An investigation by Emory University in Atlanta has led to the retractions of three articles containing falsified data, but the ambiguous wording of the notices leaves us wondering if they are implying more than they state.
Two of the papers appeared in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. The notices in ATVB implicate a researcher named Lian Zuo, who worked in Emory’s division of cardiology.
There has been some news over the past few weeks about Marc Hauser, the Harvard psychologist found guilty of misconduct by the university last year. First, because Harvard had listed him in a course catalog, The Crimson said that he might be teaching again, following a ban. But that turned out not to be the case, as The Boston Globe reported.
Today, in another Retraction Watch exclusive, we have obtained a letter sent by a faculty member at UEL to department colleagues. It suggests that faculty there are very concerned about the toll these allegations may take on the university’s students and reputation, and are furious that senior officials have failed to keep them in the loop about any potential investigation.
We’re continuing to follow the case of Jatinder Ahluwalia. As we reported on Tuesday, Ahluwalia was dismissed from graduate school at the University of Cambridge years before a University College London (UCL) investigation found had renumbered files to deceive a co-author, and had likely sabotaged his colleagues’ work while manipulating his solutions to improve how his results looked. The results of that investigation came to light as part of a Nature retraction.
Ludwigshafen Hospital, via Wikimedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Klinikum_Ludwigshafen_Nordseite.jpg
Self-plagiarism alert: A very similar version of this post is being published online in Anesthesiology News, where one of us (AM) is managing editor.
Unglaublich is the German word for unbelievable, and it’s an apt description for the latest development in the case of Joachim Boldt.
Boldt, a prominent German anesthesiologist, has been at the center of a research and publishing investigation since last October, when the journal Anesthesia & Analgesiaretracted a 2009 article of his over concerns of data manipulation. This morning, the German medical board overseeing the case, the Landesärztekammer Rheinland-Pfalz (LÄK-RLP), released its findings — and they are truly stunning.
According to LAK, somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 of Boldt’s published articles might require retraction because the investigator failed to obtain approval from an institutional review board to conduct the research.
Jatinder Ahluwalia apparently did some pretty bad things as a researcher at University College London. As we reported in November, in an investigation related to a Nature retraction, a research misconduct panel at UCL found that:
Ahluwalia “renumbered the files to deceive [another coauthor,] Professor [Lucie] Clapp as to the results of his patch clamping experiments,” adulterated his reagents so his results would look better, and sabotaged his colleagues’ work.
The panel said that the file renumbering charge was proven “beyond reasonable doubt,” and “that on the balance of probabilities it was highly confident” that the other two charges had been proven. It also concluded unanimously that Ahluwalia had acted alone.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) may not be on most scientists’ list of Facebook friends, but we’re grateful to them for a hat tip. Several days ago, we were approached by Justin Goodman, associate director of PETA’s laboratory investigations department, with a new twist on an old story.
The February 2010 retraction of the original Wakefield paper in the Lancet was, of course, a huge deal. If there were a Canon of Scientific Retractions, it would be in it. It happened before we launched Retraction Watch, however, so we haven’t commented much on it.
We plan on writing about major retractions in history, but the frequency of fascinating timely ones hasn’t abated enough yet to let us do that. (One exception: Our Best of Retractions series.) And in any case, there have been a lot of pixels spilled on this one already, so we’re not sure we have much to add. That’s the nice thing about the web: It leaves us free to curate as well as create.
The Office of Research Integrity has thrown a heavy book at Bengu Sezen, a former chemist at Columbia University, alleging that school and agency investigators turned up 21 instances of research misconduct by the disgraced scientist.
An investigation by Emory University in Atlanta has led to the retractions of three articles containing falsified data, but the ambiguous wording of the notices leaves us wondering if they are implying more than they state.
