The analysis misconduct allegations maintain coming at Harvard, as a number one neuroscientist is now below the microscope for presumably falsifying information and plagiarizing photographs in his groundbreaking analysis about aggressive mind tumors and stem cells.
Khalid Shah, a Harvard Medical School professor who’s the vice chair for analysis on the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is dealing with warmth that dozens of his analysis papers allegedly embrace photographs taken from different researchers’ papers and vendor web sites.
These accusations for the Harvard Med professor come after Dana-Farber Cancer Institute mentioned it was shifting to retract six research and proper 31 others as scientists face “data forgery” allegations for his or her most cancers analysis. Also, Harvard’s former president, Claudine Gay, lately resigned amid plagiarism allegations.
The claims about Shah have come to gentle due to science integrity marketing consultant Elisabeth Bik. The sleuth has been carefully inspecting Shah’s analysis papers after she bought a tip from an ex-lab employee about “sloppiness … in the lab,” Bik informed the Herald on Thursday.
“There was a general feeling of unease from this person,” Bik mentioned concerning the tipster. “They said people in the lab felt encouraged to give the principal investigator particular results.”
Bik took an in depth have a look at dozens of Shah’s analysis papers. In explicit, she analyzed a 2022 paper that’s apparently one of the crucial egregious examples of copying photographs that she has seen.
“The papers have the usual image problems we, unfortunately, encounter so many times, such as duplicated photos of mice and overlapping Western blots,” Bik posted on her weblog on Thursday.
“But this set also includes a 2022 paper that appears to have copy/pasted several figure panels from other researchers and even scientific vendors,” the scientist added.
The paper that she zeroed in on was titled, “Target receptor identification and subsequent treatment of resected brain tumors with encapsulated and engineered allogeneic stem cells.”
In the research, the researchers claimed that they devised a novel therapeutic technique for treating glioblastomas post-surgery by utilizing stem cells taken from wholesome donors that had been engineered to assault glioblastoma-specific tumor cells. The scientists reported that 100% of mice lived greater than 90 days after therapy.
“I did my usual ImageTwin scan to see if any of the figure panels were duplicated or overlapping,” Bik mentioned in her submit on Thursday. “What I found was a huge surprise.”
“Several of the images showing mouse tissues matched those of older papers from completely different groups,” the sleuth mentioned, later including, “It was totally unexpected to find images from a Harvard lab to match images published by a different set of authors working in a different lab.”
Overall, at the least 12 panels on this paper seem to have been copied from unrelated papers, one panel from one among their very own older papers, and three panels from scientific distributors.
Bik additionally discovered 27 extra papers with picture issues, similar to duplicated and overlapping images, or images reused from papers by the identical authors.
Last yr, the Herald spoke to Shah about making a vaccine to kill and forestall glioblastoma. Shah didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Thursday.
Harvard Medical School in a press release mentioned, “Harvard Medical School believes that the critical review of scientific work by peer scientists — both before and after publication — is an integral part of the scientific process, which is designed to identify and correct errors and enhance the rigorous interpretation of data so that scientific discoveries can be built upon and augmented, and so that existing knowledge can be expanded.”
“Please note that until proven otherwise, any and all concerns remain simply concerns, and it is critical for the review process to unfold as intended,” HMS added. “The mere identification of irregularities is, in and of itself, not indicative of deliberate misconduct because errors can occur for a range of reasons. The cause and nature of any alleged errors or irregularities can only be assessed through rigorous, detailed, and careful review.”
Paul Anderson, chief educational officer of Mass General Brigham, mentioned, “Mass General Brigham is dedicated to preserving the very best requirements of biomedical analysis and fostering scientific innovation. We take very severely any questions, considerations, or allegations relating to analysis carried out at our hospitals and undertake a strong and confidential course of to evaluate and reply to any claims which can be dropped at our consideration in accordance with hospital coverage and federal rules.
“We have also engaged in several new research integrity initiatives over the past few years, including enhancing education and training, instituting a research code of conduct, and utilizing new tools and technology,” Anderson added. “With thousands of papers published by our researchers each year and as the largest hospital system-based research enterprise in the nation, we always welcome any additional information that can aid in our review to ensure that all research conducted is done under the most rigorous scientific standards.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”