Immunologist faked data

An immunologist duplicated images and falsified data in a study on regulating factors of autoimmune disease published in Nature Medicine in 2006, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) reported.

Image: FlickrCreativeCommons/Julo

According to ORI's linkurl:statement,;http://ori.dhhs.gov/misconduct/cases/Deng_Zhong_Bin.shtml released this fall, Zhong-Bin Deng, then a postdoc at the linkurl:Medical College of Georgia,;http://www.mcg.edu/ manipulated data to show that the autoimmune regulator (AIRE) gene controls the growth and maturation of invariant natural killer T cells, or iNKT. iNKT cells are thought to be a driver of autoimmune diseases that affect the endocrine system. The research was supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the paper, which was cited three times, according to ISI, figure 1a showed that the number of iNKT cells is lower in AIRE-deficient mice than in those with normal or elevated AIRE levels. But an investigative committee at the Medical...