Kristin Roovers, a postdoctoral fellow at the Ottawa Health Research Institute who was found by U.S. investigators last year to have wrongfully doctored images published with her scientific research while at the University of Pennsylvania, was suspended last week pending an investigation into her work at the Canadian institution.
Institute officials said on Thursday that they were not aware of the U.S. investigation of Ms. Roovers's conduct when they hired her, in October 2005.
The U.S. Office of Research Integrity, which polices government-financed science projects, published a summary of the findings in a notice in the Federal Register in July.
The investigators concluded that images from an experiment by Ms. Roovers submitted to The Journal of Clinical Investigation as part of a paper had been improperly manipulated, as had images she had produced for papers published in three other journals. The researcher had used Photoshop to make results from her research look more impressive than they were.
Those findings led two of the journals to retract the papers involving Ms. Roovers, papers that had been cited by other researchers dozens of times.
Image tampering is an increasing problem in scientific publishing, and Ms. Roovers is hardly alone, according to some journal editors, who are stepping up their efforts to detect doctored images.
Officials at the Ottawa Health Research Institute said they did not learn of the misconduct finding against Ms. Roovers until reading an account in The Chronicle last month (The Chronicle, May 29).
"We immediately set up a committee to review this situation," Jennifer Paterson, director of communications and public relations at the institute, said in an e-mail interview on Thursday. She said that Ms. Roovers had been temporarily relieved of her duties, pending the outcome of the review.
Ms. Roovers has continued to research and publish: She is listed as a co-author of a research paper published in April by PLoS ONE. In an interview with The Chronicle last month, Ms. Roovers said that she had recused herself from handling laboratory images while at the Ottawa institute. "I've sort of removed myself from the situation," she said. "I'm of the opinion now whatever I get is what I show."
She could not be reached for further comment this week.
Officials from the Office of Research Integrity, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, have said that they spread the word about their findings by publishing them online and in the Federal Register, among other ways. But the case of Ms. Roovers indicates that not everyone gets the message.
The office's published finding about Ms. Roovers, for instance, explicitly stated that three figures in a paper that listed her as a co-author in Nature Cell Biology contained manipulated images, and said that the University of Pennsylvania had recommended corrections to the journal.
But the journal has not made any corrections, and in an interview last month, Linda J. Miller, U.S. executive editor of Nature and the Nature Publishing Group's research journals, said that editors at Nature Cell Biology did not know about the case of Ms. Roovers until asked about it by The Chronicle.
"Now that we know about the paper, we are familiarizing ourselves with the case and will determine the appropriate course of action," Ms. Miller said in an e-mail interview last month.
Ms. Paterson, of the Ottawa Health Research Institute, said her institution plans to take a close look at its policies regarding research images as a result of the case.
"We have policies and procedures in place to ensure that our research is conducted with the utmost integrity," she said. "But in light of the situation with Dr. Roovers, we will be reviewing these and determining if any changes should be made."
