Category: misconduct investigations

Fraudster loses third attempt to remove 7-year debarment

court caseA U.S. judge has denied a virology researcher’s third attempt to overturn a seven-year debarment from receiving federal funds, following a 2010 decision by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

The ORI banned Scott Brodie for seven years after concluding he had committed 15 acts of misconduct at the University of Washington. The deception affected grant applications, published papers, manuscripts, and presentations. Since then, Brodie has tried multiple times to reverse the ruling in court.

In the latest decision, dated June 13, United States District Judge James E. Boasberg writes: Continue reading Fraudster loses third attempt to remove 7-year debarment

Columbia investigation reveals researcher faked data — and a degree

InnateImmunityA researcher faked data and a masters degree, according to an investigation by Columbia University.

He’s also earned his fourth retraction. The new notice, along with one we’ve uncovered from 2014, provide some information on the extent of the deception of Robert Frumento, who left Columbia a decade ago, around the time that the now-retracted papers were published.

Here’s the new retraction notice:

Continue reading Columbia investigation reveals researcher faked data — and a degree

Can misconduct be fun? A new game wants to find out

lab wars1
Caezar Al-Jassar and Kuly Heer

Can’t get enough of the personal and professional politics that dog a scientific career? On your off-hours, you can play a new game called Lab Wars, which lets players reenact the best – and the worst – parts of climbing the scientific career ladder. It was developed by two researchers — Caezar Al-Jassar, a structural biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and his partner Kuly Heer, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire – while they were on vacation together in Spain last year, according to The Scientist. The pair launched a Kickstarter campaign this week to raise money to manufacture and sell the game — and quickly met their funding goal, and then some.

Retraction Watch: You say the game — also featured this week in Nature — was inspired by author Michael Brooks. How? Continue reading Can misconduct be fun? A new game wants to find out

PLOS ONE retracts 2 malaria papers over doubts experiments ever took place

PLOS One

Authors have retracted a pair of PLOS ONE papers after an investigation suggested the articles might contain some fiction.

In the papers, the authors describe collecting and analyzing the DNA of mosquitoes to look for changes following the introduction of bed nets treated with insecticides to combat malaria. However, an investigation by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in France could not confirm some of the experiments ever took place.

Here’s the retraction notice for “How the Malaria Vector Anopheles gambiae Adapts to the Use of Insecticide-Treated Nets by African Populations,” which appears at the top of the paper:

Continue reading PLOS ONE retracts 2 malaria papers over doubts experiments ever took place

Should researchers guilty of misconduct go to “rehab”?

Nature_latest-cover

A report on the first few years of “researcher rehab” suggests that three days of intensive training have a lasting impact on participants.

Specifically, among participants — all of whom had been found guilty of at least one type of misconduct — the authors report that:

A year later, follow-up surveys indicate that the vast majority have changed how they work.

The authors claim this shows the program is worth the time and investment — a $500,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, and a cost of $3,000 per participant for the three-day course. Do you agree? Tell us what you think in our poll at the end of the story.

Infractions ranged from consent issues for human subjects, plagiarism, and outright fraud. Still, researchers who need this training aren’t much different from everyone else, the authors note in “Lessons of researcher rehab,” published today by Nature: Continue reading Should researchers guilty of misconduct go to “rehab”?

Another paper by Duke pair with 12+ retractions is flagged

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care MedicineAnother expression of concern (EOC) has appeared for a pair of lung researchers formerly employed by Duke University.

Co-authors Erin Potts-Kant, a research assistant who left the school and was charged with embezzlement, and Michael Foster, who has retired, share more than a dozen retractions, corrections and EOCs.

Like many of those papers, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine is being flagged over concerns it is “unreliable.” Here’s more from the EOC:

Continue reading Another paper by Duke pair with 12+ retractions is flagged

Researcher accused of fraud, embezzlement acquitted by Italian court

University of PerugiaAn Italian court has acquitted a gastroenterologist who was accused of fraud and embezzlement.  

An earlier institutional investigation into Stefano Fiorucci, based at the University of Perugia in Italy, found that he had manipulated images in publications that he allegedly used to win two million Euros of funding. The story, which has dragged on for years, has resulted in four retractions and nine expressions of concern for publications authored by Fiorucci. 

Fiorucci’s lawyer, Stefano Bagianti, told us: Continue reading Researcher accused of fraud, embezzlement acquitted by Italian court

Author “committed serious mistakes,” finds Taipei investigation

Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular BiologyAn investigation at Taipei Medical University found that an author made “serious mistakes” when preparing a manuscript.

The journal prompted the university to investigate the paper, which looks at the role of a protein in repairing arteries after an injury.

The retraction notice explains:

Continue reading Author “committed serious mistakes,” finds Taipei investigation

Neuro journal pulls article for data theft, prompts misconduct probe

annneuro

Neuroscientists have retracted a research letter less than two months after it appeared, admitting they appeared to pass off others’ data as their own.

Two of the researchers are listed as affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the incident has led to a misconduct investigation at the institution, a UCSF spokesperson told us.

The article, “DNAJC6 variants in Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” appeared in April. It was quickly followed by this notice, dated in May: Continue reading Neuro journal pulls article for data theft, prompts misconduct probe

JACS corrects, removes author from previously flagged paper

JACSA paper at the center of a high-profile case of alleged misconduct in Hong Kong has earned a correction notice.

The correction replaces an expression of concern on the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) paper, which followed allegations of data manipulation. It provides some un-cropped images, and removes a co-author from the paper. However, it does not appear to address previous allegations of misconduct, nor a recent ruling from an investigation at Hong Kong University (HKU), which found that some of the data were “invalid.”

Here is the correction notice for “Molecular Imaging of Peroxynitrite with HKGreen-4 in Live Cells and Tissues:”

Continue reading JACS corrects, removes author from previously flagged paper