Novartis Dismisses Employee who Fabricated Data in Research Papers

A Novartis scientist who engaged in research misconduct has been banned from receiving federal funding for three years and has also been dismissed by the drug maker, a Novartis spokesman tells us. 

Igor Dzhura provided or falsified data that found its way into six research papers, which he has agreed to retract or correct, according to a statement by the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which reviewed his work. The papers were published while he worked as a biomedical researcher at Vanderbilt University, which also conducted a review. More recently, he worked at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Ma. 

“We have learned that Igor Dzhura included papers with fraudulent data in his application for employment at Novartis,” a spokesman for the drug maker tells us. “Falsifying data is not acceptable and we have terminated his employment with the company. We are conducting an internal review to ensure that there was not any scientific misconduct related to his research here.” 

Dzhura could not be reached for comment. We also asked the Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Engineering and will update you accordingly. 

The half-dozen papers to be retracted were originally published between 2000 and 2005 in several medical journals – Nature Cell Biology, the Journal of Physiology, Circulation and The FASEB Journal, which focuses on biology. And the papers were cited more than 500 times, according to Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks research misconduct. Among the issues cited by ORI: Dzhura created a hierarchy of computer folders containing duplicated and renamed files and also falsified groups of files.(...)

...Drug makers, meanwhile, are not immune from the phenomenon. Over the past year, Retraction Watch notes that researchers at Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb had been found to falsify data in published papers. We asked the drug makers for comment and will pass along any response. But this latest episode involving Norvartis “is the first case we’ve seen in which a drug company has immediately fired someone for such revelations,” says Ivan Oransky, who co-founded the blog, which first reported the dismissal.(Más)