A professor of biomedical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University today lost a government-funded study in Science Advances, marking her second retraction. Deborah Kelly, is also facing retraction of a paper in Current Opinion in Structural Biology after a review undertaken by her institution found “serious data integrity concerns” in the work. Kelly has hired a lawyer to fight the retraction, apparently without success.
Today’s retraction of "Structural analysis of BRCA1 reveals modification hotspot” cites “unresolved concerns in the integrity of the data presented", including what appears to be alterations of cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) maps using an "eraser tool". The study was funded in part through a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for US$353,386 to Kelly.
Due to "ongoing confidential proceedings" regarding the proposed retractions, "I consider substantive discussion about them to be premature at this juncture", Kelly said. "At least one external review has very recently contradicted the conclusions of the journals as presented in the respective retraction notices".
