NYU postdoc with federal research misconduct settlement awarded NIH grant

Shuo Chen

A postdoc at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine who the U.S. Office of Research Integrity found engaged in research misconduct while a postdoc at another institution has been awarded an NIH grant just months after being sanctioned. 

The postdoc, Shuo Chen, didn’t admit or deny the ORI’s findings, but agreed to one year of supervision for any research funded by the U.S. Public Health Service, which includes the NIH, as we’ve previously reported. 

That year began on Feb. 28, 2022, and less than four months later Chen was awarded a coveted and competitive K99 “pathway to independence” grant for “Elucidating circuit mechanisms of brain rhythms in the aging brain” on June 15, according to NIH RePORTER. The $135,945 grant is from the National Institute on Aging. 

Chen is listed as a postdoc on the lab website of NYU School of Medicine neuroscientist Zhe Sage Chen (no relation), and also appears in a 2021 photo of members of György Buzsáki’s NYU lab. The grant abstract mentions training in the labs of Zhe Sage Chen, Buzsáki, and Thomas Wisniewski, director of NYU Langone’s Pearl I. Barlow Center for Memory Evaluation and Treatment and its Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. 

We emailed Shuo Chen for comment but have not heard back. NYU Langone Health media relations sent us this statement after we reached out to Zhe Sage Chen for comment: 

Continue reading NYU postdoc with federal research misconduct settlement awarded NIH grant

An Elsevier journal said it would retract 10 papers two years ago. It still hasn’t.

Andrew Grey

An Elsevier journal has sat for two years on its decision to retract 10 papers by researchers with known misconduct issues, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch. 

The Journal of the Neurological Sciences had decided by June 2020 to retract the articles by Yoshihiro Sato and Jun Iwamoto, who are currently in positions four and six on our leaderboard of retractions, according to the emails. But the papers still haven’t been retracted, to the disappointment of one of the data sleuths who raised concerns about the work – and in the meantime have been cited more than a dozen times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. 

As Andrew Grey, of the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, wrote to a staffer at the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) who became involved in the case: 

Continue reading An Elsevier journal said it would retract 10 papers two years ago. It still hasn’t.

UPenn prof with four retractions “may no longer be affiliated” with school

William Armstead

A pharmacology researcher with four retractions appears to have left the University of Pennsylvania, where he had worked for at least 30 years and won more than $7 million in NIH grants.

The school’s faculty page for William Armstead, who held ​​a research professorship in Anesthesiology and Critical Care, now bears only the statement that “Dr. Armstead may no longer be affiliated with the Perelman School of Medicine.” Penn Medicine has not responded to our request for comment.  

In May, we reported that Armstead was up to four retractions after the Journal of Neurotrauma had retracted three articles at the researcher’s request. 

Continue reading UPenn prof with four retractions “may no longer be affiliated” with school

Papers on Alzheimer’s slapped with expressions of concern

A Science journal has issued expressions of concern for two papers on Alzheimer’s disease over concerns about the integrity of the data. 

One involves a 2016 article by a star-studded group of neuroscience researchers over allegations of manipulated data in one of the figures. That paper, “Gain-of-function mutations in protein kinase Cα (PKCα) may promote synaptic defects in Alzheimer’s disease,” appeared in Science Signaling and  came from a team led by Rudolph Tanzi  and Roberto Malinow, of Harvard and UC San Diego, respectively.

Here’s the notice for the paper, which has been cited 64 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science: 

Continue reading Papers on Alzheimer’s slapped with expressions of concern

Weekend reads: Automated peer review; ‘journal editors resign in protest;’ attention to retracted papers

Would you consider a donation to support Weekend Reads, and our daily work? Thanks in advance.

The week at Retraction Watch featured:

Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to 237. There are more than 34,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers?

Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read):

Continue reading Weekend reads: Automated peer review; ‘journal editors resign in protest;’ attention to retracted papers

An Elsevier book plagiarizes an abstract published by…Elsevier

Elsevier plans to remove the introduction from a book on mineralogy after investigating allegations of plagiarism, including from another Elsevier publication, according to emails obtained by Retraction Watch. 

Photo Atlas of Mineral Pseudomorphism by J. Theo Kloprogge and Robert Lavinsky, was published in 2017 and still appears to be for sale for $100 for a hardcover and ebook bundle. (The usual price is $200, but there is a sale on at the time of this writing.) Its listing on ScienceDirect includes the introduction with no note about removal.   

As we’ve previously reported, Elsevier last year retracted an entire book by Kloprogge, an adjunct professor at the University of the Philippines Visayas and honorary senior fellow at the University of Queensland, that plagiarized heavily from Wikipedia.  

According to the emails we obtained, Gloria Staebler, of mineralogical publisher Lithographie, Ltd., noticed the plagiarism in the book in May while preparing to formally publish a manuscript   by Si and Ann Frazier that had been circulated in a mineral club newsletter in 2005. In a May 31st email to an editor at Elsevier, Staebler laid out her evidence: 

Continue reading An Elsevier book plagiarizes an abstract published by…Elsevier

Extensive correction adds to five flagged papers for UPenn professor

Erle Robertson

A UPenn professor now has six papers with a correction, expression of concern, or retraction in two PLOS journals after one published an extensive correction to a 2018 paper. 

The correction adds to two retractions and three expressions of concern for papers in PLOS Pathogens and PLOS ONE with Erle Robertson, a microbiology professor and vice chair of research for the department of otorhinolaryngology at the University of Pennsylvania, as a senior author. The actions on each paper happened after commenters on PubPeer pointed out issues. 

The correction to “STAT6 degradation and ubiquitylated TRIML2 are essential for activation of human oncogenic herpesvirus” states: 

Continue reading Extensive correction adds to five flagged papers for UPenn professor

Journal run by new AMA president-elect caught in special issue scam

Jesse Ehrenfeld

A med-tech journal whose editor-in-chief is the president-in-waiting of the American Medical Association has retracted six papers for compromised peer review and related problems.  

The Journal of Medical Systems, led by Jesse Ehrenfeld – an anesthesiologist in Wisconsin who this week became president-elect of the AMA –  said the articles were part of a special issue that ran in 2018 titled “Advancements in Internet of Medical Things for Healthcare System.”

Here’s the retraction notice for “LSTM Model for Prediction of Heart Failure in Big Data”:

Continue reading Journal run by new AMA president-elect caught in special issue scam

‘This has been a nightmare’: One paper was retracted. The other still lingers.

Philip Tsichlis

On a Saturday last November, Philip Tsichlis of The Ohio State University received an email no researcher wants to get. 

Another scientist had tried to replicate a finding in a recent paper of his, and couldn’t. “We believe that our results should lead to some revision of the model you propose,” stated the email, which was released to us by OSU following a public records request. 

It turned out that was an understatement. The email eventually led Tsichlis to discover data fabrication in that paper and a related article. Within a week, he requested the retraction of both papers, one in Communications Biology and the other in Nature Communications, both Springer Nature journals. One was retracted in December, but not the other.

In an email to a Nature Communications editor on November 22nd, Tsichlis wrote: 

This has been a nightmare and I blame myself for not having detected it earlier. However, we cannot go back. I hope that we will retract this paper as soon as possible. 

Seven months later, it remains unflagged. 

Continue reading ‘This has been a nightmare’: One paper was retracted. The other still lingers.

Retraction leads to review change at SAGE journal

A cancer journal has retracted a 2016 paper by a group in China after deciding – more than five years after publication – it couldn’t stand behind the work. 

The article, “The preoperative platelet–lymphocyte ratio versus neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio: which is better as a prognostic factor in oral squamous cell carcinoma?”, appeared in Therapeutic Advances in Medical Oncology, a SAGE title. The authors were led by Shan Chen, of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. 

The notice reads: 

Continue reading Retraction leads to review change at SAGE journal