Bhagavathi Narayanan, a former research associate professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at New York University (NYU), has been debarred for three years from involvement in federal contracting, according to the HHS Office of Research Integrity (ORI). Narayanan “trimmed and/or copied Western blot images from unrelated sources, manipulated them to obscure their origin, and reused and relabeled them to represent different experimental results,” which she included in 58 Western blot plots in 22 figures published in three papers. They also appeared in seven NIH grant applications, ORI announced March 14. “In the absence of valid Western blot images, the quantitative data presented in associated bar graphs and statistical analyses also are false,” the agency said.
Narayanan, whose work was supported by the National Cancer Institute, agreed to refrain from serving on any Public Health Service advisory panels for a three-year period beginning Feb. 26, in addition to the debarment. A 2011 paper that was published in the journal Anticancer Research will be retracted.
Link to the ORI case summary: https://tinyurl.com/yb28rewp.