A group at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has chalked up another retraction — its sixth — and an expression of concern, Retraction Watch reports.
This latest retraction, of a paper in the British Journal of Cancer purporting to show DNA methylation-linked silencing of two genes involved in TGFβ-signaling, is due to "improper manipulation and replication of figures in this paper," according to the retraction notice in the journal.
Retraction Watch notes that other papers from the group, headed by Adi Gazdar, were retracted for similar concerns.
Additionally, the expression of concern, for a paper in Cancer Biology & Therapy that looked at caspase-8 inactivation in lung cancers, also notes image manipulation, but says that there is uncertainty regarding the "impropriety of the manipulation."
A previous Retraction Watch post on the earlier retractions says that a co-author of Gazdar's, Takao Takahashi, had taken responsibility for some of the manipulated images while an unnamed postdoc may have been responsible for others. However, Retraction Watch noted then that "[n]either researcher has acknowledged wrongdoing."