Pfizer’s Senior Principal Scientist has quietly left the company, following allegations of data manipulation in several of her published papers.
Cancer researcher Min-Jean Yin was with Pfizer in LaJolla California for 13 years and published multiple scientific articles during that time. Now, the pharmaceutical giant is retracting five of them and correcting a sixth, after PubPeer raised suspicions of image duplication.
A private corporate inquiry found the images in Yin’s papers were in fact duplicates. Pfizer has recommended, along with the researcher herself, that the journals retract five of these articles on the efficiency of Pfizer’s own pharmacological enzyme inhibitors, and publish a correction to a sixth.
An article in Pharmaceutical Investing News says that this issue “image duplication” is rather prevalent in biomedical publications. In fact, recent research indicates that as much as 3.8 percent of them may contain inaccurate date. It’s an honest mistake most of the time – or at least in 50 percent of cases. Researchers accidentally replicate western blot images, for example – but they also deliberately splice and duplicate select, clinically promising, parts of a gel band.
The reported irregularities in Yin’s papers, according to watchdog blog For Better Science, included duplicated western blots and duplicated bands within western blots. The problem articles span a four year period, from 2010 to 2014.
Pfizer is keeping mum on the exact nature of the duplication and the circumstances around Yin’s departure. But while the company has only said that she is “no longer employed” at Pfizer, some suspect the researcher was let go – perhaps as a result of the image duplication incidents.
In September 2016, she joined Diagnologix, a small San Diego-based biotech startup. Once Pfizer’s Senior Principal Scientist, her business card now reads “general manager.”
C. Glenn Begley, former head of oncology and hematology research at Amgen, believes this latest example of flawed research is just the tip of the iceberg – not for industry specifically, but for all published science.
“These retractions appear to be intentional image duplication, but there’s an entire spectrum of flawed research published in journals at every tier,” Begley said in an interview last week.
While Big Pharma fraud attracts more attention, Begley said the incentives are far greater for academic scientists to exaggerate, “cherry-pick,” or deliberately bias their results. A 2013 study of 140 cancer research trainees found over 30 percent had felt pressure to confirm a mentor’s hypothesis, even when the science wasn’t there.