YOUTUBE, ANNEWSPaolo Macchiarini, the Italian surgeon and artificial organ researcher accused of multiple counts of research misconduct, received more bad news this week when his former employer, Sweden’s Karolinska Institute (KI) found him guilty of misconduct. The institute then called for the retraction of the 2014 Nature paper marred by Macchiarini’s alleged malfeasance, which involved falsifying the results of a study on implanting artificial esophagi in rats. Three of the paper’s coauthors were also implicated.
“KI finds that Paolo Macchiarini and three of the co-authors had insight into and an overview of the process, either in its entirety or in large part, and are thus to be found guilty of scientific misconduct,” the institute said in a statement. “The remaining authors contributed in ways that are not judged to constitute misconduct, nor were they in a position to have had insight into or an overview of the whole project.”
Macchiarini initially made headlines when he was arrested and charged with fraud and attempted extortion in 2012, triggering retractions of some of his published work. But concerns about Macchiarini’s most recent line of research and clinical practice did not start swirling until 2014, after he was lauded as a pioneer on ...
