A prominent neuroscientist is accusing two former researchers in his lab of taking data without his permission and publishing misleading interpretations of them against his wishes.

Nikos Logothetis, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen, Germany, says that two former researchers working in his lab took fMRI data from monkey brain scans without his permission and made misleading interpretations in a paper published this month in the journal Human Brain Mapping. In addition, the journal has not guaranteed him an opportunity to publish a response to the findings, he told Nature.

The paper, authored by Amir Shmuel -- now at Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University in Canada -- and David Leopold -- now at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland -- suggests that the fMRI data is useful for studying spontaneous, or random, activity in the resting brain. "The protocol [in their paper] was just inappropriate for analysis of spontaneous brain activity," Logothetis told Nature.

Peter Fox, editor-in-chief of the journal, refused to retract the paper and told Nature that the paper was correctly refereed.