The microbiome-testing company made misleading claims about its prospects and about its business strategy, which allegedly relied on fooling doctors into ordering unnecessary tests, according to the US government.

Meet some of the people featured in the December 2020 issue of The Scientist.

Illinois-based Surgisphere Corporation had a brief moment in the limelight this year following its infamous study of hydroxychloroquine. But the impact of the company’s deception reverberated across world.

The high-profile retractions of two COVID-19 studies stunned the scientific community earlier this year and prompted calls for reviews of how science is conducted, published, and acted upon. The warning signs had been there all along.

Four Chinese nationals have been charged with visa fraud after revelations that they sent information on the layout of US labs and research carried out by colleagues back to China.

The company had helped develop a tool to aid decision-making in distributing limited medical equipment among coronavirus patients, but two high-profile retractions call into question the validity of Surgisphere’s work in toto.

A second investigation by the school concludes that David Latchman, also the head of Birkbeck, University of London, was not involved in the image manipulation found in papers he coauthored.

A whistleblower claims his former supervisor committed fraud when applying for government funds.

Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital disavow the work by former faculty member Piero Anversa.

The discredited blood-testing company announced its decision to close in a company-wide email.

Changsheng is found to have forged records for a rabies vaccine and is accused of distributing thousands of substandard DPT immunizations to be used in children.

The company raised more than $700 million based on false claims to investors, according to the complaint.

Ashutosh Tiwari, who falsely claimed to be affiliated with Linköping University, is also under investigation for alleged scientific misconduct and fraud.

Virginia Tech’s Yiheng Percival Zhang was arrested for misusing grant funds from the federal government.

Scientific misconduct motivated Yoshihiro Sato’s three additional retractions last month; his institution doesn’t respond. 

Authors of rescinded papers see a 10 percent to 20 percent decline in citation rates for their other publications. 

Nature Plants explains how it handled a manuscript coauthored by Patrice Dunoyer, a biologist with multiple retractions to his name.

Most of the authors have had papers pulled in the past.

Molecular and Cellular Biology has found numerous errors after launching a retrospective sweep of the figures it’s published in recent years.