Category: image manipulation

A law firm known for filing shareholder suits says that data supporting a drug company’s plan for trials of its experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s disease show evidence of manipulation.

Stock in the company, Cassava Biosciences, tumbled yesterday after the FDA posted material from the firm, Labaton Sucharow, and a top research integrity expert tells Retraction Watch he sees near-certain signs of fabrication in the data.

Earlier this week, Labaton Sucharow submitted a “citizen’s petition” to the FDA regarding a regulatory filing from Cassava, and called on the agency to halt trials of Cassava’s drug simulfilam on the grounds that it had: 

Continue reading Biotech’s data supporting Alzheimer’s trials under scrutiny

Two journals have retracted three papers by a former researcher at the University of Colorado Denver six weeks after Retraction Watch first revealed that the university had recommended correcting the research record in 2016. Another journal has issued an expression of concern for a paper flagged in the investigation.

Despite a recommendation that nine different papers be corrected and retracted, journals had, by last month, retracted just two papers by the researcher, Hari Koul, now at Louisiana State University, and corrected one. Koul, as we reported, had apparently failed to inform multiple journal editors of the need for corrections and retractions.

At the time, Jennifer Regala, the executive editor of the Journal of Urology, which just retracted two of Koul’s papers, told Retraction Watch: “We were not aware of these allegations, so of course these are of grave concern to us.” She said that the American Urological Association, which publishes the journal, planned to conduct its own investigation. 

Continue reading Journals retract papers following publication of university investigation by Retraction Watch

When the University of Colorado at Denver completed an investigation in 2015 into the work of a former faculty member, the school recommended that nine papers be corrected or retracted.

But six years after the close of that investigation, the researcher, urologist Hari Koul, has had just two papers retracted and one corrected. 

Multiple journal editors told Retraction Watch they had not been informed that papers published in their journals were recommended for retraction or correction, according to documents obtained by Retraction Watch via a public records request. And emails show Koul was still negotiating the retraction of at least one of the papers last year.

Continue reading Exclusive: Six years after a misconduct investigation, more than half of suspect papers remain unflagged

Collaborations can be fraught. Ask David Ojcius. 

Ojcius, an emeritus professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Merced, and a department chair at the University of the Pacific, is up to four retractions, five corrections and an expression of concern in papers he wrote with collaborators in China and elsewhere. 

Ojcius is the editor-in-chief of Microbes and Infection, which has retracted one of his papers and corrected another. 

Continue reading On the perils of scientific collaboration from thousands of miles away

An investigation by the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, in Memphis, into a 2006 Science paper found evidence that three figures in the article had been manipulated.

Science sleuth Elisabeth Bik first flagged the paper, titled “Molecular Linkage Between the Kinase ATM and NF-κB Signaling in Response to Genotoxic Stimuli,” to the editors of Science in 2015. Today, Science issued an expression of concern for the paper: 

Continue reading University of Tennessee investigation finds manipulated images in Science paper

A researcher at the University of Maryland, along with two former colleagues, has had three papers retracted in the past six months following an institutional investigation that found evidence of image manipulation.

The three retractions share three authors: Hua Zhou, Ying Hua Yang and John Basile, an associate professor of oncology and diagnostic sciences at the institution. The original papers appeared in Angiogenesis and PLOS ONE between 2011 and 2013.

Basile told Retraction Watch that he was prohibited from discussing the matter, based on statements from the university’s investigation committee, but that he did not think other papers from his lab co-authored with Zhou would be retracted.

One of the articles, “Semaphorin 4D cooperates with VEGF to promote angiogenesis and tumor progression,” has been cited 46 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. Here’s the retraction notice from Angiogenesis, which was published earlier this month:

Continue reading U Maryland group up to three retractions following investigation

King’s College London (KCL) found evidence of poor research practices by three of its faculty, but “no intention to deceive” and no misconduct, according to documents obtained by Retraction Watch.

One case involves work by cancer biologists Farzin Farzaneh and Ghulam Mufti, while the other involves work by Mahvash Tavassoli, also a cancer researcher. Both involve problems with images and were brought to the attention of KCL in January of this year by pseudonymous whistleblower Claire Francis.

In the Farzaneh and Mufti case, writes Tim Newton, KCL’s dean of research governance, ethics and integrity in an October 31 letter:

Continue reading Exclusive: King’s College London finds “poor research practices” but no misconduct in two recent cases

A researcher who is now up to six retractions has left his faculty position at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science following a finding of research misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.

Gulam Waris, who studies hepatitis, has reused images across multiple papers, according to a retraction notice published this week in the Journal of General Virology:

Continue reading Hepatitis expert out at Chicago university following misconduct finding