A bunch of researchers on the University of Chicago has requested a Nature journal to retract a paper after PubPeer commenters identified quite a few duplicated photographs in the article.
The paper, “Synergistic checkpoint-blockade and radiotherapy–radiodynamic therapy via an immunomodulatory nanoscale metal–organic framework,” was revealed final month in Nature Biomedical Engineering. According to its senior creator, Wenbin Lin, the know-how is already in a human trial.
After 5 totally different feedback on PubPeer, Lin at first mentioned he and his colleagues would appropriate the paper:
We thank the reader for declaring these errors in the Supplementary Materials of our just lately revealed paper in Nat Biomed Eng. The first four errors pertain to PBS and H2DBP management teams. For the final error, the shortage of organ abnormality and common toxicity is supported by many different strains of proof in the manuscript. We can guarantee that the correction of these errors is not going to influence the conclusions of this paper. We have submitted corrections to the journal and offered detailed explanations to the editor. We apologize to the readers for these errors in our paper.
In a second remark, Lin mentioned his crew is “investigating what had happened and will report our findings in due time” and apologized “for the unacceptable mistakes in this paper.” But in a 3rd remark following more than a dozen extra PubPeer feedback, Lin blamed first creator Kaiyuan Ni, his former graduate pupil:
After analyzing the problematic photographs and a number of conferences with different authors, we concluded that these issues had been solely brought on by the misconduct of the primary creator. We submitted a retraction notice for this paper yesterday. As for the tumor dimension challenge, our protocol has a 2 cm3 dimension restrict and some of the antitumor efficacy experiments had been ongoing throughout the shutdown part of Covid pandemic in 2929 [sic]. I apologize for our failure to catch the misconduct from the primary creator.
Ni, now a postdoc at MIT, didn’t reply to requests for remark from us.
In feedback to Retraction Watch, Lin reiterated what he posted on PubPeer, that
…the primary creator misused photographs in these papers, significantly in the Nat Biomed Eng paper. I’m not in the place to say more as I’ve requested my establishment to launch an investigation into the matter. We have requested to retract the Nature Biomed. Eng. paper and want more time to determine what really occurred in different papers. I’ve repeatedly apologized for my failure to catch these potential misconducts and must wait till the investigation concludes to make extra feedback.
Lin mentioned he “communicated with [Ni] after the initial set of images were posted on Pubpeer.”
In responses to PubPeer feedback on four different papers for comparable points, Lin wrote:
We are launching an investigation into this matter and will get to the underside of this matter. We will report our findings and work with the journals to deal with the issues. As the corresponding creator of these problematic papers, I apologize for my failure to catch potential misconducts of a singular former graduate pupil in my lab.
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