Category: ori investigations

Ob-gyn prof up to 7 retractions, latest due to “substantial data misrepresentation”

University of Florida
University of Florida

Two more retractions have popped up for Nasser Chegini, the former University of Florida professor currently under investigation by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Both retractions appear in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The notices indicate that an investigation report from the University of Florida “found substantial data misrepresentation” in two JCEM articles about Smads, signaling molecules that carry messages from TGF-beta receptors to the nucleus.

Here’s the notice for “The Expression of Smads in Human Endometrium and Regulation and Induction in Endometrial Epithelial and Stromal Cells by Transforming Growth Factor-Beta” (cited 28 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge):

Continue reading Ob-gyn prof up to 7 retractions, latest due to “substantial data misrepresentation”

Exclusive: Former NIH lab head who faked data now working as government patent examiner

usptoThe former director  of the X-ray crystallography lab at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, who was found by the Office of Research Integrity to have faked findings in three papers, is once again earning a government salary, this time as a patent examiner, Retraction Watch has learned. Continue reading Exclusive: Former NIH lab head who faked data now working as government patent examiner

Former Pitt cancer researcher admits to faking findings

Dong Xiao
Dong Xiao

A former researcher at the University of Pittsburgh inflated the number of mice used in his experiments, and faked data in a number of images in a paper reporting the results, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Dong Xiao admitting to having

intentionally fabricated data contained in a paper entitled ‘Guggulsterone inhibits prostate cancer growth via inactivation of Akt regulated by ATP citrate signaling,’ specifically Figure 6G,

the ORI reports. The paper was published in  in July 2014 in Oncotarget. Here’s Figure 6: Continue reading Former Pitt cancer researcher admits to faking findings

Oklahoma postdoc admits to faking data in grant application, submitted paper

bin kang
Bin Kang

A postdoc at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation faked data in a submitted paper and in a grant application, according to a new report from the Office of Research Integrity.

Bin Kang admitted to the misconduct, in which he Continue reading Oklahoma postdoc admits to faking data in grant application, submitted paper

ORI sanctions former University of Chicago and UCSF scientists for faking findings

H. Rosie Xing
H. Rosie Xing

The stories behind several recent inscrutable retraction notices became a bit more clear today when the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) issued findings in cases involving former researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California, San Francisco.

The ORI found that H. Rosie Xing, a former assistant professor at the University of Chicago, Continue reading ORI sanctions former University of Chicago and UCSF scientists for faking findings

Faking data earns stem cell researcher a ban on federal funding

Screen shot 2014-12-09 at 12.01.19 PMThe Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has sanctioned Kaushik Deb, a former post-doc at the University of Missouri-Columbia, who “engaged in misconduct in science by intentionally, knowingly, and recklessly” fabricating data in papers in both Science and Nature (which ultimately rejected his manuscript).

Deb was big news in 2007, when Science retracted his paper. Articles about the case appeared in many outlets, including The Scientist and USA Today. At the time, Missouri’s research integrity officer, Rob Hall, told the Columbia Tribune that: Continue reading Faking data earns stem cell researcher a ban on federal funding

Updated: Former Vanderbilt scientist faked nearly 70 images, will retract 6 papers: ORI

ori logoA former Vanderbilt University biomedical engineer committed fraud on a massive scale, according to a new Office of Research Integrity (ORI) report.

Igor Dzhura is banned from receiving federal funding for three years, and is retracting six papers, which have been cited more than 500 times. Since leaving Vanderbilt, he has worked at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and now works at Novartis.

According to the ORI, Dzhura was a busy boy at Vanderbilt, faking images and drastically inflating the number of experiments he conducted by duplicating computer files and saving them in nested folders. The total body count from his work includes: Continue reading Updated: Former Vanderbilt scientist faked nearly 70 images, will retract 6 papers: ORI

Retraction appears for faked study of Novartis anti-cancer compound

Raymond Sawaya, director of MD Anderson’s brain tumor program, presents Jun Fu with the 2014 Caroline Ross Endowment Fellowship.
Raymond Sawaya, director of MD Anderson’s brain tumor program, presents Jun Fu with the 2014 Caroline Ross Endowment Fellowship.

A paper by a former postdoc at MD Anderson Cancer Center who “admitted to knowingly and intentionally falsifying” a figure has been retracted.

In August, the Office of Research Integrity announced that it had sanctioned Jun Fu for faking data in a study of the results of a mouse study of NVP-HSP990, a Novartis compound designed to fight brain tumors. Here’s the notice for the study in question, published in Cancer Research:
Continue reading Retraction appears for faked study of Novartis anti-cancer compound

Former NIH lab director faked findings in three papers: ORI

ori logoThe former director  of the X-ray crystallography lab at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, faked findings in three papers, according to the Office of Research Integrity.

Two of the three papers by Bijan Ahvazi were published in 2004, and later retracted in 2007, while the other was rejected: Continue reading Former NIH lab director faked findings in three papers: ORI

Former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers faked data in 10 papers: ORI

ut southwesternThe Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has ruled in a case we’ve been following for nearly two years — and which seems to have been launched after Retraction Watch readers took a careful look at figures from what appeared to be an unrelated case.

Takao Takahashi and Makato Suzuki, both former postdocs at a cancer research center at UT-Southwestern, both “knowingly, intentionally, and recklessly falsified data” in a total of 10 papers, according to the ORI. Takahashi, now at Gifu University in Japan, was responsible for fakery in four papers, while Suzuki, now at Kumamoto University Hospital, also in Japan, falsified data in six.

We reported on the retraction of the four Takahashi papers, and one of the Suzuki papers, in November 2012. At that time, Adi Gazdar, the head of the lab where the researchers worked, told us that
Continue reading Former UT-Southwestern cancer researchers faked data in 10 papers: ORI