Category: misconduct investigations

Lawsuit couldn’t stop four retractions for diabetes researcher

Mario Saad
Mario Saad

Four expressions of concern in the journal Diabetes have turned into retractions for Mario Saad, a move which he had tried to stop with a lawsuit.

Last August, a judge dismissed Saad’s suit against the American Diabetes Association, which publishes Diabetes, concluding that the expressions of concerns on the papers were not defamation, but part of an “ongoing scientific discourse.” Now, after an investigation at the University of Campinas in Brazil, where Saad is based, and an assessment from an ADA ethics panel (which overturned some of Unicamp’s recommendations), the journal has added to that discourse by turning the EOCs into retractions — and flagging two more of Saad’s papers with EOCs.

Together, the retracted papers have been cited more than 600 times.

As the retraction notes explain, Continue reading Lawsuit couldn’t stop four retractions for diabetes researcher

Chemist fighting to keep PhD asks University of Texas to pay $95k in legal fees

University of Texas

After the University of Texas postponed a hearing to determine whether it should revoke a chemist’s PhD, her lawyer has filed a motion to stop the proceedings, and requested the school pay her $95,099 in lawyer fees and expenses.

This is the second time UT has threatened to revoke Suvi Orr‘s PhD, following a 2012 retraction for a paper that made up part of her dissertation, which the school alleged contained falsified data. UT revoked her degree in 2014, only to reinstate it after she sued. The school is now trying to revoke it again, but the scheduled hearing on March 4 was postponed. Last week, her lawyer filed a motion for final summary judgment requesting that UT stop the proceedings and repay $95,099 in lawyer fees and expenses. The new motion makes a few requests:

Continue reading Chemist fighting to keep PhD asks University of Texas to pay $95k in legal fees

Poll: Should there be a way to “self-retract” for honest error?

Daniele Fanelli
Daniele Fanelli

This week in Nature, Daniele Fanelli at Stanford made an interesting proposal: Set up a system of “self-retraction” that makes it crystal clear when a paper is pulled for honest error, rather than misconduct.

Fanelli, a whose work we have frequently covered, rightly notes that honest error represents a minority of retractions — around 20%. To remove any hint that a paper contains misconduct, Fanelli proposes designating self-retractions as those where all authors sign the retraction note:

Continue reading Poll: Should there be a way to “self-retract” for honest error?

Biologist’s research under investigation in Sweden after being questioned on PubPeer

Holgersson
Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson

The University of Gothenburg in Sweden is investigating several papers co-authored by biologist Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson after they were challenged on PubPeer.

Sumitran-Holgersson already has one retraction under her belt — of a 2005 Blood paper, after another investigation concluded the results “cannot be considered reliable.” Sumitran-Holgersson and her husband, co-author Jan Holgersson, did not sign the retraction notice. Both were based at the Karolinska Institutet (KI) at the time, but have since moved to the University of Gothenburg.

Now, the University of Gothenburg has launched its own investigation of the papers questioned on PubPeer, according to Continue reading Biologist’s research under investigation in Sweden after being questioned on PubPeer

Macchiarini dismissed from Karolinska

Paolo Macchiarini
Paolo Macchiarini

The Karolinska Institutet has dismissed former rising star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini from his post, effective immediately.

A KI news release, dated today, states:

The Staff Disciplinary Board at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to relieve Paolo Macchiarini of his duties as a researcher at KI. He is to be informed immediately that his contract has been rescinded.

For a refresher on the story, check out our constantly updating timeline. As a brief recap: Continue reading Macchiarini dismissed from Karolinska

FDA bans trial coordinator who pocketed patient funds and went to prison

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has permanently debarred a clinical trial coordinator from working on drug applications after he swapped patient stool samples for his own, and pocketed the money earmarked for patients — along with forging patient records, lab work, and doctors’ signatures.

The debarment is moot for time being — last year, Wesley McQuerry was sentenced to three years in prison for his misdeeds, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

The FDA’s debarment, effective March 18, provides more details: Continue reading FDA bans trial coordinator who pocketed patient funds and went to prison

Shigeaki Kato up to 38 retractions

Shigeaki Kato
Shigeaki Kato

Our retraction notice count for Shigeaki Kato, number seven on our leaderboard, has grown to 38.

The former University of Tokyo endocrinologist recently earned another retraction, for a paper in Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics that contained image manipulation. As we’ve noted before, Kato resigned from the university in 2012 as it investigated his work for misconduct; in 2013 a Japanese newspaper reported that the investigation had found 43 papers from his lab contained “likely altered or forged materials.”

In addition to the new retraction, we’ve dug up four others for Kato from the past few years, plus one correction. Two of the retraction notices mention an investigation at the University of Tokyo.

First, the retraction note for “Multiple co-activator complexes support ligand-induced transactivation function of VDR,” published in December:

Continue reading Shigeaki Kato up to 38 retractions

Another paper by GM researcher pulled over manipulation concerns

Screen Shot 2016-03-14 at 11.52.18 AMA researcher who published findings questioning the safety of genetically modified organisms has lost a second paper following concerns of image manipulation.

Last week, the journal animal retracted a 2010 paper by Federico Infascelli, an animal nutrition researcher at the University of Naples, which claimed to find modified genes in the milk and blood of goats who were fed genetically modified soybeans. The retraction stems from an investigation that concluded the authors likely manipulated images, according to the note. Earlier this year, another journal retracted one of Infascelli’s papers that contained a duplicated figure.

In February, Italian paper La Repubblica (which we read with Google Translate) reported that the university found problems in three of his articles and issued a warning.

Here’s the retraction note for “Fate of transgenic DNA and evaluation of metabolic effects in goats fed genetically modified soybean and in their offsprings:”

Continue reading Another paper by GM researcher pulled over manipulation concerns

More retractions bring total to 7 for neuroscience pair, 2 more pending

JOCNAuthors have retracted two papers about visual perception and working memory from the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, after the first author admitted to falsifying or fabricating data in four other papers.

The authors have requested another two retractions, as well, which will bring the total for Edward Awh and his former graduate student David Anderson to nine retractions. (Earlier in 2015, they lost a paper due to an error in the analytic code, which Awh told us was unrelated to the misconduct.)

The retraction notice attached to both articles cites a 2015 settlement agreement between the Office of Research Integrity and first author Anderson (the “respondent”), who admitted to misconduct while working as a graduate student in the lab of Awh at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Since then, “additional problems” were discovered in the newly retracted articles, such as removed data points.

Awh, who has since moved to the University of Chicago, sent us a lengthy statement, explaining the concerns about each article: Continue reading More retractions bring total to 7 for neuroscience pair, 2 more pending

Whistleblower removed from Macchiarini’s Lancet author list

Paolo Macchiarini
Paolo Macchiarini

Last week, The Lancet honored a co-author’s request to remove his name from Paolo Macchiarini’s seminal 2011 paper, which described the first transplant of an artificial trachea seeded with autologous stem cells but has since come under fire.

On March 3, the journal posted this notice:

The Lancet has been contacted by Dr KH Grinnemo who was an author on the paper. Dr Grinnemo no longer wishes to be an author and asks for his name to be removed. This correction has been made to the online version as of March 3, 2016.

The paper has been cited 187 times, designating it “highly cited” by Thomson Reuters Web of Science.

As The Scientist reports, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo is one of the four surgeons at Karolinska Hospital who filed a complaint against Macchiarini in 2014 — alleging, for instance, Continue reading Whistleblower removed from Macchiarini’s Lancet author list