On the basis of the recommendation of the American Diabetes Association’s Panel on Ethical Scientific Programs (ESP), the American Diabetes Association, the publisher of Diabetes, is issuing this expression of concern to alert readers to questions about the reliability of the data in the above-cited article.
After readers of the journal contacted Diabetes about potentially duplicated images in the article, the ESP reviewed the following issues:
Lanes 5–8 of the Total Akt strip in Fig. 2G and the IB:IKKβ strip in Fig. 3B appear to be duplicates, and these images appear to have been previously published in the IB: Foxo1 strip of Fig. 5A in the following paper:
Ropelle et al. J Physiol 2009;587:2341–2351. DOI: 10.1113/jphysiol.2009.170050. PMID: 19332486
Bands 3–8 in the Total Akt strip in Fig. 2I appear to have been later republished, with horizontal rotation, as the IB:Tub strip in Fig. 1B (LH) in the following paper:
Prada et al. Diabetes 2013;62:137–148. DOI: 10.2337/db11-1388. PMID 22966070
Lanes 2 and 3 of the IP:EGFR strip in Fig. 5D appear to be duplicates of lanes 2 and 3 of the IB:Caveolin strip in Fig. 5E.
The Panel has contacted the corresponding author to inform him of these concerns, and the corresponding author’s institution, the University of Campinas (São Paulo, Brazil), has been asked to undertake an investigation of these issues. Diabetes will make a final decision on the publication status of this article after the journal obtains more information on the reliability of the data and conclusions presented in the article.
Diabetes is a member journal of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (publicationethics.org). As such, the editors of the journal and the ESP refer to COPE’s guidelines and recommendations when reviewing such matters.
