Pennsylvania State University has barred a biomedical engineering professor from conducting further research following an investigation that found “unreliable data” in numerous publications she authored, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday.
Deborah Kelly, who specializes in cancer research, is still listed online as the director of PSU’s Center for Structural Oncology and remains employed by Penn State. But “as of May 2024, she is indefinitely prohibited from conducting research, pursuing grants or contracts, submitting publications, or making presentations on behalf of the Pennsylvania State University,” the university said in a statement published by the Inquirer.
The university’s investigation into Kelly’s work was prompted by U.K.-based academic Thomas McCorvie, a senior research associate at Newcastle University, who told Retraction Watch in September that he first noticed suspicious aspects of Kelly’s research in a now-retracted paper published in Science Advances back in 2017. Another paper Kelly published in 2022 in ChemBioChem raised similar concerns, and that led McCorvie to identify 21 of Kelly’s papers as problematic, which he started posting about on PubPeer last year.
According to Retraction Watch, McCorvie noted that Kelly’s papers reused figures and images for different conditions and samples, included electron microscopy maps that did not have the expected pixel sizes, failed to correlate atomic models with electron microscopy maps, and did not incorporate the expected features at their stated resolutions on those maps.
“There are many problems, and I believe it to be a deep-rooted issue,” McCorvie said, noting that while students and early-career researchers may have had a part in producing the papers, he believes the responsibility “lies solely” with Kelly as the principal investigator and head of the lab.
So far, four of Kelly’s scientific papers have been retracted from the medical literature, according to the Inquirer, though each retraction notice also includes a statement saying that Kelly disagrees with the decision.
While it’s rare for a scientist like Kelly to lose research privileges after allegedly fabricating their findings, retractions are far more common: The journal Optical and Quantum Electronics, for instance, has retracted more than 200 papers since September of this year.
