A former graduate student studying the link between immune function and symptoms of high cholesterol at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport fudged data in three published papers and one manuscript under review, according to a report by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

Image: Wikimedia commons

Ryan Wolfort admitted to "fabricating tabulations and the associated statistical analyses" in four reports stemming from his dissertation research on the role of the immune system in endothelial dysfunction associated with diet-induced high cholesterol, the ORI statement said. Specifically, Wolfort falsified measurements of endothelial function in all four reports, results of a cytokine measurement assay in one of the published papers, and levels of superoxide production in the other two.

As a result of the ORI's finding, all three published papers -- two in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology and one in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology -- have been retracted or are in the process of being retracted. Two of the papers had not been cited, according to ISI, and the other was not found in the database. In addition, Wolfort has been suspended from eligibility for federal grants and is barred from serving on any US Public Health Service (PHS) advisory committee for two years.

Although Wolfort claimed that some of these falsifications were unintentional, he admitted to deliberately erasing the files and discarding the notebooks containing the raw data for these measures -- an offense which the ORI also considers an act of research misconduct. This action "did play into ORI's findings," John Dahlberg, the director of ORI's Division of Investigative Oversight, told The Scientist in an email, adding that Wolfort received such a severe sentence because of "the overall scope of the admitted misconduct."

The university refused to comment on how the fraud would affect the status of Wolfort's PhD earned in 2008, but he will retain his MD degree, earned from the LSU Health Science Center School of Medicine in 2003, Dahlberg said.

Due to ongoing "legal issues" related to the case, university employees -- including Wolfort's PhD advisor D. Neil Granger, who was a coauthor on all three of the published papers in question -- were unable to comment. The university also refused to comment on Wolfort's current whereabouts.

"The faculty and administration of LSU Health Sciences Center at Shreveport subscribe to the highest standards of research integrity and procedures are in place designed to assure that integrity," the university said in a statement. "The report in the Federal Register is evidence that these procedures are effective."


Related stories:

Misconduct from NIH postdoc
[17th February 2009]

Duke investigating misconduct?
[25th July 2008]

Lies, Damn Lies? and Scientific Misconduct
[February 2006]