昨日《自然》杂志报道，最近有一桩非常奇异的学术造假事件。2013年4月BBRC发表的一篇论文，声称发现两个脂肪因子是糖尿病和肥胖的重要相关蛋白，论文发表后被一个科学家发现存在奇异的现象，这个论文报道的内容并没有错误，甚至完全正确，不过论文的所列出的5个作者全部都是虚构的，经过调查确认所注学校根本没有这5个学者。不过这个研究和别人在会议上报道的内容完全相关，估计是完全是恶意发表。对这件事情唯一的解释是某一有恶意破坏学术发表规则，或者对受仿造学者造成发表障碍。目前BBRC已经正式将该论文撤销。过去曾经有人虚构论文恶搞杂志，以达到讽刺目前同行评议存在漏洞。也有人为达到虚假的学术利益而编造或抄袭的学术不端行为，但是这种损人不利己的特异行为，真是天下奇闻。

Mystery over obesity ‘fraud’

Researcher baffled after his results appear in boguspaper.

• Declan Butler

24 September 2013

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Ghost writing is taking on an altogether differentmeaning in a mysterious case of alleged scientific fraud. The authors of apaper published in July (A. Vezyrakiet al. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. http://doi.org/nxb;2013), which reported significant findings in obesity research, seemto be phantoms. They are not only unknown at the institution listed on thepaper, but no trace of them as researchers can be found.

The paper, published in the Elsevier journal Biochemicaland Biophysical Research Communications (BBRC), is not the kind ofprank that journals have encountered before, in which hoaxsters have submitteddummy papers to highlight weaknesses in the peer-review process. The paper’sreported findings — that overexpression of two novel proteins in fat cellsleads to improvements in metabolic processes related to diabetes and obesity inmice — are, in fact, true.

Too true, in the opinion of Bruce Spiegelman, a cellbiologist at Harvard Medical School’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston,Massachusetts. He says that he has presented similar findings at about sixresearch meetings, and is preparing to submit them to a journal. He suspectsthat the BBRC paper was intended as a spoiler of his own lab’s work.

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Now withdrawn, the article lists five authors who areall supposedly from the School of Health Sciences at the University of Thessalyin Trikala, Greece, and is entitled ‘Identification of meteorin and metrnl astwo novel pro-differentiative adipokines: Possible roles in controllingadipogenesis and insulin sensitivity’. Adipokines are proteins secreted by fattissue that play an active part in such processes as sugar and fat metabolism,inflammation and obesity-related metabolic disorders, including insulinresistance and diabetes.

Spiegelman says that he smelt a rat as soon as he sawthe paper. Meteorin and metrnl have been little studied, and no previous paperhas shown a role for them in obesity. It was therefore suspicious, he says, tosee a paper published out of the blue reporting that they were novel adipo­kinesand that their overexpression in adipose cells led to improvements in diabetesand obesity in mice — exactly the same findings as the work he had presented.

On 20 July, he e-mailed Ernesto Carafoli, BBRC’seditor-in-chief, to air his concerns. “The authors on this paper haveapparently never published a single academic paper before and they list anon-academic e-mail address,” he wrote. “Odder still, upon looking for them onGoogle, PubMed or on the website of the university they list, there is nomention of any of the authors as being at that university.”

Carafoli, along with Elsevier, launched aninvestigation. Elsevier temporarily withdrew the paper from the journal websiteon 8 August, and, after the University of Thessaly confirmed that none of theresearchers listed on the paper had ever worked there, now intends to withdrawit permanently.

Spiegelman, who works on fat-cell differentiation, isalso a co-founder of Ember Therapeutics, a company based in Watertown, Massachusetts,that is developing therapeutics for metabolic disorders. He believes that thepaper was intended to hurt him and his lab. Scientific misconduct is usuallydone for academic gain, but because the authors on the paper seem to bephantoms, they can derive no benefit, he says. He argues that this seems toleave “maliciousness” as the only explanation.

Spiegelman says that he is surprised that the e-mailaddress of the corresponding author did not prompt the journal to ask forevidence of the authors’ institutional affiliations. “The e-mail was a bitstrange, and that we could have checked,” agrees Carafoli, but nothing else inthe paper aroused suspicion. “It was impeccable. The authors were clearlyacademics,” he adds.

The perpetrators also seem to have used Greeksurnames similar to those of authentic researchers working in obesity-relatedresearch, in what one might speculate was an attempt to fool referees shouldthey search the literature. There are also genuine researchers at theUniversity of Thessaly working in the field of obesity.

Spiegelman, who is certain that the paper is “madeup”, is keen for there to be a criminal investigation. He says that lawyershave told him that the faked paper represents fraud, not just academicmisconduct — a view shared by Carafoli. But Spiegelman says the lawyers alsoadvised that although he might have been the target, there would be littlebasis for him to sue, whereas Elsevier, BBRC and the University ofThessaly could have grounds to press fraud charges.

Elsevier told Nature: “BBRC has beentargeted by a scheme to defraud our editors, reviewers and readers withsubmission of a manuscript with falsified author and institutional informationand therefore wholly unverifiable scientific claims. We consider such abuseunethical.” It added that it is continuing its investigation and will, with therelevant authorities, “explore the question of whether this constitutes acriminal case of Internet fraud”.