brain barrier data fudged by fraudulent fony

[Rich66]

http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56186/

Ningaraj's research focused on new approaches to treat brain tumors using an agonist to help a drug traverse the normal blood-brain barrier and reach the tumor.

A spokesperson from ORI told The Scientist in an email that the misconduct was first uncovered when one of Ningaraj's coauthors and colleagues noticed something unusual in the poster data.

Upon investigation, it was discovered that Ningaraj had switched the experimental image of brain tumors treated with both an agonist and antitumor drug with the control image of tumors receiving only the anticancer drug and no agonist. Ningaraj's actual experiment showed, surprisingly, that there was more crossing of the blood-brain barrier without the agonist. By reversing the data, he was able to support his hypothesis that the agonist increased the antitumor drug's ability to cross the blood-brain tumor barrier, and thus increased its anticancer activity, said a spokesperson from ORI.

In several NIH grant applications, Ningaraj included (and relabeled) old images and mass spectral data obtained from different experiments, claiming them as new data.

The spokesperson from ORI noted that it is not possible to determine how the falsified images affected work by others in the field. "However, the impact of the misconduct was probably limited by the fact that the data were not published other than in meeting abstracts and poster presentations."

According to the spokesperson, Ningaraj gave several inconsistent explanations for the swapped images over time, sometimes claiming he was unaware of the switch, sometimes saying he swapped the images because a technician told him the tissue samples had been mislabeled.

So...what is the penalty for this??? Firing or firing squad?

[Laurel]

Firing Squad!