Paul Brookes is a biologist with a passion for sleuthing out fraud. Although he studies mitochondria at the University of Rochester, he also secretly ran a science-fraud.org, a site for people to post their concerns about papers. Following legal threats, he revealed he was the author and shut the site in 2013 — but didn’t … Continue reading What if we could scan for image duplication the way we check for plagiarism?
Today, the Ohio State University (OSU) announced that Ching-Shih Chen, who resigned from a professorship there in September, was guilty of “deviating from the accepted practices of image handling and figure generation and intentionally falsifying data” in 14 images from eight papers. Chen had earned more than $8 million in Federal grants, and his work … Continue reading Ohio State just released a 75-page report finding misconduct by a cancer researcher. What can we learn?
Kyoto University has “punitively dismissed” a researcher found guilty of falsifying nearly all of the figures in a 2017 stem cell paper. According to an announcement Wednesday, the university fired the paper’s corresponding author, Kohei Yamamizu, after determining he had fabricated and falsified data in all but one figure in the 2017 Stem Cell Reports … Continue reading Stem cell paper falsification leads to firing; Nobelist also penalized
Titles: 1) Angiopoietin-Like 4 Confers Resistance to Hypoxia/Serum Deprivation-Induced Apoptosis through PI3K/Akt and ERK1/2 Signaling Pathways in Mesenchymal Stem Cells 2) Novel Mechanism of Inhibition of Dendritic Cells Maturation by Mesenchymal Stem Cells via Interleukin-10 and the JAK1/STAT3 Signaling Pathway What Caught Our Attention: In the span of 48 hours, PLOS ONE retracted two papers … Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Duplicates, errors prompt two retractions for same author
How much role did a potentially problematic paper play in the demise of a once-promising compound? Researchers are questioning the validity of a high-profile article, published by Nature in 2006. Although the letter is 12 years old, the concerns have current implications: It was among the early evidence used to develop a cancer compound that … Continue reading Figures in cancer paper at root of newly failed compound called into question
Title: Haemophilus influenzae responds to glucocorticoids used in asthma therapy by modulation of biofilm formation and antibiotic resistance What Caught Our Attention: This is the fourth retraction for Robert Ryan, formerly a high-profile researcher studying infections that can be deadly in people with lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis. In 2016, the University of Dundee … Continue reading Caught Our Notice: Former rising star loses fourth paper
PNAS has corrected a highly cited paper after an investigation found evidence of misconduct. The investigation—conducted jointly by the University of California, San Francisco, and the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center—uncovered image manipulation in Figure 2D, which “could only have occurred intentionally.” The institutions, however, could not definitively attribute the research misconduct to any … Continue reading UCSF-VA investigation finds misconduct in highly cited PNAS paper
A third paper co-authored by researchers based at a prominent lab whose work has been under investigation on and off for almost three years has been retracted. According to the notice, the university’s investigation found that a 2008 paper in FEBS Letters contained “clear signs of manipulation” in three figures. Research from geneticist David Latchman’s … Continue reading “Clear signs of manipulation” in paper co-authored by prominent geneticist
A former researcher at New York University falsified and/or fabricated data in multiple papers and grant applications, according to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity. Bhagavathi Narayanan has already retracted three papers, the result of missing original data. Among the three papers flagged by the ORI, only one remains intact: A 2011 paper in Anticancer … Continue reading Former NYU researcher falsified data in 3 papers, 7 grants: ORI
After being “blindsided” a few months ago when she was told one of her 2005 papers was going to be retracted, a researcher scrambled to get information about why. And when she didn’t like the answers, she took to PubPeer. Eight days ago, Shalon (Babbitt) Ledbetter, the first author of the 2005 paper published in … Continue reading Delays, arguing over upcoming Cell retraction leave first author “devastated”