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.
The American Diabetes Association was recently notified about an instance of potential image reuse and duplication involving this article. This instance involves the use of the same source file to create images in multiple articles. The source image can be accessed by copying the underlying file of the left “Tubulin” panel of Fig. 1E in the paper-in-press version of a 2011 Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) article by Ardestani et al. (1), which was published on 10 March 2011 and is available at http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2011/03/10/jbc.M110.210526.full.pdf. It should be noted that the 2011 JBC paper was retracted in November 2015 (2).
The American Diabetes Association is concerned that the source file used to create the images in the 2011 JBC paper was previously used to create images in the above-cited article, as well as another 2006 Diabetes article (Diabetes 55:2713–2722) (3) by the same laboratory.
In this article, the “Actin, 96 h” strip in Fig. 3D appears to derive from lanes 6–11 of the source file used to create the images in the 2011 JBC paper, with contrast and size adjustments. In Diabetes 55:2713–2722, the “Actin 42 kDA” strip of Fig. 3B appears to derive from lanes 4–9 of the source file, with horizontal rotation and contrast and size adjustments. As such, and after accounting for the size, orientation, and contrast adjustments made to each figure, lanes 3–6 of the “Actin, 96 h” strip in Fig. 3D of this article and lanes 3–6 of the “Actin 42 kDA” strip of Fig. 3B in Diabetes 55:2713–2722 appear to be duplicates.
The American Diabetes Association contacted Kathrin Maedler and corresponding author Marc Y. Donath to report these concerns and to request the original source files for review, but the authors explained that they no longer have access to the original source materials for these 2006 reports. As such, the ESP remains concerned that Fig. 3B of Diabetes 55:2713–2722 and Fig. 3D of this article are related. The Panel has contacted the University of Zurich to request an institutional investigation of these recently reported issues, and 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). The ESP refers to COPE’s guidelines and best practices when reviewing potential violations of the journal’s publication policies.
