Matsubara lab in Japan: Breathtaking reuse of Western and Northern blot bands

A whisteblower alerted me to the fact that the Japanese investigative blog http://blog.m3.com/Retraction
published postings on presumably manipulated articles from the Matsubara lab.
He told me that Dr Matsubara became a professor/director at the department of cardiovascular medicine, Kyoto Prefectural University School of Medicine in Mar 2003 after he had served as an associate professor at the Kansai Medical University, Japan.

Since this website is written in Japanese which poses a huge language barrier, I wondered how effective it might be to send an unprocessed link to the editor of an English language journal.

Kidney International, after receiving this link (http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20111031/1) responded immediately:
„The similarity between the figures does raise some concern; however, we cannot read the text on the blog (all I get is a bunch of squares). Perhaps you can provide more information for us to investigate this further—otherwise I’m not sure what else we can do, since all we have to work with are these figures taken out of context.“

This response reflects a rather arrogant and ignorant attitude. It loads all the burden of documenting and explaining data manipulation onto whistleblowers. Some journal editors are simply not prepared to live up to their responsibilities and take a fair share of the investigative work.

I started to take a closer look at the above link and immediately detected additional evidence for potentially serious data manipulations.

Article 1
Uchiyama-Tanaka Y, Matsubara H (corresponding author), Nozawa Y, Murasawa S, Mori Y, Kosaki A, Maruyama K, Masaki H, Shibasaki Y, Fujiyama S, Nose A, Iba O, Hasagawa T, Tateishi E, Higashiyama S, Iwasaka T.
Angiotensin II signaling and HB-EGF shedding via metalloproteinase in glomerular mesangial cells.
Kidney Int. 2001 Dec;60(6):2153-63.
Department of Medicine II, Kansai Medical University, Osaka, Japan.

Kidney Int., Fig. 2B

Hypertension 2001, Fig. 2B

Article 2
Shibasaki Y, Matsubara H (corresponding author), Nozawa Y, Mori Y, Masaki H, Kosaki A, Tsutsumi Y, Uchiyama Y, Fujiyama S, Nose A, Iba O, Tateishi E, Hasegawa T, Horiuchi M, Nahmias C, Iwasaka T.
Angiotensin II type 2 receptor inhibits epidermal growth factor receptor transactivation by increasing association of SHP-1 tyrosine phosphatase
Hypertension. 2001 Sep;38(3):367-72.
Department of Medicine II, Kansai Medical University, Moriguchi, Osaka, Japan.

Very quickly it became obvious that these 2 articles were considerably affected by data reuse across the board:

Kidney Int. 2001, Fig. 1A

Kidney Int. 2001, Fig. 4

Kidney Int. 2001, Fig. 6B

Hypertension 2001, Fig. 1B
(contained exclusively in the pdf version, not the online version)

Kidney Int. 2001, Fig. 5A                    Hypertension. 2001, Fig. 2A

Kidney Int. 2002, Fig. 5A                     Kidney Int. 2001, Fig. 6C

Circ. Res 2001, Fig. 4

Article 3
Fujiyama S, Matsubara H (corresponding author), Nozawa Y, Maruyama K, Mori Y, Tsutsumi Y, Masaki H, Uchiyama Y, Koyama Y, Nose A, Iba O, Tateishi E, Ogata N, Jyo N, Higashiyama S, Iwasaka T.
Angiotensin AT(1) and AT(2) receptors differentially regulate angiopoietin-2 and vascular endothelial growth factor expression and angiogenesis by modulating heparin binding-epidermal growth factor (EGF)-mediated EGF receptor transactivation.
Circ Res. 2001 Jan 19;88(1):22-9.
Department of Medicine II, Kansai Medical University, Osaka, Japan.

Article 4
Uchiyama-Tanaka Y, Matsubara H (corresponding author), Mori Y, Kosaki A, Kishimoto N, Amano K, Higashiyama S, Iwasaka T.
Involvement of HB-EGF and EGF receptor transactivation in TGF-beta-mediated fibronectin expression in mesangial cells.
Kidney Int. 2002 Sep;62(3):799-808.
Department of Medicine II, Kansai Medical University, Moriguchi, Osaka 570-8507, Japan.

 Kidney Int. 2001, Fig. 6C

Kidney Int. 2002, Fig. 5B

Kidney Int. 2001, Fig. 5B

Kidney Int. 2002, Fig. 1

Kidney Int. 2002, Fig. 2

Kidney Int. 2002, Fig. 3

Kidney Int. 2002, Fig. 6

Since it all started with the whistleblower hinting at http://blog.m3.com/Retraction, I asked him for more links to complement my findings. Here is what I had failed to notice with regard to the above articles:

http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20111023/_2_

http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20111022/_1_

Article 5:
Matsubara H (corresponding author), Shibasaki Y, Okigaki M, Mori Y, Masaki H, Kosaki A, Tsutsumi Y, Uchiyama Y, Fujiyama S, Nose A, Iba O, Tateishi E, Hasegawa T, Horiuchi M, Nahmias C, Iwasaka T.
Effect of angiotensin II type 2 receptor on tyrosine kinase Pyk2 and c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase via SHP-1 tyrosine phosphatase activity: evidence from vascular-targeted transgenic mice of AT2 receptor.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2001 Apr 20;282(5):1085-91.
Department of Medicine II, Kansai Medical University, Moriguchi, Osaka, Japan

http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20110701/_5__

http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20110630/_4__

http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20111029/_4_

Duplicated text passages are documented here:
http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20110628/_3_

http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20110704/1

http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/20111107/_9_

Taken together, articles 1-5 are distinguished by the extensive reuse and mutual exchange of data, in particular Western and Northern Blot bands. A single band has been reused up to eigth times in distinct blots in Kidney Int. 2002.
It is apparent that band images from ‘real’ blots may have been digitally reassembled into new blot images pretending to be derived from distinct experimental settings. Since ‘reconfigured blots’ have been densimetrically scanned and the results illustrated in tables and figures, we are presumably confronted with a case of severe data fabrication.

Findings of Research Misconduct require:
1. Significant departure from accepted practices of relevant research community
and
2. Misconduct is committed intentionally, knowingly or recklessly
and
3. Allegation proven by preponderance of evidence.

The preponderance of evidence may also include the retraction of an article due to self-plagiarism:
Mol Cell Biochem. 2000 Sep;212(1-2):187-201.
Transactivation of EGF receptor induced by angiotensin II regulates fibronectin and TGF-beta gene expression via transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms.
Matsubara H, Moriguchi Y, Mori Y, Masaki H, Tsutsumi Y, Shibasaki Y, Uchiyama-Tanaka Y, Fujiyama S, Koyama Y, Nose-Fujiyama A, Iba S, Tateishi E, Iwasaka T.

This retraction notice appeared in Mol Cell Biochem. 2003 Sep;251(1-2), 167:
„Due to a mistake of duplicating the publication of original data which already appeared in Circulation Research (84: 1073–1084, 1999), the following paper published in Molecular Cellular Biochemistry has been retracted with an apology“.

Clearly, the authors of the above articles owe us another apology. This may not be enough though. All articles deconstructed in blog.m3.com/Retraction and Abnormal Science Blog should be retracted without delay.

The preponderance of evidence clearly suggests that we are confronted with a severe case of SMS.

Blog.m3.com/Retraction has uncovered a hell of a lot more irregularities in this affair. Stay tuned.