Indian institute investigates nanoscientists for indiscriminate image manipulation

On 31 May, the American Chemical Society (ACS) retracted another four papers from Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) (IIT(ISM)), Dhanbad, scientists due to suspicious microscopy images. This brings the tally of retractions racked up by Rashmi Madhuri and Prashant K Sharma to 14 papers, with Dutch publishing giant Elsevier previously retracting nine and the ACS one more. But anonymous commenters on the online journal club PubPeer have identified at least 50 sustainable nanoscience papers by Madhuri and Sharma that apparently show similar problems.

Rajiv Shekhar, IIT(ISM)’s director tells Chemistry World that he has asked Madhuri and Sharma to explain the situation, and has launched an external investigation into the matter. Currently unnamed ‘acclaimed experts’ working in nanoscience ‘who are absolutely against plagiarism’ will deliberate for a month, Shekar says. Then their recommendations will go to IIT(ISM)’s board, which meets once a quarter. ‘We take these allegations very seriously,’ he adds. Chemistry World was unable to reach Madhuri, while Sharma declined to comment beyond observing that he’s ‘just a co-author on some of those papers’.