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Allegations of research fakery at a leading cancer center have turned a spotlight on scientific integrity and the amateur sleuths uncovering image manipulation in published research. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, announced Jan. 22 it’s requesting retractions and corrections of scientific papers after a British blogger flagged problems in early January. The blogger, 32-year-old Sholto David, of Pontypridd, Wales, is a scientist-sleuth who detects cut-and-paste image manipulation in published scientific papers. He’s not the only hobbyist poking through pixels. Other champions of scientific integrity are keeping researchers and science journals on their toes. They use special software,...

A Harvard University-affiliated teaching hospital is seeking to retract or correct dozens of papers authored by four of its top researchers — including the hospital’s CEO — following a probe into allegations of data falsification. The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston has already initiated six retractions to papers and 31 others are in the process of being corrected, the hospital’s research integrity officer, Dr. Barrett Rollins, confirmed to the Harvard Crimson. The corrections follow claims of data falsification leveled against the cancer institute’s CEO, Dr. Laurie Glimcher, chief operating officer Dr. William Hahn, director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program...

Aaron Stevens will run the Boston Marathon for the sixth time in April, and his fifth as part of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute team. For each of the past two years, he has raised $16,000 for the cancer center. The effort is personal. Stevens lost a cousin in her 30s to colon cancer, and his father survived grueling treatment for bladder cancer that included a nine-week stay in intensive care. He’s got his two-pronged fundraising strategy down pat—an email list of 500 people get monthly appeals from him, and he can count on at least 100 of those people to...

...FDA oncology drugs chief Richard Pazdur is the most important person in the U.S. government when it comes to cancer drugs, and he has never made a secret that he dislikes the accelerated approval process under which Iressa got the green light. Nor has he been shy about suggesting that the agency was railroaded in this drug's case. The truth is that Iressa-maker AstraZeneca simply refused to play by Dr. Pazdur's rules. In 2002 -- knowing it had plenty of data to qualify for accelerated approval -- the company rebuffed his requests for more trials and appealed directly to something...