Journal articles to be corrected, retracted after UK investigation finds misconduct
Unverifiable or fabricated data developed by a former University of Kentucky scientist found guilty of research misconduct was included in five journal articles, the university announced Friday.
As a result, a leader in a UK Markey Cancer Center lab will be stepping down from his post and UK will ask five academic journals to correct or retract articles that used research from Stuart Jarrett, a former assistant professor and senior research associate who left the university in September 2019 amid an internal investigation into his conduct.
The investigation began in April 2019 after the university was alerted to potential research misconduct and concluded a year later. The results released Friday found Jarrett did not follow stringent standards, the university announced in a press release.
Dr. John D’Orazio, a physician-scientist and chief of pediatric hematology and oncology, supervised the lab where Jarrett worked. D’Orazio did not collect the questionable data, but the university investigation found him responsible for a lack of oversight. As a result, D’Orazio “will step down from his research leadership role in the Markey Cancer Center and his endowed chair in pediatric research,” the university said. But he will remain chief of pediatric hematology and oncology.
D’Orazio may continue research on pediatric cancer “and the actions taken in no way impact his role in the clinic, nor his ability to provide outstanding care to patients,” an executive report of the investigation said.
According to D’Orazio’s page on the UK HealthCare website, much of the research in his lab focused on melanoma, a form of skin cancer.
Details released about the UK researcher’s misconduct
According to the executive report, Jarrett committed research misconduct across four academic papers and two grant proposals. In one instance, the university’s investigating committee found that one of the published papers had data that was “intentionally fabricated and falsified to support an anticipated outcome by Dr. Jarrett, the first author of the manuscript.”
In other instances, figures and panels in articles were “flipped, swapped for blank images and/or inappropriately manipulated,” and some original experiment data was not kept.
Jarrett and D’Orazio were listed as authors, along with several others, on all of the papers for which the university will initiate corrections or retractions. The articles include a June 2014 article in the journal Molecular Cell; a 2018 article in J Biol Chem; a 2017 article in Scientific Reports and a 2016 article in Nucleic Acids Research.
In a fifth paper, published in 2019 in the journal Pigment Cell and Melanoma, an “honest error” was made — a photo of a mouse was mistakenly duplicated, the investigation found.
“The University of Kentucky is committed to research that addresses Kentucky’s most significant challenges, and we expect that research to be conducted in the most ethical and responsible manner possible,” said Lisa Cassis, UK’s vice president for research. “In those instances where people do not adhere to our standards and what we expect, the university will continue to act – without hesitation – to find out what happened, correct it, and take preventive measures to help ensure that it doesn’t re-occur.”
This story was originally published August 28, 2020 at 1:18 PM.