Academia Sinica yesterday said that it would hand out punishments, including reclaiming NT$1.86 million (US$62,083) in grants, after a 20-month investigation into the case of a former research fellow who resigned after accusations of falsifying research.
Chen Ching-shih (陳慶士), a former head of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, was accused of fabricating data and images in research papers published from 2006 to 2014. He resigned as a cancer researcher from Ohio State University in 2017 and left Academia Sinica the following year.
Chen’s alleged misconduct was identified by Ohio State University, which said that on 14 occasions in eight articles, he “intentionally committed research misconduct” and was guilty of “deviating from the accepted practices of image handling and figure generation, and intentionally falsifying data.”
Following the Ohio report, Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) formed a special investigation team and handed the findings to its ethics committee, which yesterday said in a statement that Chen had breached its Code of Ethics by faking data and images in four of the 22 papers published during his time at the biology institute.
“Of the four papers, one should be retracted, and requests to modify the other three should be made to the journals that published them,” the committee said.
Chen would be prohibited from collaborating with the academy on any academic activities or research projects, using academic or administrative resources and assuming any Academia Sinica post for 10 years, the committee said.
Academia Sinica would rate Chen’s academic performance from Aug. 2014 to March 2018 as below “second level” and reclaim grants totaling NT$1.86 million it approved for him during that period, it said.
In one of the four falsified papers, the lead author, a researcher on Chen’s team, was involved in the fabrication, too, the committee said, adding that its findings would be sent to that person’s current institute, it said.
“Chen should take responsibility for his failure to oversee the research as a contributing author,” it added.
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