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HomeScience18 papers co-authored by ICMR ex-researcher flagged for ‘image manipulation’, 2nd case...

18 papers co-authored by ICMR ex-researcher flagged for ‘image manipulation’, 2nd case this month

The latest allegations have taken the total number of flagged papers co-authored by Das to 28. The other ICMR researcher accused of misconduct in January had denied allegations.

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New Delhi: Eighteen research papers co-authored by retired ICMR researcher Pradeep Das have been flagged for alleged image manipulation over the past week.

The latest allegations have taken the total number of flagged papers co-authored by Das to 28. While some of the other 10 papers had been flagged as far back as seven years ago, a few have been brought up in recent times, including one that was retracted in June last year.

Das, former director of ICMR-Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences, is the recurring name in the papers. However, there is no solo research by him. All 28 papers have other co-authors.

Apart from Das, many of the other authors of the papers were also affiliated to the ICMR-Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences. 

For two of the 28 papers, the authors have already issued a correction, while an ‘expression of concern’ has been issued for a third research paper. A fourth was retracted, as mentioned above.

The research papers have been flagged on PubPeer, a website that allows scientists to raise concerns in research papers that have been published after peer review. Comments on PubPeer in themselves are not proof of scientific misconduct. However, multiple instances of such duplications by the same set of authors often raise concerns.

ThePrint reached Das for comments via email Monday, but there was no response until the time of publishing this report. This report will be updated when a response is received.

Das is the second researcher affiliated with the ICMR to have been flagged for alleged misconduct this month.

Earlier, Nivedita Gupta, head of virology at ICMR, had been accused of image manipulation and plagiarism. 

While Gupta denied these charges, Bik later alleged that she had found similar issues in her PhD thesis. ThePrint reached Gupta by text for a comment after Bik’s new allegations, but she declined to offer a response.

ThePrint reached ICMR Director General Balram Bhargava for comments by text Monday, but there was no response until the time of publishing. This report will be updated when a response is received.


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Latest allegations

Since 15 January, US-based Dutch research integrity expert Elisabeth Bik has found 18 papers co-authored by Das that have apparent instances of image duplication.

Other commenters, some of whom kept themselves anonymous, had earlier found more such instances of image duplication and manipulation, in 10 other papers co-authored by him.

The concerns raised referred to different types of manipulations. 

For example, in a paper published in the journal Immunology and Cell Biology published in 2012, Bik pointed out that one of the images appeared to have two identical bands even though they were labelled differently.

Similarly, in a study published in 2014 in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Bik highlighted that there were duplicate regions within the same image.

In the paper retracted last year, the authors were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the flagged images. Published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology in 2020, the paper had an image with several identical panels. The journal contacted the authors, who sent in a correction. However, this, too, was found to have duplication issues. As a result, the journal retracted the article with the following statement:

“Upon issuing a correction article, further issues were identified within the figure panels, namely similarities in the dot patterns between flow cytometry plots. The authors were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for these occurrences and could not provide the original flow cytometry data. As a result, the data and conclusions of the article may be unreliable. The article and the correction are therefore being retracted.”  

“This retraction was approved by the specialty and field chief editors of Frontiers in Immunology and the editor-in-chief of Frontiers. The authors did not agree to this retraction.”


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Bik’s methodology

Bik, a microbiologist known for her work in detecting image manipulation in research papers, had explained in a 2019 blog post that there are three types of image duplications that can be spotted in research papers.

The first category, where two images look identical, could be the result of an honest error, where the same photo was inserted twice by accident.

The second category is when images are rotated, flipped, shifted, etc. “These are less likely to occur as the result of an honest error, and more likely to be done intentionally, than Category I,” she wrote.

The third category of duplications are those where features, such as cells, bands, or groups of dots, appear multiple times within the same photo, or in a different photo, she added. 

While Bik didn’t specify the categories that apply to the 18 flagged papers co-authored by Das, it appears that they have category-II and -III issues.

(Edited by Amit Upadhyaya)


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