More studies by Columbia Cancer Researchers have been retracted
Scientists at a leading cancer lab at Columbia University have now retracted four studies and added a stern note to a fifth accusing them of “serious abuse of the scientific publishing system,” the latest fallout from allegations of research misconduct recently leveled against several leading cancer scientists. .
A scientific sleuth in Britain last year discrepancies in the data were revealed published by the Columbia lab, including the reuse of photographs and other images in various newspapers. The New York Times reported last month that a medical journal quietly halted a stomach cancer study by its researchers in 2022 after the journal’s internal investigation found ethical violations.
Despite the removal of that study, the researchers – Dr. Sam Yoon, head of one cancer surgery department at Columbia University Medical Center, and Changhwan Yoon, a junior biologist there, continued to publish studies with suspect data. Since 2008, the two scientists have collaborated with other researchers on 26 papers that the researcher, Sholto David, publicly marked for misrepresenting the results of experiments.
One of those articles was withdrawn last month after The Times asked publishers about the allegations. In recent weeks, medical journals have done just that withdrawn three Additionally studies, which described new strategies for the treatment of stomach, head and neck cancer. Other labs had cited the articles in about 90 articles.
A major scientific publisher also added a blunt note to the article that it originally removed in 2022 without explanation. “This reuse (and partial misrepresentation) of data without appropriate attribution represents a serious abuse of the scientific publishing system.” said.
Yet these measures only affected a small portion of the laboratory’s suspicious papers. Experts said the episode illustrated not only the extent of unreliable research by top labs, but also the tendency of scientific publishers to respond slowly or not at all to significant problems once they are discovered. As a result, other labs continue to rely on questionable work while pouring federal research money into studies, allowing errors to accumulate in the scientific record.
“For every paper that is retracted, there are probably 10 that should be,” says Dr. Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, which maintains a database of more than 47,000 retracted studies. “Journals are not particularly interested in correcting the data.”
Columbia Medical Center declined to comment on the allegations against Dr. Yoon. It said the two scientists remained at Columbia and that the hospital is “fully committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards and to rigorously maintaining the integrity of our research.”
The laboratory web page was recently taken offline. Columbia declined to say why. Neither Dr. Neither Yoon nor Changhwan Yoon could be reached for comment. (They are not related.)
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where the scientists worked when much of the research was done, is examining their work.
The Columbia scientists’ retractions come amid growing attention to the suspect data underlying medical research. Medical journals have been doing the same since the end of February seven withdrawn paper by scientists at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. This followed investigations into data problems published by Dr. Davidan independent molecular biologist who, sometimes with the help of AI software, looks for irregularities in published images of cells, tumors and mice.
The wave of misconduct allegations has drawn attention to the pressure on academic scientists – even those like Dr. Yoon, who also work as doctors – to produce a huge amount of research.
Such studies often require strong images of the results of experiments. By publishing them, scientists can win prestigious academic appointments and attract federal research grants that can bring profits to themselves and their universities.
Dr. Yoon, a robotic surgery specialist known for his treatment of stomach cancer, helped introduce it almost $5 million in federal research money throughout his career.
The latest retractions from his laboratory include papers from 2020 and 2021 that Dr. David said contained noticeable irregularities. Their results appeared to include identical images of tumor-stricken mice, despite those mice supposedly being subjected to different experiments with separate treatments and types of cancer cells.
The medical journal Cell Death & Disease has retracted two of the latest studies, and Oncogene the third. The journals revealed that the studies had also reused other images, such as identical images of constellations of cancer cells.
The studies that Dr. David flagged because they contained image problems, were largely overseen by the more experienced Dr. Yoon. Changhwan Yoon, a senior research associate who has worked with Dr. for a decade. Yoon, was often the first author, which usually indicates the scientist who performed the bulk of the experiments.
Kun Huang, a scientist in China who oversaw one of the recently withdrawn investigations, a 2020 paper in which senior Dr. Yoon was not included, attributed the problematic sections of that study to Changhwan Yoon. Dr. Huang, who made those comments This month, PubPeer, a website where scientists post about research, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
But the more experienced Dr. Yoon has long been aware of the problems in the study he published with Changhwan Yoon: the two scientists were notified in January 2022 of the removal of their stomach cancer study, which was found to have violated ethics guidelines.
Research misconduct is often blamed on the younger researchers conducting experiments. Other scientists, however, assign greater responsibility to the senior researchers who run laboratories and oversee studies, even as they juggle jobs as physicians or administrators.
“The research community is starting to realize that with great power comes great responsibility and that in fact you are not only responsible for what one of your direct reports has done in the laboratory, but also for the environment you create,” said Dr . Oransky.
In their latest public retraction notices, medical journals said they had lost confidence in the results and conclusions. Imaging experts said some by Dr. David identified irregularities showed signs of deliberate manipulation, such as flipping or rotating images, while others could have been sloppy copy and paste errors.
The little-noticed removal by a journal of the gastric cancer study in January 2022, the policy of some scientific publishers not to make public the reasons for retracting articles until they have formally appeared in print was highlighted. That study was only published online.
Roland Herzog, the editor of the journal Molecular Therapy, said the editors had prepared a statement that they planned to publish at the time the article was removed. But Elsevier, the magazine’s parent publisher, told them such a note was not necessary, he said.
Only after last month’s Times article did Elsevier agree to publicly explain the article’s removal with the stern letter. In a editorial this weekMolecular Therapy editors said they would explain the removal of articles that had only been published online in the future.
But Elsevier said in a statement that it does not consider online articles “to be the latest articles published.” As a result, company policy continues to advise that such items be removed without explanation if they are found to contain issues. The company said it allowed editors to provide additional information as necessary.
Elsevier, which publishes and generates almost 3,000 journals billions of dollars in annual revenueshas long criticized for its opaque takedowns of online articles.
Papers by the Columbia scientists with data discrepancies that remain unaddressed were largely distributed by three major publishers: Elsevier, Springer Nature and the American Association for Cancer Research. Dr. David alerted many journals to the discrepancies in the data in October.
Each publisher said it is looking into the concerns. Springer Nature said studies take time because they involve consulting experts, waiting for responses from authors and analyzing raw data.
Dr. David also raised concerns about studies published independently by scientists who collaborated with the Columbia researchers on some of their recently retracted papers. For example, Sandra Ryeom, associate professor of surgical sciences at Columbia, published an article at Harvard in 2003 in which Dr. said it contained a duplicate image. According to a mortgage document from that year, as of 2021 she was married to the eldest Dr. Yoon.
The paper had a notice of default added said last week that “appropriate editorial action will be taken” once concerns about the data were resolved. Dr. Ryeom did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Columbia has tried to reinforce the importance of good research practices. Hours after the Times article appeared last month, Dr. Michael Shelanski, the medical school’s senior vice dean for research, sent an email to faculty members titled “Research Fraud Allegations – How to Protect Yourself.” It warned that such allegations, whatever their merits, could take their toll on the university.
“In the months it can take to investigate an allegation,” wrote Dr. Shelanski, “funding could be suspended and donors could feel like their trust has been violated.”