ISTOCK, BRIANAJACKSONIn June, Nature Plants published a manuscript by Patrice Dunoyer, a plant biologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France who was previously found guilty of scientific misconduct. The paper, which describes a strategy used by viruses to suppress a host plant’s defences, was published along with an editorial describing Dunoyer’s previous retractions and stating that since subsequent disciplinary action was taken, this author’s paper was treated like any other submission.
Dunoyer was part of a troubled plant biology group led by Olivier Voinnet, a high-profile scientist known for his work on RNA inference in plants. That team, which was based at the CNRS, had eight papers retracted from several journals, including Science, The EMBO Journal, and Plant Cell, and more than 20 corrected due to image duplications and manipulations.
After investigations by the CNRS and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich (where Voinnet is currently employed) independently uncovered evidence of image manipulation in 2015, Voinnet received a three-year funding ban from the Swiss National Science Foundation, a two-year suspension from the CNRS, and had an award revoked by EMBO. Dunoyer, who was a first author on a number of the retracted papers, also ...
