Scientists in a prominent cancer lab at Columbia University have now had four studies retracted and a note added to a fifth accusing it of “severe abuse of the scientific publishing system” in the latest fallout from research misconduct allegations against several leading cancer scientists.
Last year, a British scientific sleuth uncovered discrepancies in data published by the Columbia lab, including the re-use of photos and other images across different papers.
The New York Times reported last month that a medical journal in 2022 had quietly removed a stomach cancer study by the researchers after an internal inquiry by the journal found ethics violations.
Despite that, the researchers – Dr Sam Yoon, chief of a cancer surgery division at Columbia University’s medical centre, and Changhwan Yoon, a more junior biologist there – continued publishing studies with suspicious data.
Since 2008, the two have collaborated with other researchers on 26 articles that the sleuth, Dr Sholto David, publicly flagged for misrepresenting experiments’ results.
One of those articles was retracted last month after The New York Times asked publishers about the allegations. Recently, medical journals have retracted three additional studies, which described new strategies for treating cancers of the stomach, head and neck. Other labs had cited the articles in roughly 90 papers.
A major scientific publisher also appended a blunt note to the article that it had originally taken down without explanation in 2022. “This reuse (and in part, misrepresentation) of data without appropriate attribution represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system,” it said.
Still, those measures addressed only a small fraction of the lab’s suspect 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, if at all, to significant problems once they are detected.
As a result, other labs keep relying on questionable work as they pour federal research money into studies, allowing errors to accumulate in the scientific record.
“For every one paper retracted, there are probably 10 that should be,” said Dr Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, which keeps a database of 47 000-plus retracted studies. “Journals are not particularly interested in correcting the record.”
Columbia’s medical centre declined to comment on allegations facing Yoon’s lab. It said the two scientists remained at Columbia and the hospital “is fully committed to upholding the highest standards of ethics and to rigorously maintaining the integrity of our research”.
The lab’s web page was recently taken offline. Columbia declined to say why. Neither Dr Yoon nor Changhwan Yoon could be reached for comment. (They are not related.)
The Columbia scientists’ retractions come amid growing attention to the suspicious data that undergird some medical research. Since February, medical journals have retracted seven papers by scientists at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
That followed investigations into data problems publicised by David, an independent molecular biologist who looks for irregularities in published images of cells, tumours and mice, sometimes with help from AI software.
The spate of misconduct allegations has drawn attention to the pressures on academic scientists – even those, like Dr Yoon, who also work as doctors – to produce heaps of research.
Strong images of experiments’ results are often needed for those studies, helping scientists win prestigious academic appointments and attract federal research grants that can pay dividends for themselves and their universities.
Dr Yoon, a robotic surgery specialist noted for his treatment of stomach cancers, has helped bring in nearly $5m in research money over his career.
The latest retractions from his lab included articles from 2020 and 2021 that David said contained glaring irregularities. Their results appeared to include identical images of tumour-stricken mice, despite those mice supposedly having been subjected to different experiments involving separate treatments and types of cancer cells.
The medical journal Cell Death & Disease retracted two of the latest studies, and Oncogene retracted the third. The journals found the studies had also reused other images, like identical pictures of constellations of cancer cells.
The studies David flagged as containing image problems were largely overseen by the more senior Dr Yoon. Changhwan Yoon, an associate research scientist who has worked alongside Dr Yoon for a decade, was often a first author, which generally designates the scientist who ran the bulk of the experiments.
Kun Huang, a scientist in China who oversaw one of the recently retracted studies, a 2020 paper that did not include the more senior Dr Yoon, attributed that study’s problematic sections to Changhwan Yoon. Huang made those comments on PubPeer, a website where scientists post about studies, and did not respond to an email seeking comment.
But the more senior Dr Yoon has long been made aware of problems in research he published alongside Changhwan Yoon: the pair was notified of the removal in January 2022 of their stomach cancer study that was found to have violated ethics guidelines.
Research misconduct is often pinned on the more junior researchers who conduct experiments. Other scientists, though, assign greater responsibility to the senior researchers who run labs and oversee studies, even while juggling jobs as doctors or administrators.
“The research world’s coming to realise that with great power comes great responsibility and, in fact, you are responsible not just for what one of your direct reports in the lab has done, but for the environment you create,” Oransky said.
In their latest public retraction notices, journals said that they had lost faith in the results and conclusions. Imaging experts said some irregularities identified by David bore signs of deliberate manipulation, like flipped or rotated images, while others could have been sloppy copy-and-paste errors.
The little-noticed removal by a journal of the stomach cancer study in January 2022 highlighted some scientific publishers’ policy of not disclosing the reasons for withdrawing papers as long as they have not yet formally appeared in print. That study had appeared only online.
Roland Herzog, editor of Molecular Therapy, said editors had drafted an explanation they intended publishing at the time of the article’s removal. But Elsevier, the journal’s parent publisher, advised them that this was unnecessary, he said.
Only after the Times article last month did Elsevier agree to explain the article’s removal publicly with the stern note. In an editorial this week, Molecular Therapy editors said that in future, they would explain the removal of any articles that had been published only online.
But Elsevier said in a statement that it did not consider online articles “to be the final published articles of record”.
As a result, company policy continues to advise that such articles be removed without an explanation if found to contain problems, with editors allowed to provide additional information where needed.
Elsevier, which publishes nearly 3 000 journals and generates billions of dollars in annual revenue, has long been criticised for its opaque removals of online articles.
Articles by the Columbia scientists with data discrepancies that remain unaddressed were largely distributed by Elsevier, Springer Nature and the American Association for Cancer Research.
David alerted many journals to the data discrepancies in October.
Each publisher said it was investigating the concerns. Springer Nature said investigations take time because they can involve consulting experts, waiting for author responses and analysing raw data.
David has 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, an associate professor of surgical sciences at Columbia, published an article in 2003 – while at Harvard – that David said contained a duplicated image. As of 2021, she was married to the more senior Dr Yoon.
A medical journal appended a formal notice to the article last week saying “appropriate editorial action will be taken” once data concerns had been resolved.
Ryeom said she was working with the paper’s senior author on “correcting the error”.
Columbia has sought to reinforce the importance of sound research practices. Hours after The New York 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 accusations – how to protect yourself”, warning that such allegations could take a toll on the university.
“In the months that it can take to investigate an allegation,” he wrote, “funding can be suspended, and donors can feel that their trust has been betrayed.”
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