Today, the Ohio State University (OSU) announced that Ching-Shih Chen, who resigned from a professorship there in September, was guilty of “deviating from the accepted practices of image handling and figure generation and intentionally falsifying data” in 14 images from eight papers. Chen had earned more than $8 million in Federal grants, and his work had led to a compound now being testing in clinical trials for cancer. (For details of the case, see our story in Science.)
This interview points to one of the advantages of well-documented research misconduct procedures and fullsome inquiry reports. Of course, that can expose situations where procedures aren’t followed – which isn’t a bad thing.
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Retraction Watch (RW): What’s your impression of the case? How does it compare in significance with others you’ve looked at?
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C.K. Gunsalus (CKG): This research is clinical, and was covered by an investigational new drug application (IND). Any time you have translational research that has been or is in the process of human use, the significance is high.
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