A former PhD student at Auburn University in Alabama relabeled and reused images inappropriately in a grant application, published paper, and several presentations, a U.S. government watchdog has found.
The Office of Research Integrity says Sarah Elizabeth Martin “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally or knowingly falsifying and/or fabricating experimental data and results obtained under different experimental conditions,” according to a case summary posted online.
A neuroscientist who studies alcohol and stress faked data in two published studies and two grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to a U.S. government watchdog.
Lara S. Hwa, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, since January 2021, “engaged in research misconduct by knowingly or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data, methods, results, and conclusions in animal models of alcohol use disorders,” the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) concluded in its findings.
ORI found Hwa, who has not immediately responded to our request for comment, “falsified and/or fabricated experimental timelines, group conditions, sex of animal subjects, mouse strains, and behavioral response data” in the grant applications and papers. The articles were published when she was a postdoc at the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill.
Two cancer researchers who formerly worked at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City published 12 papers with fake data that amounts to research misconduct, according to findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
ORI found that Andrew Dannenberg “engaged in research misconduct by recklessly reporting falsified and/or fabricated data” in the papers, and Kotha Subbaramaiah “reused Western blot images from the same source and falsely relabeled them to represent different proteins and/or experimental results.”
The published findings for both scientists include the same extensive list of duplicated images in a dozen papers, all retracted.
A former researcher at the University of Utah has filed for a temporary restraining order against the U.S. government agency that last week barred her from receiving federal funds.
Ivana Frech – formerly Ivana De Domenico – “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating” images in three different papers whose work was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). ORI barred Frech from receiving federal funding for three years starting on August 21, making no mention of whether she agreed to the sanctions.
But on August 29, Jackson Nichols, an attorney representing Frech, filed for a temporary restraining order against the Department of Health and Human Services. The complaint in the case is under seal, and the summons refer only to a “suit to enjoin further action by U.S. government agency” under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Neither Nichols nor Frech immediately responded to Retraction Watch’s request for comment about the goals of the lawsuit, but the filing is consistent with others aimed at blocking such debarments.
The case dates back to at least 2012, when Frech and colleagues retracted two papers from Cell Metabolism. As we reported at the time, Jerry Kaplan, the senior author of those papers, said “the data were lost when an employee, who was dismissed, discarded lab notebooks without permission.” That employee – who was not a co-author of the paper – was a technician, Kaplan said. “This occurred prior to the identification of errors in the manuscripts and was reported at that time to the University authorities.”
A former chemistry professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville admitted to reusing data in grant applications to the National Institutes of Health while claiming that it came from different experiments, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.
Surangi (Suranji) Jayawardena, who joined the UAH faculty in 2017 following a postdoc at MIT, “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data in twelve (12) figure panels” in four grant applications in 2018 and 2019, the ORI said. All of the applications were administratively withdrawn by the agency, one in 2019 and three in 2021.
Jayawardena studied ways to rapidly diagnose tuberculosis, and to deliver drugs to treat various bacteria. She does not appear to have had any papers retracted.
A cancer researcher who admitted to faking data has pleaded guilty to attempted forgery in a case involving letters of recommendation he passed off as coming from his former supervisor.
Last year, Georgios Laliotis, a former postdoc at The Ohio State University, was charged with forgery for allegedly creating a fake email address with the name of his PI, Philip Tsichlis, and using it to send two letters of recommendation to prospective employers.
Laliotis was later indicted for identity fraud, forgery, and telecommunications fraud, and pleaded not guilty to each count.
A pharmacy researcher who left the University of Pennsylvania sometime last year has been found guilty of research misconduct in multiple federal grant applications and five published papers, four of which have already been retracted.
As we have reported, William Armstead, who is retired from Penn, was working among other things on the effects of brain injury on piglets – experiments in which the animals were slaughtered. He has had seven papers retracted, and The Philadelphia Inquirerreported in September that he had left the university. Penn did not respond to several requests for comment when we attempted to reach officials there about Armstead’s work.
A cancer researcher who was terminated from one postdoc position and resigned another faked data in multiple papers and grant applications, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.
ORI found that Yiorgos (Georgios) I. Laliotis “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally and knowingly falsifying and/or fabricating data, methods, results, and conclusions” in three published papers and two applications for grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The findings were based on Laliotis’ own admissions as well as reports from The Ohio State University and Johns Hopkins University.
As we’ve previously reported, Ohio State terminated Laliotis from his postdoc position in November of 2021, and he apparently resigned from another postdoc position at Johns Hopkins University that same month. Whether both universities employed him at the same time is unclear.
Laliotis has also been charged in Franklin County, Ohio – home to Ohio State – with forgery, identity theft, and telecommunications fraud in connection with allegations he created a fake email address in the name of Philip Tsichlis, his PI at Ohio State, and used it to send letters of recommendation purportedly from Tsichlis to prospective employers. Laliotis has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The former director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio has been removed from the post after the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found he had faked data.
Last August, ORI found that Deepak Kaushal, who remains a professor at Texas Biomed, “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, and/or recklessly falsifying and fabricating the experimental methodology to demonstrate results obtained under different experimental conditions.”
Citing Kaushal’s admission, ORI said that he had engaged in research misconduct in work supported by 8 grants from the National Institutes of Health, and faked data in two grant applications and one published paper that has since been retracted.
The former director of a cancer research center faked data and presented others’ published data and text as his own in four grant applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and one research record, according to a U.S. government watchdog.
Johnny J. He, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (RFUMS) in Chicago, Ill., “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsifying, fabricating, and plagiarizing experimental data and text” published by other scientists, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said today.
He did not immediately respond to an email or phone call seeking comment.
