Category: Legal Threats

In September 2020, we requested records from the University of California, Irvine, regarding four papers by an assistant professor of education that had been retracted, corrected, or taken down. 

The retraction and correction notices for the articles, written by Constance Iloh, mentioned plagiarism and misuse of references. After our initial reporting, we wanted to see if we could learn more about what happened. 

It took approximately two and a half years for us to obtain the records, detailed in this post. The emails we obtained shed light on the processes three journals took after concerns were raised about Iloh’s work, and how she responded – including with legal threats. 

Here, we tell the story of how we fought in court to get the records, represented by Kelly Aviles, who specializes in cases involving the California Public Records Act and has successfully sued on behalf of the Los Angeles Times. 

A law firm that holds a mortgage on the house of Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher at The Ohio State University, may foreclose on the property, a judge has ruled. 

Croce hired James E. Arnold and Associates to represent him in a libel case against the New York Times and a defamation case against David Sanders, a professor of biological sciences at Purdue University who became something of a public nemesis for the Ohio scientist after pointing out problems in Croce’s published work. Croce also needed representation for Ohio State’s research misconduct investigation, and a suit attempting to stop the university from removing him as chair of the department of cancer biology and genetics. 

Croce lost each case. Ohio State’s investigation found problems with how he managed his lab that did not amount to research misconduct. 

A professor at the University of Pittsburgh is suing the institution and two administrators, alleging they discriminated against him because he is Black.  

The researcher, Moses Bility, an assistant professor of infectious diseases and microbiology in the university’s School of Public Health, alleges the school’s response to a 2020 paper he published and later withdrew that proposed jade amulets may prevent COVID-19 was discriminatory.

He also claims the school discriminated against him by blocking him from transferring his lab to the Pitt-affiliated Hillman Cancer Center, and that one of the named administrators plagiarized his COVID-19 paper, among other allegedly discriminatory acts. Bility says the school denied his application for tenure in June as retaliation for his complaints of discrimination. 

Bility is seeking lost wages, compensatory and punitive damages, and attorney’s fees. His complaint states: 

An alumna of the lab of Carlo Croce, a high-profile cancer researcher at The Ohio State University with 14 retractions, has sued the institution over the results of its investigation that found she committed research misconduct. 

Flavia Pichiorri is now a principal investigator with her own lab researching potential therapies for multiple myeloma at City of Hope – a cancer center that also owns Cancer Treatment Centers of America –  in Duarte, Calif. 

She worked at Ohio State from 2004-16, first as a postdoctoral researcher in Croce’s lab, then as a research scientist, and finally as an assistant professor of hematology. She has been a PI on grants that garnered millions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health since switching jobs. 

A gastroenterology researcher has sued a scientific journal to stop it from publishing an expression of concern for one of her papers. 

Soudamani Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Translational Sciences at Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine in Huntington, W. Va., is the middle author of “Cyclooxygenase pathway mediates the inhibition of Na-glutamine co-transporter B0AT1 in rabbit villus cells during chronic intestinal inflammation,” published in PLOS ONE in September 2018. The article has been cited nine times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

We previously reported that the corresponding author of the paper, Uma Sundaram, vice dean of research and graduate education at the Edwards School and chair of its department of clinical and translational science, told us he had contacted PLOS to request a correction to the article. 

The sheriff of Franklin County, Ohio, has received an order to seize and sell property of Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher at The Ohio State University in Columbus, to pay his nearly $1.1 million debt to lawyers who represented him in failed libel and defamation suits. 

Last December, a judge ordered Croce to pay $1,098,642.80, plus interest, to Kegler Brown Hill & Ritter, which was one of the firms that represented him in his libel lawsuit against the New York Times and his defamation case against David Sanders, a researcher at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. 

He lost both cases, and the firm sued him for $900,000 in unpaid fees. Croce also lost a suit against Ohio State in which he sought to regain his post as chair of his department after the university removed him. 

Lawyers who represented Carlo Croce, a cancer researcher at The Ohio State University in Columbus, in failed libel and defamation suits – and who later sued him for not paying his tab – have won a judgment for $1 million against the scientist. 

The judgment, dated Dec. 8, 2022, orders Croce to pay just shy of $1.1 million plus interest to Kegler Brown Hill + Ritter, of Columbus, one of the firms that represented him in his libel lawsuit against the New York Times and his defamation case against David Sanders, a researcher at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., both of which he lost. 

The firm sued Croce in 2020, seeking more than $920,000 in unpaid fees. After the case went to trial, a jury awarded the full amount to the firm in damages, and the judge ruled that the lawyers were entitled to prejudgment interest at a rate of 4%, totaling an additional $175,000. The judgment amount can continue accruing interest, and Croce is responsible for the court costs. 

In his post-trial decision, judge Richard A. Frye wrote: