Two years ago this month, Nutrition retracted a study by former Memorial University nutrition researcher Ranjit Chandra, but since then no other journals have retracted or issued warnings about the other papers alleged to contain fraud, if not outright fabrication. And some experts following the case are getting frustrated at the journals' decisions to let the data stand.
"It's ridiculous," Saul Sternberg, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Scientist. Sternberg, along with Seth Roberts from the University of California, Berkeley, published a paper in Nutrition Journal last November about suspicious patterns in Chandra's data. The papers are a "permanent piece of the scientific establishment. It's irresponsible on the part of the journal editors" to avoid taking action on questionable data, Sternberg noted.
Editors at the journals that published the accused papers told The Scientist they have taken the allegations against Chandra seriously, but so far haven't seen ...
