February 7, 2024

There were 59 problems of “sloppy and potentially fraudulent work” found in 29 papers written by a group of scientists headed by Harvard’s Khalid Shah, an independent investigator stated last week.

A “2022 paper…appears to have copied/pasted several figure panels from other researchers and even from scientific vendors,” the investigator Elisabeth Bik noted in a blog post on Science Integrity Digest.

Shah has focused his research on probing if cancer cells can be used to kill cancer cells. His 2022 research paper, with 32 co-authors including Deepak Bhere, states that mice with brain tumors, who were treated with engineered stem cells, had a much longer survival than untreated mice.

Bik scanned this paper using Image Twin. She writes, “What I found was a huge surprise. Several images showing mouse tissues matched those of older papers from completely different groups… It was completely unexpected to find images from a Harvard lab matching images published by a different set of authors working in a different lab.”

The 2022 paper, by Shah and his team, published by the journal nature communications, “was featured on EurekAlert with the headline ‘Scientists develop ‘off the shelf’ engineered stem cells to treat aggressive brain cancer’”, notes Bik.

Following Bik’s blog post questioning Shah’s work, nature added an editorial note at the top of the article stating “concerns have been raised regarding the reliability of the data presented in this article” and that the issue is being investigated..

Bik’s investigations of 28 additional papers, done by teams led by Shah, found “duplicated and overlapping photos, or photos reused from papers by the same authors.”

Shah is the Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which is part of the Harvard Medical School, Boston. A professor at Harvard Medical School, since 2017 he has been the director of The Center for Stem and Translational Immunotherapy and also a joint Center of Excellence in Biomedicine. He is the Principal Faculty at Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Shah and his team have pioneered major developments in the stem cell therapy field, successfully developing experimental models to understand basic cancer biology and therapeutic stem cells for cancer, according to his bio on a Harvard site. These studies have been published in several peer-reviewed journals like Nature Neuroscience, PNAS, Nature Reviews Cancer, JNCI, Stem Cells and Lancet Oncology.

He is the author of two books, Stem Cell Therapeutics for Cancer and Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Cancer Therapy. Shah’s stem cell work has been featured in Scientific American, New York Times, BBC, CNN and other media.

He holds more than 10 patents and he has founded two biotech companies. He is the founder, owns equity and is a member of the Board of Directors of AMASA Therapeutics.

While Shah earned a degree from the Harvard Medical School, 2001-2004, neither his bio on various Harvard sites nor his LinkedIn profile mention his previous education. A paper he published notes he worked on plant research at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Shah grew up in Kashmir, India.

Shah has received the young investigator award from the Alliance for cancer gene therapy, Research fellow award from the American Cancer Society (ACS), and Distinguished research award from the Academy of Radiology.  

He has participated in the training of numerous undergraduate and graduate students and medical hospital residents from the US and 40 foreign countries. He received the Young Mentor Award from Harvard University.

Two months ago, Bik began investigating Shah’s work after receiving a tip from a past member of Shah’s team. Bik writes, “It was a story I have heard too many times before, about sloppiness in storing samples, contaminated cell lines, and bullying and threatening of PhD students and post-docs on (temporary work) visas to cut corners and to produce desired results.”

Bik, based in San Francisco, is a science integrity consultant and author of 37 scientific publications. Earlier, from 2002 to 2016, she was a research associate at Stanford University. She earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Microbiology from Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Bik was part of the team which alleged data falsification by four top scientists at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, leading to the retraction of six and correction of 31 papers. Bik was also one of the first scientists to allege research misconduct by former Stanford University president Marc T. Tessier-Lavigne, which played a part in his resignation in 2023.

Bik’s findings had merit and raised serious concerns about the integrity of the papers in question, Matthew S. Schrag, an assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and Mike Rossner, the president of Image Data Integrity told The Harvard Crimson.  

Shah declined to comment to the Crimson and other media about the findings of Bik’s investigations.

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