Harvard Prof Allegedly Falsified Data, Tainting Study Results

Another major figure at Harvard is facing accusations of plagiarism. Khalid Shah, a Harvard Medical School professor who serves as vice chair for research at Brigham and Women's Hospital's Department of Neurosurgery, is accused of falsifying data and taking research images from other papers and the websites of scientific vendors without proper attribution. He allegedly "presented images from other scientists' research as his own original experimental data," per the Harvard Crimson. Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and science integrity consultant, began investigating Shah's work after a former lab worker complained about "sloppiness," she tells the Boston Herald. "They said people in the lab felt encouraged to give the principal investigator particular results."

In a Thursday blog post, Bik claimed she'd found problems, including blots and images manipulated or duplicated from previous work by Shah, in 28 of his papers dating back to 2001. But she said one paper from 2022, of which Shah is one of 33 authors, served as a particularly egregious example. The study, which described a novel strategy for treating glioblastomas in mice, had copied 12 panels from unrelated papers, three panels from scientific vendors, and one panel from a paper by the same authors, Bik said, per the Herald. One image appears to be an exact copy of an image of an antibody found in a 2018 catalog entry for R&D Systems, a company which manufactures antibodies for scientific research, but the study authors allegedly claim it's a different antibody, per the Crimson.

"I cannot imagine how this happens by accident," Matthew Schrag, an assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, tells the Crimson, which notes some of the issues, if confirmed, would change the study findings. Most "could be explained by honest error," though a few cases "suggest an intention to mislead," Bik tells the Wall Street Journal. Harvard Medical School said "the cause and nature of any alleged errors or irregularities can only be assessed through rigorous, detailed, and careful review." A rep for Mass General Brigham, which oversees Brigham and Women's Hospital, said it undertakes "a robust and confidential process to assess and respond" to such allegations. Scientific journals are investigating the claims, as well. (More Harvard stories.)