Bear-faced lie? Amgen retracts diabetes-obesity paper due to data manipulation

By Dan Stanton

- Last updated on GMT

The original paper showed how the obesity and insulin resistance pattern of hibernating grizzly bears may have implications in human diabetes
The original paper showed how the obesity and insulin resistance pattern of hibernating grizzly bears may have implications in human diabetes

Related tags Obesity Amgen

Amgen has retracted a study showing how grizzly bears could hold the key to understanding diabetes after one of the authors was found to have manipulated data.

The study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism in August 2014, reported research that found the pre-hibernation weight gain in grizzly bears and the insulin resistance (IR) and subsequent reinitiated responsiveness upon awakening could help drug developers better understand the relationship between obesity and diabetes.

But yesterday Amgen, the drug company behind the research, raised its paws and pulled the scientific paper after finding evidence of data manipulation by one of the study’s authors.

“Amgen requested the retraction as an outcome of an internal review where it was determined that one of the Amgen authors had manipulated specific experimental data presented in Figures 1 and 3,”​ the retraction notice states. “This author is no longer employed by Amgen.”

Figure 1 in the paper showed how grizzly bears control adipose tissue insulin signaling in a seasonal tripartite manner, while figure 3 was a series of charts and blots of adipose tissue lysate showing that obesity and insulin resistance in the bears correlates with lipolysis.

The lead author was Kevin Corbit whose email address at Amgen was not working this morning.

The paper was co-authored by several scientists at Washington State University and the University of Idaho who remained “confident that the physiological data generated for this manuscript are accurate and representative of the true metabolic responses of these grizzly bears.”

They are currently repeating the mechanistic portions of the study.

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