"She started looking at more publications on which he was a co-author, and the issues soon piled up: some figures were stitched together strangely, and images of cells and tissues were duplicated, rotated, mirrored and sometimes reused and labelled differently. Bik, a microbiologist and leading research-integrity specialist based in San Francisco, California, ended up flagging about 80 papers on PubPeer, a platform that allows researchers to review papers after publication. A handful of other volunteer science sleuths found more, bringing the total to 90."
"Khademhosseini told Nature that investigations into his work have been carried out and have found no evidence of misconduct by him. The Terasaki Institute says that an "internal review has not found that Dr. Khademhosseini engaged in research misconduct". The case raises questions about oversight in large laboratories and about when a paper needs to be retracted and when a correction is sufficient."
In December 2024, Elisabeth Bik identified irregularities in several papers co-authored by Ali Khademhosseini and expanded the review to many more publications. The problems included figures stitched together oddly and images of cells and tissues duplicated, rotated, mirrored, reused and relabelled. About 80 papers were flagged on PubPeer, with volunteers raising the total to 90. The articles appeared in 33 journals over 20 years and have been cited around 14,000 times. Khademhosseini and co-authors provided original source data, journals issued corrections in many cases, and institutional reviews reported no evidence of his misconduct. The situation raises questions about oversight in large laboratories and criteria for retraction versus correction.
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