by reason for retraction – Page 27

Einstein duo faked data in 16 federal grant applications: ORI

A pair of researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York faked data in 50 figures in 16 NIH grant applications for six years starting in 2013, according to new findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

According to the ORI, Daniel Leong, a former lab tech at Einstein,

intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsified and/or fabricated Western blot and histological image data for chronic deep tissue conditions including osteoarthritis (OA) and tendinopathy in murine models by reusing image data, with or without manipulating them to conceal their similarities, and falsely relabeling them as data representing different experiments in fifty (50) figures included in sixteen (16) PHS grant applications. In the absence of reliable image data, the figures, quantitative data in associated graphs purportedly derived from those images, statistical analyses, and related text also are false.

Award-winning Berkeley postdoc faked data, says federal watchdog

A former University of California, Berkeley postdoc in physics “engaged in research misconduct in research reported in a grant application” submitted to the NIH, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

The postdoc, Shuo Chen, “reused an image of visual cortex neurons to represent fluorescence calcium imaging of hippocampal neurons,” the ORI said. Chen, who was awarded the 2019 Science & PINS Prize for Neuromodulation for this essay published in Science, also used data from a 2018 Nature Neuroscience paper he co-authored while at the RIKEN Institute in Japan “to represent several sessions of two-photon hippocampal calcium imaging of progressive place fields, obtained from multiple mice running on a treadmill in a head-fixed VR set up.”

Study of cryotherapy for COVID-19 anosmia fails the sniff test

The authors of a study suggesting that a deep freeze might help reverse one of the curious complications of COVID-19 have put their paper on ice after determining that they lacked adequate ethics approval for the research.

“Whole-Body Cryotherapy as an Innovative Treatment for COVID 19-Induced Anosmia-Hyposmia: A Feasibility Study,” was written by a group in France led by Fabien D. Legrand, of the University of Reims. The article appeared online this January in the Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine.

The randomized study looked at the effect of cryotherapy in 45 people whose sense of smell had been disrupted by COVID. Two-thirds received either high- or low-dose cryotherapy – which Legrand’s team defined as exposure to “extremely low temperatures (−60°C to −110°C) in a double Cryoair chamber (MECOTEC, Pforzheim, Germany) for 3 min” – while a third were assigned to a control group.

According to the investigators, whose affiliations included the French Society of Whole-Body Cryotherapy — and who nonetheless registered their protocol in the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials:

Authors request retraction of study in Nature journal and look into four more papers

A group of researchers at the University of Chicago has asked a Nature journal to retract a paper after PubPeer commenters pointed out numerous duplicated images in the article.

The paper, “Synergistic checkpoint-blockade and radiotherapy–radiodynamic therapy via an immunomodulatory nanoscale metal–organic framework,” was published last month in Nature Biomedical Engineering. According to its senior author, Wenbin Lin, the technology is already in a human trial.

After five different comments on PubPeer, Lin at first said he and his colleagues would correct the paper:

Study on teen pot use goes up in smoke, then reappears

A JAMA journal has retracted and replaced a widely circulated 2021 paper which purported to find that pot use among adolescents drops when states make the drug legal.

The article, “Association of Marijuana Legalization With Marijuana Use Among US High School Students, 1993-2019,” appeared in JAMA Network Open and received a bale of attention in mainstream and social media. As GreenEntrepreneur reported:

A September 2021 study of high school use between 1993 and 2019 used the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) to determine that adult-use laws did not increase teen use. After two years, states with adult-use laws saw decreases in usage.

But as readers soon pointed out, the findings were schwag. According to the notice:

UNC-Chapel Hill vice chancellor resigns post after admitting to plagiarism

Terry Magnuson, the vice chancellor for research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s medical school, has resigned from that post two days after the U.S. Office of Research Integrity said that he had admitted to plagiarizing text in an NIH grant application.

As we reported March 8, Magnuson

“engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly plagiarizing text” from two guides, material from a company that makes sequencing kits, and a review article, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

Magnuson did not respond to our requests for comment earlier this week about whether the finding would have any effect on his positions at UNC. But in a letter today to the “Carolina Community,” chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz and provost and chief academic officer J. Christopher Clemens wrote:

UNC-Chapel Hill vice chancellor admits to plagiarism

The vice chancellor for research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s medical school has admitted to plagiarizing text in an NIH grant application, according to a U.S. federal watchdog.

Terry Magnuson, who serves as the Kay M. & Van L. Weatherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor of Genetics at UNC-Chapel Hill as well as vice chancellor for research, “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly plagiarizing text” from two guides, material from a company that makes sequencing kits, and a review article, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

[See an update on this post.]

Magnuson submitted the plagiarizing grant application on March 1, 2021. He has received NIH funding as recently as August, and over his career has been a principal investigator on more than $50 million in grants from the agency.

Sports medicine researcher Paul McCrory requests another retraction

A high-profile sports medicine researcher who earlier this week had an editorial he wrote while editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine retracted has asked for another of his articles to be retracted, Retraction Watch has learned.

On Monday, we published a guest post by Steve Haake, whose work the former editor, Paul McCrory, had plagiarized. And on Wednesday, we reported that McCrory had called the plagiarism “isolated” but that sleuth Nick Brown had found at least two similar cases.

Of those two cases, McCrory, who has also served as an Australian Football League consultant, now tells Retraction Watch:

Journal editor explains ban on manuscripts from Russian institutions

Earlier this week, a scientist in Russia posted, on Facebook, part of a letter rejecting a manuscript explaining that “the editors of the Journal of Molecular Structure made a decision to ban the manuscripts submitted from Russian institutions.” That move was confirmed by Richard van Noorden of Nature.

Here, in an email he sent to us on Monday when we contacted him but which he learned just today had bounced back, Rui Fausto, the editor in chief of the journal, explains the decision.

First of all, let me say, because there is some misunderstanding circulating in some social media regarding the issue you asked me for information, that the editors of the Journal of Molecular Structure did not decide to implement any sort of ban to articles submitted by Russian authors. This would be something I, or my colleagues, could never accept. Our Russian colleagues, as all our colleagues from all around the world, deserve us maximum respect.

However, it was decided by the editors of the journal to not consider manuscripts authored by scientists working at Russian Institutions, in result of the humanitarian implications emerging from the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation. This position is temporary and shall apply until the refugees (whoever they are, Ukrainians, Russians, or of any other nationality) have conditions to return to their homes, their jobs, and join their families.

Was leading sports medicine researcher’s plagiarism ‘an isolated and unfortunate incident?’

Earlier this week, we wrote about a case of plagiarism in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) involving a highly credentialed researcher and Australian Football League consultant who’d cribbed roughly half of an article from another scholar.

The researcher, Paul McCrory, has still not responded to our requests for comment. But in an email to Steve Haake, whose work McCrory lifted while editor of the BJSM, Paul McCrory said that the offense was:

an isolated and unfortunate incident …
That resulted from the uploading to the journals’ website of a “working draft” that “failed to appropriately cite your original and excellent work as the source of the manuscript.”

Unfortunate, yes. Isolated? That’s a bit less clear.

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