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German funding agency rules on long-running misconduct case

Germany’s main funding agency, the DFG, has imposed sanctions on Silvia Bulfone-Paus, an immunologist from the Research Centre Borstel who was at the centre of a data-manipulation scandal two years ago. An investigation committee commissioned by the centre found that two lab members had manipulated data in four papers involving DFG-funded research on which they were first authors and lab chief Bulfone-Paus was last author. In total, 13 of her papers were retracted during 2011.

In a statement, the DFG said:

Bulfone-Paus had committed ‘gross negligence of her supervisory duty’ in her function as the leader of the working group and was therefore guilty of scientific misconduct as stipulated in the DFG procedures. On the basis of this result, the Joint Committee of the DFG decided to issue Bulfone-Paus with a written reprimand, to prohibit her from submitting proposals for three years, and to exclude her from statutory bodies at the DFG and not to appoint her as a reviewer for three years. However, since Bulfone-Paus had voluntarily suggested at the start of the proceedings that she withdraw from her appointments, not be appointed as a reviewer, nor be included in statutory bodies, the Joint Committee decided that this period should count towards the measures taken, leaving only the issue of the written reprimand to continue in effect.

The DFG also named Elena Bulanova as one of those primarily responsible for falsifying the data in these publications and banned her from applying for DFG research grants for five years.

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    S L said:

    Silvia Bulfone-Paus has had to retract 13 total papers. Transplantation (Vol. 69, pp. 1386–1391, April 15, 2000) was retracted and does not include the two post-docs that have taken the most blame, Vadim Budagian and Elena Bulanova.

    https://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/bulfone-paus-retraction-count-grows-to-13-with-one-in-transplantation/

    The blog reports that other papers are now being reviewed. This might not be a case of post docs gone wild, but more of systematic fraud by a PI. Time well tell.

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