There are an increasing number of retractions of studies and published papers. Can we even trust what remains??
Former NCI postdoc faked data from nearly 60 experiments
by Ivan Oransky
A former postdoc at the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) made up data for 59 experiments that never happened, according to new findings by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.
The ORI found that Rahul Agrawal “knowingly, intentionally, and/or recklessly falsified and/or fabricated:”
qRT-PCR data in fifty-nine (59) Excel files by:
— conceiving Cycle Threshold (CT) values and PCR machine run identification numbers and run dates for fifty-nine (59) experiments that were not conducted
— inserting falsified and/or fabricated CT values in fifty-four (54) files that originated from one (1) Excel template with a single file creation date to represent distinct experimental runs with different experimental dates in exported Excel files from the PCR machine
— utilizing an earlier PCR machine calibration date in four (4) Excel files to represent experiments completed at a later date
CFC and FF assay images in four (4) PowerPoint files by:
— representing eight (8) images of CFC and FF assays in cell culture plates as the overexpression of LINC00379 or LINC00380 in human alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma RD and Rh41 cells when the cultured cells did not overexpress the specific LINC RNA
Agrawal agreed to have any federally funded research supervised for a year beginning on August 8.
Agrawal, who was a PhD student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi before becoming a postdoc at the NCI, did not respond to a request for comment from Retraction Watch.
Filed under: General Problems
I worked for over 15 years in academic basic research. A tremendous amount of researchers’ time is spent desperately scrabbling for scarce funding –they spend more time trying to keep the lab funded than thinking about & working on the actual research. Unless you can hook your project to some sexy, currently popular subject, you’re screwed. I’m sure lots of unscrupulous (or just more desperate) researchers have climbed on the “evil opioid” bandwagon for the sake of funding…all you have to do is read the studies coming out in the last couple of years to see that many in research & even more in formerly respectable journals have sold out (the fact that anyone published the incredibly awful Krebs study at all indicates that journalistic integrity is dead).
Maybe if this country was willing to actually put up money for basic research –even if it didn’t have immediately profitable results– this tsunami of lies and scientific sell-out wouldn’t be so bad. If researchers of integrity could actually do their work & survive, one helluva lot more basic & ultimately useful work could be accomplished. If a country is not willing to actually fund anything but corporations, don’t be surprised if you end up drowning in a swamp of profit-driven crap, in a country where science is seen as evil.
WTF. It seems that in the last several years our institutions, gov’t protections, and morals are all sitting at the bottom of the deepest swamp in history.
They got so fat on big profits which was actually highway robbery (a loaf of bread retail really doesn’t actually need to cost $2.59) they don’t even come to work anymore, but offload the work to junior employees figuring things will go on the same. But they don’t – it takes REAL work to run a country and keep hands out of the cookie jar. For example, the good restaurants in this town have all been turned over to the kids now and nothing is of any quality anymore.