Publication requires complainants to disclose financial conflicts in the wake of controversy over Cassava Sciences’ experimental treatment simufilam.
A scientific journal has revamped its whistle-blower policy amid a dispute over the integrity of research underlying an experimental Alzheimer’s drug.
In a 1 November 2022 editorial in The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI), editor-in-chief Elizabeth McNally wrote that whistle-blowers had raised concerns in August 2022 about potentially doctored images in research papers published by multiple journals, including JCI. Some of the papers were related to the experimental drug simufilam, developed by biopharmaceutical firm Cassava Sciences, based in Austin, Texas, whereas others were authored by a scientist involved in the treatment’s early testing.
But, McNally says, the whistle-blowers did not disclose conflicts of interest when they lodged their complaint — and she alleges that they have profited from short-selling Cassava stock, a practice in which individuals bet that a company’s stock will fall, and make money when it does. “This represents a new means of manipulating the scientific-publishing industry,” she writes.
Typically, when a whistle-blower contacts a journal about concerns over manipulated images or otherwise questionable data, the allegations are taken on good faith, McNally told Nature. The idea that whistle-blowers could be doing this for their own financial gain “was very eye-opening to me”, she says.
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