Journal Investigation Appears To Find No Data for Paper Published The Very Same Year

But Nobody Wants To Talk About It

Earlier this week, I shared my concerns about newly surfaced data provided to the journal Behavioral Pharmacology by the lead scientific collaborator of Cassava Sciences, a pharmaceutical company which I’ve covered here at length and which faces ongoing investigations by federal authorities with regard to the scientific underpinnings of their lone experimental drug, simufilam. Elisabeth Bik looked more closely and concurred with my concerns, and she also extended the findings to include, quite incredibly, identical signatures in the background noise of raw data sent by the author to three separate journals, supposedly representing as many as 10 separately run Western blots spanning more than 10 years. Readers may recall that I had originally written about my attempts to have this raw data disclosed back in January of this year (my requests to the Editor-in-Chief that the raw data be published began in February 2022). From my article:

The concerns now apparent in this previously sequestered raw data extend to another paper which I wrote about after separate Freedom of Information Law requests divulged details about the editors’ decision to retract a paper for what it turns out were concerns over the very same background noise correlations that we now observe in papers published in both Neuroscience and Behavioral Pharmacology, both of which conducted opaque investigations with no indication of having detected these issues. The editors of both journals have yet to respond to requests for clarification or additional information, despite being responsive when the original concerns were raised.

Until such a time as these editors and publishing companies choose to take these issues seriously and openly communicate with the scientific public about their dispensation, there appears little else that we can do to convey the severity of these findings. Editors at a handful of journals connected by similar issues pertaining to this author have suggested that they will defer to an investigation which has been pending at CUNY for nearly two years longer than CUNY guidelines dictate, and this despite the raw data having been provided to them independently of the CUNY investigation. In fact, it required requests to CCNY/CUNY itself to finally obtain the data that Behavioral Pharmacology has declined to disclose.

Rather than harp on this for any longer—at least for now—I would like to cover another series of communications that enlighten an exchange between myself and an editor of the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration which I shared in January 2022:

I share this again now because the trove of emails contained in the FOIL request contain communications between Drs. Li, Wang, and Yassine that followed Molecular Neurodegeneration’s request to see the raw data for this 2021(!) paper. Here is the original request as it appears in the FOIL records:

It’s rather unpleasant to have to dwell on personal communications between the authors, but in this case it’s important to understand what transpired that led to the eventual retraction of this paper over one barely perceptible rectangle in the background of a single Western blot. The requested “scanned film” (which in fact was a PowerPoint slide) was sent to Dr. Yassine by Dr. Wang before being forwarded to the editors:

Meanwhile, the editors continued to diligently inspect the article and noticed two items that could help them confirm the authenticity of the published data. The first is the statement that the quantification of the Western blots was conducted on three independent experiments—i.e., there should be plenty of data for this experiment that was published just months earlier in 2021:

Shortly thereafter, the editors write to Dr. Yassine asking to view the actual raw images from the imaging system that was documented in the paper, having recognized that the irregular rectangular shape persists in the PowerPoint slide. Dr. Wang demurs—appearing not to have an explanation—and refers back to the PowerPoint, needing more time to locate the image files:

What stands out about this particular interaction is that the editors show a great deal of concern about the reliability of the scientific record and, because they are unfamiliar with the specific imaging system, decide to reach out to independent experts in order to determine whether this kind of image irregularity might be common or explainable (we don’t have access to these communications, of course, but one can reasonably assume that the experts did not feel that it was). These requests by the editors came after Dr. Yassine passed along the raw data that Dr. Wang had sent him, attempting to explain to the editors that the box was “not exactly rectangular in shape” and thus concludes that “none of the images were manipulated.” This was clearly not a satisfactory answer:

In the end, it does not appear as though any of the raw data from the three separate experiments performed for the 2021 paper surfaced, and a retraction notice was distributed to the authors, including David Bennett and Zoe Arvanitakis, both of whom are professors at Rush Medical College:

I mention Drs. Bennett and Arvanitakis because there are two intertwining stories here, and Rush is involved in both. First, a significant portion of the responsive records in the FOIL request pertain to a large R01 grant which was eventually awarded to a group of investigators that largely intersects with the authors of this Molecular Neurodegeneration paper—including Wang, Yassine, Bennett, and Arvanitakis. The emails show that on or around October 17, 2021 the R01 grant scored in the top 5% of submitted grant proposals, meaning that it would almost certainly be funded by the NIH (and, in fact, it was). At the time, Dr. Wang was included in this grant, but was removed from it on December 15, 2021 due to “an ongoing investigation”:

Second, Rush University Medical Center was at one point listed on the clinical trial website for Cassava’s RETHINK-ALZ trial, but they withdrew sometime prior to January 5, 2022, which is when the update to the NIH clinical trial website shows Rush being removed from the list. It’s mere speculation to assume that the events are connected—Bennett and Arvanitakis have not commented on the situation—but the timing is curious. The larger set of allegations against Dr. Wang’s work had been publicized for months by that point, but it wasn’t until after the December 15 removal of Dr. Wang from the R01 grant that Rush dropped from the clinical trial (that said, updates to the NIH website can be delayed).

Putting the pieces together, we have a paper published in 2021, for which data was likely collected no earlier than 2020 (Dr. Wang was apparently added late to address reviewer concerns, according to the editors), and yet none of this data could be located. Independent experts were apparently consulted regarding the irregularity and there is no indication that they agreed with Wang’s and Yassine’s assertions that it was simply an imaging artifact. Blots by other co-authors were reevaluated and passed muster. Consequently, the paper is retracted with no apparent resistance from the other authors (Bennett and Arvanitakis both provide very brief replies agreeing to the retraction) and the experiment is performed by a member of Yassine’s lab prior to resubmission. Wang is then removed from both the ensuing (re)publication and the large R01 grant collaboration, and Cassava’s trial dropped by Rush Medical Center.

Meanwhile, the CUNY investigation drags on, the clinical trial proceeds, and none of the aforementioned parties—Wang, his collaborators, the journal, or Rush Medical Center—have provided public comment.

This is not a healthy system.