The retraction notice published today states first author Kevin Ng was responsible for the manipulation in the paper, including manipulated data in several figures. At the time of the experiments, Ng was a Ph.D. student at the Francis Crick Institute in London under the supervision of co-corresponding author George Kassiotis.
According to Ng’s OrcID profile, he is now a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University in New York. We were unable to find a current email address for him, and he did not respond to a message sent via Instagram.
The Francis Crick Institute’s integrity team “was made aware of concerns” regarding the study after it was published, according to a statement sent to us by Kathryn Ingham, research communications and public affairs lead for the organization. Ingham declined to comment on the origins of the concerns. The corresponding authors on the article — Kassiotis, Charles Swanton, and Julian Downward, all affiliated with the Crick Institute — agreed with the retraction, according to the statement, which is now published online.
The investigation found “no evidence of malpractice by other authors,” according to the Crick statement. The corresponding authors did not respond to our question on how the manipulation went unnoticed by the other 48 authors on the paper, and forwarded our request to Ingham.