Dong Pyou-Han, a former researcher at Iowa State University who spiked rabbit blood samples to make it look as though a potential HIV vaccine was working, was arrested earlier this week on felony charges.
According to the Des Moines Register: Continue reading Unusual: HIV vaccine researcher who faked data arrested, faces felony charges
Courtesy of a Freedom of Information Act request, The Boston Globe has a very good piece detailing what investigators found had actually happened in the Marc Hauser lab before the former Harvard psychology researcher resigned in 2011 and was found guilty of misconduct by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in 2012.
The Globe requested the 2010 report Harvard sent the ORI. Here’s a summary:
The 85-page report details instances in which Hauser changed data so that it would show a desired effect. It shows that he more than once rebuffed or downplayed questions and concerns from people in his laboratory about how a result was obtained. The report also describes “a disturbing pattern of misrepresentation of results and shading of truth” and a “reckless disregard for basic scientific standards.”
The Globe quotes key passages from the report: Continue reading “Misrepresentation,” “reckless disregard for basic scientific standards”: Hauser report reveals details of misconduct
A former Harvard postdoc who was found guilty of faking data at Oxford as a student did the same thing at Harvard, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
We first wrote about Helen Freeman in February, when we covered a retraction in Cell Metabolism that said the UK’s Medical Research Council had found that she committed misconduct while working as a student at Oxford. Today, a Federal Register notice from the ORI reports that Freeman faked images in a manuscript submitted to Nature while she was working on federally funded grants at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
From the ORI’s report: Continue reading Serial fakery: Researcher found to have committed misconduct at Harvard and Oxford
In December, we reported on the case of Timothy Sheehy, a former government contractor who was found to have faked results. ORI found that Sheehy
fabricated the quantitative and qualitative data for RNA and DNA purportedly extracted from 900 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) colorectal tissue samples presented in Table 1 of the CEBP paper and falsely reported successful methodology to simultaneously recover nucleic acids from FFPE tissue specimens, when neither the extractions nor analyses of the FFPE samples were done. Thus, the main conclusions of the CEBP paper are based on fabricated data and are false.
Sheehy agreed to ask that one of his papers be retracted. The retraction notice has appeared: Continue reading Retraction appears for former federal contractor who faked data
A former postdoc at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York faked data in four published papers, one submitted manuscript, and four NIH grant applications, according to new findings by the Office of Research Integrity.
We reported on six retractions from Savio Woo’s Mount Sinai lab in 2010, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and two each from Human Gene Therapy and Molecular Therapy. The PNAS paper, as we noted then:
claimed to have discovered a possible cure for phenylketonuria, or PKU, in mice—a finding that was cited more than 30 times and trumpeted in the media.
At the time, Mount Sinai said that two of the lab’s postdocs had been dismissed for misconduct. Now, more than three and a half years later, the ORI reports that a former postdoc in that lab, Li Chen: Continue reading Former Mount Sinai postdoc faked gene therapy data: ORI
We have an update on the case of Parag Patel, the Park Ridge, Illinois cardiologist whom the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said “engaged in research misconduct by directing or intimidating fellows and others to influence” test results so that patients would be eligible for a clinical trial.
A spokesperson for the clinical trial’s sponsor, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), tells us: Continue reading Alleged faked heart tests “might affect inclusion of data” in study led by UCSF
A cardiology researcher in Illinois coerced trainees to fake the results of a heart test so that patients would qualify to enter a clinical trial, according to a new finding by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
Here’s an excerpt from the ORI’s notice about Parag V. Patel, of Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, in Park Ridge, Illinois: Continue reading Researcher intimidated trainees into faking heart test results: ORI
Last week, we reported that David Wright had resigned as director of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). At the time, we noted we were short on details, but Science has obtained Wright’s resignation letter, which sheds a great deal of light on the move.
In his letter, according to Science, Wright wrote that: Continue reading In sharp resignation letter, former ORI director Wright criticizes bureaucracy, dysfunction
March has come in like a lion for the folks at the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).
The agency’s director, David Wright, stepped down late last month for reasons that even now remain unclear. And in what seems to be an unrelated development, ORI has managed to draw the ire of Sen. Charles Grassley, who has been among the staunchest watchdogs over federal research integrity.
According to the Des Moines Register, the Iowa Republican
Continue reading Senator “unsatisfied” with ORI’s response on recovery of tainted grant money
David Wright has left his post as director of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), Retraction Watch has learned.
Although we’re short on details on the moment, we have confirmed that Wright’s last day at the agency was a week ago Thursday. Wright joined ORI as director in January 2012. According to his agency bio:
Continue reading Office of Research Integrity (ORI) head David Wright leaves agency