Mitochondrial fission paper falls for fusing data from earlier work

A team of neuroscientists in Japan has lost their 2012 article in Brain Research for duplicating elements of a figure from a paper they’d published earlier that year in another journal.

The article, “Dynamic changes of mitochondrial fission proteins after transient cerebral ischemia in mice,” came from a lab at Okayama University. The last author was Koji Abe. According to the retraction notice:

Second retraction appears for University of Wisconsin neuroscientist who faked images

A University of Wisconsin scientist who was found by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to have faked data in two papers, has had a second study retracted.

Here’s the notice: for “Secretory phospholipase A2 IIA is up-regulated by TNF-α and IL-1α/β after transient focal cerebral ischemia in rat,” by Rao Adibhatla and colleagues and originally published in Brain Research in February 2007:

University of Wisconsin neuroscientist faked data in two papers: ORI

Rao Adibhatla, via University of Wisconsin

A University of Wisconsin neuroscience researcher falsified “Western blot images as well as quantitative and statistical data” in two NIH-supported papers and three unfunded grant applications, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has found.

As first reported by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and then The Scientist, Rao M. Adibhatla has agreed to retract the two papers, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Brain Research: