Category: ori investigations

Resveratrol fraud case update: Dipak Das loses editor’s chair, lawyer issues statement refuting all charges

Das, via UConn

Many Retraction Watch readers will now be familiar with the case of Dipak Das, the resveratrol researcher about whom the University of Connecticut issued a voluminous report yesterday — summary here — detailing 145 counts of data fabrication and falsification. This has been a fast-moving story, so we wanted to highlight a number of updates to our original post, and offer a few more.

First, we have confirmed with publisher Mary Ann Liebert this morning that Das has been relieved of his duties as co-editor in chief of Antioxidants & Redox Signaling. He had shared that post with Chandan Sen, and his name as been removed from the masthead of that journal. Here’s a statement from the publisher: Continue reading Resveratrol fraud case update: Dipak Das loses editor’s chair, lawyer issues statement refuting all charges

ORI comes down (hard) on Bengu Sezen, Columbia chemist accused of fraud

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.

According to the agency: Continue reading ORI comes down (hard) on Bengu Sezen, Columbia chemist accused of fraud

What happens after a retraction for falsified data? An example from Endocrinology

In the world of scientific misconduct, it’s often worth keeping track of what happens to scientists whose papers were retracted because of falsified or otherwise fraudulent results.

Take the case of Hung-Shu Chang. Last week, the the federal Office of Research Integrity announced that it had closed its investigation into the scientist’s misdeeds. Chang was a visiting postdoctoral researcher from Taiwan who in 2005 had come to the renowned Skinner Laboratory at Washington State University to study the effects of endocrine disruptors — a class of compounds that includes BPA and which have been shown to disrupt the action of hormones — on sex cells.

Chang was accused of falsifying data in a 2006 paper in Endocrinology — later retracted — reporting the damaging effects of vinclozolin, a fungicide used to protect vineyards, on the genetic integrity of sperm cells.

According to federal and university investigators, Chang, who has since returned to Taiwan, “fabricated and falsified data” central to the authors’ claim that vinclozolin could alter sperm in such a way that the mutations could cause disease in future generations. Such mutations are referred to as epigenetic changes. Continue reading What happens after a retraction for falsified data? An example from Endocrinology