Circulation retracts four papers by author who misled on IRB approval

Circulation has retracted four articles by a pediatric cardiologist in Japan who failed to obtain ethics approval for the studies in question but evidently lied about it to the journal.

The researcher, Hideaki Senzaki, of Saitama Medical University, is a highly-published investigator who trained for a time with at Johns Hopkins.

According to the Circulation notice:

The four articles listed below have been retracted due to ethical violations. The corresponding author’s institution, Saitama Medical University, reported to the editors of Circulation, that Dr. Hideaki Senzaki did not receive approval for these studies from the institutional internal ethics committee. Furthermore, in each of the articles referenced below, it was determined that Dr. Senzaki misinformed the editors and readers of Circulation by stating that the studies had received the necessary approval from his institutional review board.

Ventricular–Vascular Stiffening in Patients With Repaired Coarctation of Aorta: Integrated Pathophysiology of Hypertension. Circulation. 2008;118:S191–S198, doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.757096

Arterial Hemodynamics in Patients After Kawasaki Disease. Circulation. 2005;111:2119–2125, doi:10.1161/01.CIR.0000162483.51132.25

Ventricular Afterload and Ventricular Work in Fontan Circulation: Comparison With Normal Two-Ventricle Circulation and Single-Ventricle Circulation With Blalock-Taussig Shunts. Circulation. 2002;105:2885–2892, doi:10.1161/01.CIR.0000018621.96210.72

Circulating Matrix Metalloproteinases and Their Inhibitors in Patients With Kawasaki Disease. Circulation. 2001;104:860–863, doi:10.1161/hc3301.095286

The four papers have been cited ranging from 9 to 67 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

Tagni McRae, a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, which publishes Circulation, told us that

We were contacted in April by the institution and we published a retraction at their request.

We tried to reach Senzaki for comment but have yet to hear back. We also left word with Kass and with the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which has published papers by Senzaki, to find out whether it, too had been contacted by Saitama officials. We’ll update this post when we learn more.

Meanwhile, we’re glad to see that the institution and the journal are taking lack of IRB approval seriously. That, after all, among other things is what got Joachim Boldt and Yoshitaka Fujii — two anesthesiologists going mano e mano for the Most Retractions title — in trouble.