Dive Brief:
- Former Novartis scientist Igor Dzhura has been fired by the pharma giant and banned from research funding for three years.
- Dzhura has agreed to retract six papers he published between 2000 and 2005 that included false data.
- Dzhura published papers with false data in various journals, including Nature Cell Biology, Circulation, the FASEB Journal, as well as others.
Dive Insight:
This far from the first time that a scientist has falsified, published, and been forced to false data; however, it is one of the first times that a pharma company has immediately fired someone accused of such behavior.
The fabrications came to light when the Office of Research Integrity at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Dzhura's work. Novartis is currently conducting an internal review to make sure that his research-related misconduct did not have a broader impact on other research projects at Novartis.