A Japanese web site is reporting that Yoshitaka Fujii, a Japanese anesthesiologist suspected of widespread data fabrication, did indeed fake his results in at least 172 published studies.
According to the article, on a site called Jiji Press: Continue reading Report: Fujii faked data in at least 172 papers
Shikeagi Kato, an endocrinologist formerly of the University of Tokyo who resigned on March 31 amidst an investigation into his work, has retracted another paper, this one in Nature.
Here’s the notice for “DNA demethylation for hormone-induced transcriptional derepression,” which was the subject of a correction last October: Continue reading Shikeagi Kato, who resigned post in March, retracts Nature paper
Last month, we brought you the story of Soo-Kyung Kang, a Seoul National University stem cell researcher who has now retracted four papers amidst questions about image manipulation in a total of 14 studies. That story has drawn a great deal of attention in Korea, with comparisons to the Woo-Suk Hwang scandal, and has even led to a profile of Retraction Watch in the Seoul Daily, one of Korea’s largest newspapers.
We’ve now learned that the investigation has grown to 25 papers after an anonymous whistleblower warned about possible data fabrications in another paper by Kang, an associate professor of veterinary biotechnology, and Kyung-Sun Kang, director of the Adult Stem Cell Research Center in the same department (but no relation). And Soo-Kyung Kang was investigated in 2010, according to the Korea Herald.
The researchers’ labs are also under lockdown Continue reading Korean stem cell investigation expands to another researcher, and more papers
Dipak Das, the UConn researcher whom the university earlier ths year found to have fabricated or falsified data more than 100 times, has four more retractions to his name.
The notices appear in the June 1, 2012 issue of the American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology, and suggest that Das was not all that cooperative: Continue reading Retraction count for resveratrol researcher Dipak Das rises to 12
Edward Shang, a weight loss surgeon who has now retracted two papers for fraudulent data, is out of his job at the University Hospital Leipzig.
According to a university release — which was apparently retracted for about an hour and which we’ve had trouble accessing at various points this morning — Shang’s employment contract with the Leipzig hospital is “terminated by mutual agreement with immediate effect.”
The release also says Continue reading Weight loss surgeon who made up data loses job at University Hospital Leipzig
A group of researchers whose work has been under investigation at the University of Louisville has issued a correction for a paper in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology (AJRCMB).
The correction follows three retractions each in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the AJRCMB, the latter of which made it clear that lab member ShouWei Han was responsible for the manipulations and duplications that brought down the papers. Here’s the new notice, which appeared in the March 1, 2012 issue of the journal: Continue reading Group investigated by University of Louisville corrects lung cancer paper after retracting six others
A group of editors representing nearly two dozen medical journals has issued an ultimatum of sorts to officials at seven Japanese institutions that once employed Yoshitaka Fujii: Validate the papers of the disgraced anesthesiologist or they will be retracted.
Fujii, as we have reported, was fired by Toho University in late February, putatively for failing to obtain ethics approval for a handful of his studies. That much may be true, but the integrity of his data has been in question for more than a decade. At the time of his dismissal, journal editors expressed concern that the university would not pursue an inquiry into Fujii’s data.
Last month, the journal Anaesthesia published a statistical analysis of Fujii’s research bya UK anesthesiologist named John Carlisle which cast serious doubt on the veracity of the studies.
The joint letter forces the question. Continue reading 193 papers could be retracted: Journal consortium issues ultimatum in Fujii case
Shigeaki Kato, an endocrinology researcher at the University of Tokyo who retracted a paper late last month, has resigned amidst an investigation into whether he committed misconduct, Japanese media outlets are reporting.
According to the reports, the university has been investigating Shigeaki Kato and his group, affiliated with the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, for scientific misconduct. The investigation was prompted by an outside whistleblower’s allegations in January about 24 of Kato’s papers. The whistleblower claimed that the papers manipulated and reused data improperly, and created a YouTube video to spread the word, as ScienceInsider reported earlier this year.
One of the 24 papers, Continue reading Endocrinologist Shigeaki Kato resigns amidst University of Tokyo misconduct investigation
In 2010, a group of crystallographers immunologists and allergy researchers at the University of Salzburg published a paper in the Journal of Immunology claiming to have derived the structure of a birch pollen allergen.
That structure, however, caught the attention of Bernhard Rupp, an eminent crystallographer. In January of this year, Rupp submitted a paper to Acta Crystallographica Section F pointing out problems with it, which prompted the editors of the crystallography journal to contact the authors of the original paper a month later. Those authors, it turns out, agreed with Rupp, they write in a response to his paper published in the April 2012 issue of Acta Crystallographica Section F: Continue reading Protein structure retracted after investigation into “highly improbable features,” journal calls it fraud
We have an update in the case of two Japanese scientists who first came to our attention when they retracted a 13-year-old paper in the Journal of Neuroscience last year. Shortly after that, we learned, thanks to a report in Sankei Shimbun and a helpful Retraction Watch reader, that some 17 papers were being investigated.
It now appears that 19 papers by the two researchers, Kenji Okajima and Naoki Harada, ended up under scrutiny.
Nagoya City University said last week that their investigation had concluded that Okajima and Harada committed misconduct. The university dismissed Harada, whom they found guilty of misconduct in at least eight of the papers. The investigation couldn’t find any evidence that Okajima was directly involved, but suspended him for six months because he supervised the work. Continue reading Japanese universities find pair of researchers guilty of misconduct in 19 papers