falls to rogue author

No Potti retractions on the horizon from JAMA, NEJM

With the third retraction of a paper by Anil Potti this weekend, plus details of various investigations dribbling out, we decided to check in with the world’s two leading medical journals about whether they planned to retract the papers of Potti’s they’d published.

JAMA published two papers by Potti and colleagues: One, “Gene Expression Signatures, Clinicopathological Features, and Individualized Therapy in Breast Cancer,” appeared in 2008. It has been cited 51 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, and was the subject of two letters. In one, a correspondent expressed concerns about the lack of information in the study about Continue reading No Potti retractions on the horizon from JAMA, NEJM

Lancet Oncology retracts previously questioned Anil Potti paper

courtesy Duke

Early in December, as the house of cards that is Anil Potti‘s publication record started to really collapse, we called attention to a paper in The Lancet Oncology that had already been the subject of a correction and Expression of Concern in July of last year. Today, the journal officially retracted the paper, “Validation of gene signatures that predict the response of breast cancer to neoadjuvant chemotherapy: a substudy of the EORTC 10994/BIG 00-01 clinical trial.” The paper was cited more than 100 times, according to Google Scholar.

The retraction notice: Continue reading Lancet Oncology retracts previously questioned Anil Potti paper

Georgia (well, the Medical College there, anyway) on our minds for a mysterious retraction

We’re watching a case which appears to involve more than meets the eye.

Molecular Endocrinology has retracted a 2010 study by researchers at the Medical College of Georgia. According to the Spartan retraction notice (we added a link): Continue reading Georgia (well, the Medical College there, anyway) on our minds for a mysterious retraction

And that’s 14: More (and more) Mori retractions, as Japanese cancer journal pulls three papers

Naoki Mori

The steady drip-drip-dripping sound you hear from the cancer literature these days comes from the stream of retractions involving studies by Naoki Mori, the now jobless scientist whose work on cancer viruses appears to be evaporating before our eyes.

Cancer Science, which used to be called the Japanese Journal of Cancer Research,  has retracted three more of Mori’s papers, each of which, according to the journal, contained multiple unreliable images. That brings the tally of retractions involving Mori’s articles to 14 by our count, an impressive number by any measure. Mori has more than 50 papers to his name, however, so it’s possible that the number of retractions will grow.

Here are the latest retractions: Continue reading And that’s 14: More (and more) Mori retractions, as Japanese cancer journal pulls three papers

Inability to reproduce Dutch grad student’s data prompts two retractions from the cancer lit

We are watching an intriguing case out of the Netherlands, involving a young researcher whose dubious results have led to the retraction of a pair of papers.

The retracted articles, which appeared in 2008 in Cancer Research and the British Journal of Cancer, come from the lab of the prominent Dutch scientist Ed Roos, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. Both papers addressed the actions of certain chemokine receptors — molecules on cell surfaces that interact with blood proteins involved in the immune response — on the behavior of tumor cells.

The first author on each paper was Joost Meijer, at the time a graduate student in Roos’ shop.

The retraction notices contain essentially the same information, although in the case of the BJC article — “Effect of the chemokine receptor CXCR7 on proliferation of carcinoma cells in vitro and in vivo” — the letter is quite personal. Dated Jan. 4, 2011, it reads: Continue reading Inability to reproduce Dutch grad student’s data prompts two retractions from the cancer lit

Clinical Infectious Diseases retracts antibiotic guidelines after posting uncorrected version

A few days after Clinical Infectious Diseases published a set of guidelines for using antibiotics in patients with cancer and dangerously compromised immune systems, we noticed that they had retracted the paper. The Medline notice read: Continue reading Clinical Infectious Diseases retracts antibiotic guidelines after posting uncorrected version

Cracking the Mori case: A reviewer describes how manipulated images came to light

Naoki Mori

We’ve had two questions since learning of the fraud case involving Naoki Mori: Who discovered the manipulations? And how?

We now have answers. We recently received an e-mail from a researcher who specializes in Mori’s field — cancer viruses — and who claims to have been a reviewer of a paper he submitted early last year to a journal in his field. (We’re obscuring some details to maintain our source’s anonymity.)

During what turned out to be a “painful” review of the manuscript: Continue reading Cracking the Mori case: A reviewer describes how manipulated images came to light