A set of 10 articles recognized by Dr. David confirmed the repeated reuse of an identical or overlapping black-and-white pictures of purportedly most cancers cells underneath completely different experimental circumstances, he mentioned.
“There's no motive to do that except you're not doing the job,” mentioned Dr. David.
A kind of paperwork, revealed in 2012, was formally marked with corrections. In contrast to the next research, which have been largely supervised by Dr. Yoon in New York, this paper was written by scientists based mostly in South Korea, together with Changhwan Yoon, who labored in Seoul.
An immunologist in Norway randomly chosen the paper as a part of a screening of knowledge copied from most cancers journals. This led the writer of the paper, the medical journal Oncogene, so as to add corrections in 2016.
However the journal didn’t seize all of the duplicate information, Dr. David mentioned. And, he mentioned, the pictures of the examine later appeared in an identical type in one other doc that continues to be uncorrected.
Copied most cancers information remains to be recurring, mentioned Dr. David. An image of a small crimson tumor from a 2017 examine reappeared within the papers in 2020 and 2021 underneath completely different descriptions, he mentioned. A rule included within the picture for the wound scale in two completely different positions.
The 2020 examine included one other tumor picture that Dr. David mentioned gave the impression to be a mirror picture of an earlier one revealed by Dr. Yoon's lab. And the 2021 examine offered a coloration model of a tumor that had appeared in a earlier paper on a distinct part of the dominion, mentioned Dr. David.
“That is one other instance the place this seems to be deliberately finished,” mentioned Dr. Bik.
The researchers confronted probably the most critical motion when the writer Elsevier withdrew the abdomen most cancers examine that had been revealed on-line in 2021. “The editors decided that the article violated the publication ethics pointers of journals,” mentioned Elsevier.
Roland Herzog, the editor of Molecular Remedy, the journal the place the article appeared, mentioned that “duplications of pictures have been famous” as a part of a screening course of for discrepancies that the journal will proceed to strengthen
As a result of the issues have been detected earlier than the examine was ever revealed within the printed journal, Elsevier's coverage dictated that the article be eliminated and no rationalization revealed on-line.
However this determination appeared to battle with trade pointers from the Committee on Publication Ethics. Posting articles on-line “often constitutes publication,” these pointers state. And when publishers pull such articles, the rules say, they have to hold the work on-line for transparency and publish “a transparent retraction discover.”
Dr. Herzog mentioned that he personally hoped that such a proof may be revealed for the examine of abdomen most cancers. The journal's editors and Elsevier, he mentioned, are inspecting attainable choices.
The publishers notified Dr. Yoon and Changhwan Yoon of the article's elimination, however neither scientist notified Memorial Sloan Kettering, the hospital mentioned. Columbia didn’t say whether or not it had been informed.
