M.D. Anderson professor under fraud probe

M.D. Anderson officials confirmed that they are reviewing herb investigator Bharat Aggarwal's studies. M.D. Anderson officials confirmed that they are reviewing herb investigator Bharat Aggarwal's studies. Photo: http://www.uthouston.edu/gsbs/fa Photo: http://www.uthouston.edu/gsbs/fa Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close M.D. Anderson professor under fraud probe 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A prominent University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center researcher is under investigation for alleged fabrication and falsification in a host of published studies about the cancer-fighting properties of plants.

M.D. Anderson officials confirmed this week that they are reviewing herb investigator Bharat Aggarwal's studies after the federal government notified them of allegations of fraud by academic whistle-blowers in what has grown to 65 published papers. One has been retracted by the journal that published it.

"Obviously, we need to deal promptly with allegations or evidence of possible research misconduct," said Dr. Ray DuBois, provost at M.D. Anderson. "When these kind of cases come forward, we take them very, very seriously and go through our processes to review them."

DuBois said federal guidelines preclude M.D. Anderson from providing details about the review, now several weeks old. He said he hoped it can be finished in a few weeks.

Aggarwal, a senior professor with an endowed chair and the author of Healing Spices: How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease, did not respond to Houston Chronicle emails asking for comment. M.D. Anderson officials said he is out of the country.

Ongoing clinical trials

Aggarwal's highly influential research into the supposed anti-cancer mechanisms of plant-derived chemicals - particularly curcumin - has laid the groundwork for ongoing clinical trials.

One study concerning curcumin's anti-cancer properties has been cited by academic researchers in 700 subsequent journal articles, according to Retraction Watch, which has blogged about the matter.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity, the government watchdog organization for federally funded research, would not confirm whether it is overseeing the matter. DuBois confirmed it was the ORI that notified M.D. Anderson of the fraud allegations.

The matter is the latest of a recent spate of academic misconduct allegations internationally, one of which featured two M.D. Anderson professors providing the evidence of errors in a Duke University cancer researcher's work.

"I think it is fair to say that, more than ever before, allegations of academic misconduct are getting attention from the mainstream media and blogosphere in ways productive to how science polices itself," said Adam Marcus, co-founder of Retraction Watch, which has reported on 300 journal retractions, not all of them misconduct, since its inception 18 months ago.

Many of the accusations of fraud are surfacing on sometimes anonymous academic whistle-blower websites. In Aggarwal's case, images of his study slides alleged to have been manipulated are posted on a German blog called Abnormal Science and one of a number of untitled blogs run by an anonymous Japanese researcher.

The whistle-blowers allege Aggarwal manipulated his images - adding or subtracting features, cropping, stretching, rotating, flipping horizontally or vertically - to leave the impression the same ones represented different experimental conditions.

The Japanese whistle-blower, who responded to Chronicle emails, said he is "continuing to look into Aggarwal's papers from 2000 until 2004."

A U.S. researcher who has supplied Abnormal Science with some of its evidence said he also plans to look at more Aggarwal papers in the coming weeks.

Much published

In his career, Aggarwal has published more than 500 papers in peer-reviewed academic journals.

The journal Cancer Letters this month retracted one of the articles, published in December. The journal's notice said, "This article has been withdrawn at the request of the author and/or editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause." The article concerns anti-cancer properties of an ingredient in the herb cardamom.

The whistle-blowers have not yet sent materials to most of the other journals.

According to Retraction Watch, Aggarwal is the inventor or coinventor on more than 33 patents and has been listed as one of the Institute for Scientific Information's most highly cited scientists since 2001.

His 1985 paper in Science on a protein that causes tumor cells to self-destruct, not alleged to contain falsification, has been cited 1,700 times.

todd.ackerman@chron.com