HUST Disciplines Dr. Xiao Chuanguo

In the aftermath of Dr. Xiao Chuanguo's conviction for attacks, the Huazhong University of Science and Technology decided to impose severe disciplinary actions on Dr. Xiao Chuanguo, who is an employee at the school and its affiliated Xiehe Hospital. The school announced today that they had decided on November 6 to strip all administrative and teaching positions Xiao Chuanguo held in the school and hospital.

But the school stopped short of expelling him altogether. Dr. Xiao Chuanguo also received an administrative censure and a one-year probation. It is unclear how the probation would carry out.

Multiple Fraud Led to a Retraction

The research journal Cancer Biology & Therapy retracted a paper recently in a case that was described as "nearly everything dishonest authors can do to doctor a manuscript, these authors did" by the web site Retraction Watch.

The paper in question have 5 authors, all from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (华中科技大学). According to the journal, at least 2 of the authors were not aware of their involvement in this paper, including one that is supposed to be the corresponding author. The other authors used a fake email address for the corresponding author to intercept any communication.

Besides such oddities, editors of the journal also found one figure in the paper is a re-publication of data in an earlier paper. "The authors have misrepresented their data as being from 2 separate cell lines," concluded the editors in the retraction notice.