UNSW skin cancer researcher Levon Khachigian hit with string of retractions – ABC News

Posted October 17, 2019 05:38:42

Levon Khachigian cuts an imposing figure in the hallways of the UNSW School of Medical Sciences.

The 55-year-old cell biologist rose to the top of the university's academic hierarchy, on a salary package once worth more than $250,000 a year.

In the elite world of academia, where prestige is driven by publication in top scientific journals and research funding is scarce, Professor Khachigian has been a big earner, bringing more than $23 million in funding to the university over his three-decade career.

The cancer and cardiovascular researcher was once regarded as a rising star on the brink of a breakthrough treatment for skin cancer.

Professor Khachigian is the winner of multiple Eureka prizes, widely regarded as the "Oscars" of Australian science, and once told a newspaper that the toughest part of the job was "when a research paper is rejected for publication on whimsical grounds".

Since that comment, his published scientific work has been under intense international scrutiny.

Now, six research papers he co-authored have been withdrawn or retracted from publication due to unresolved concerns over missing or manipulated data.

Behind the scenes, a series of high-stakes confidential inquiries and secret reports has threatened to derail his stellar career.

But after 18 months on leave while a battery of investigations were carried out, he remains in his role as head of the prestigious Vascular Biology and Translational Research laboratory.

The battleground over Professor Khachigian's research has now shifted, away from the university campus and beyond the pages of academic journals to the NSW corruption watchdog.

Elizabeth Lacey is a lawyer who will this week present a brief of evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), urging it to investigate Professor Khachigian and UNSW's handling of the case.

"Complainants in this matter have been trying to raise the flag over so many years, and each time they meet the hurdles of the university saying 'we've investigated ourselves and we're fine'," she said.

"An independent body simply must be given the scope to investigate what's occurred and ensure that they have full access to all of the relevant documentation [and] all of the relevant research."

Over the last decade, Professor Khachigian and his UNSW lab have been stalked by allegations of fabrication of data and falsifying images, with multiple investigations failing to silence his most ardent critics.

David Vaux is an outspoken campaigner in the often reserved world of scientific research. From his cluttered office at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, he's become something of a vigilante.

When Professor Vaux first came across what he thought were innocent errors in Professor Khachigian's work in 2009, he wrote to him saying he believed there had been an accident.

"He wrote back to me and he said, 'thanks for picking this up. I'll take care of it'," Professor Vaux said.

"What surprised me was that he had a very relaxed attitude. He seemed to be very casual about it."

It was the first of more than a dozen alleged errors Professor Vaux brought to the attention of journals, officials at UNSW and funding bodies.

"I found similar mistakes, the same images had apparently been duplicated and then labelled as if they were representing two different things.

"If you see this happening again and again it raises much more concerns," he said.

His complaints, and those of whistleblowers inside Professor Khachigian's lab, prompted a series of secretive investigations.

In total, UNSW commissioned five independent external expert panels. Each of them cleared Professor Khachigian of research misconduct.

But new documents and interviews with those who were responsible for investigating him reveal the flaws inherent in science policing itself.

The latest of Professor Khachigian's scientific papers to be pulled was quietly retracted during the academic break in December last year.

The paper had been plagued by questions for years and was the basis of a controversial human trial of a skin cancer drug known as Dz13.

Nine cancer patients were recruited to be injected with the drug at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital between 2010 and 2011.

Recruitment for a second trial on patients suffering from more deadly melanomas was cancelled after concerns were raised.

Professor Vaux had complained to the journal that published the paper, JBC, multiple times, over images he believed were duplicated.

"The images are clearly the same except there are different magnifications, and one's labelled as if the cells were treated with a drug," Professor Vaux said.

"So the claim that the drug is having effect on cell size is clearly due to a magnification of the image and not an actual effect of the drug."

Late last year after more questions from journal editors about other images in the paper, the authors withdrew the research, admitting they couldn't locate the raw data needed to prove their work.

The 2018 retraction came as a surprise to another eminent scientist, Peter Brooks from the University of Melbourne.

Five years earlier, he'd flown up to Sydney to investigate the matter for UNSW.

"Interestingly, we were told that the raw data was available," Professor Brooks said.

"It now seems that it wasn't. It's disappeared since we did our investigation."

He said he was constrained by the strict terms of reference provided to him by the university and now feels a responsibility to speak out for the first time.

"The conclusions were that there had been some misdemeanours, but we thought there were extenuating circumstances and therefore no research misconduct was found," he said.

Midway through the investigation, Professor Brooks was surprised to discover there were several other independent panels also looking at different complaints against Professor Khachigian and his research team.

He's frustrated that he wasn't allowed to consider Professor Khachigian's overall pattern of behaviour, only individual complaints.

"The question is, how many minor issues of misconduct do you have to have before it's classified as a major one?"

Distinguished scientist Bob Williamson was also tasked with running one of the independent investigations into Professor Khachigian. It too cleared Professor Khachigian of research misconduct.

But the former director of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute was deeply unhappy with the process.

In a scathing email, Professor Williamson wrote to the national research funding watchdog in 2016 concerned about the process the university had put in place to investigate its own.

"We were instructed that we could only find that Professor Khachigian had committed 'misconduct', (which we did, on a number of specific points), but not 'research misconduct', because we could not aggregate the acts and draw what was, for us, a conclusion."

Professor Williamson declined to comment when asked about his concerns.

In 2016, several months after UNSW publicly announced Professor Khachigian had been cleared of research misconduct, there was another indication of more problems.

Prestigious journal Circulation Research retracted another article that UNSW had already investigated.

The journal pointed out the discrepancy between what it and UNSW found acceptable in the field of scientific research.

In an unusual statement, the journal noted that despite UNSW conducting an independent investigation clearing Professor Khachigian of research misconduct, "UNSW was unable to locate any electronic record of the original images and was unable to locate any records of the images in original lab books."

"Based on the unresolvable concerns with these figures, the editors, therefore, hereby retract the article."

Not satisfied with UNSW's investigations, complaints flowed in to the Australian Research Integrity Committee (ARIC), the body set up to ensure institutions receiving federal funding are adhering to research standards.

New documents obtained by the ABC show that after a review ARIC, too, had serious concerns about the university's processes.

The draft report reviewing UNSW's investigations concluded: "The University failed to investigate whether Professor Khachigian's repeated breaches of the Australian Code amounted to research misconduct."

It also concluded the university lacked transparency in reporting their findings due to a "very restrictive approach to which information could be released, inhibited open and accountable reporting of investigation outcomes".

In response, UNSW commissioned a final independent panel chaired by barrister Justin Gleeson SC in 2017 to review the previous panels.

A confidential letter summarising the findings seen by the ABC stated there were a "significant number of findings of breaches of the UNSW Code and the Australian Code" and that "within the period from late 2008 to early 2010, [Professor Khachigian] acted negligently", but noted that the panel believed his negligence was not reckless or "gross and persistent".

The letter stated that there were "clearly real problems in the research environment that was established and managed by Professor Khachigian", but found the consequences were not serious.

For a fifth time, the panel came to the same conclusion that despite a series of issues, there was no finding of research misconduct.

But as the retractions have continued, some even within UNSW are privately questioning how, after so many apparent errors, Professor Khachigian has been repeatedly cleared.

Professor Vaux has now taken the unusual step of bringing in a legal team, led by Ms Lacey, to pursue the matter before ICAC.

"It's a matter for ICAC, because what's occurred potentially amounts to enormous amounts of fraud on the public purse," Ms Lacey told the ABC.

Taxpayer money, she said, could be better spent on science that hasn't had to be retracted.

"We have very strong suspicions about the veracity of this science," she said.

The ICAC will decide whether or not there is a case to answer.

"The reason this matters is because this is research into skin cancer," Ms Lacey said.

"There have been human beings who have been provided with a drug... which looks to be based on research which doesn't hold up.

"If that's the case, we have a very serious problem."

Both Professor Brooks and Professor Vaux are calling for a national office of research integrity to handle these cases.

"Because of the way the system is set up, the university is supposedly investigating themselves, and I think they do have significant conflicts of interest," Professor Brooks said.

Professor Vaux agrees: "We really need to have a research integrity commission set up that's independent of certainly the universities and the medical research money agencies as well.

"In 23 European countries, the US, Japan, China, there are national offices for research integrity that handle these things. In Australia, it's a self-regulation model, where institutions handle things internally and in secret."

In a statement, UNSW said it took its research ethics obligations "very seriously" and had cooperated fully with ARIC.

"We are strongly committed to promoting and maintaining a culture that demands the highest standards of compliance and responsible research practices," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Professor Khachigian continues to receive millions of dollars in funding and has published four more scientific papers this year.

His latest research, investigating the use of an antiparasitic drug on melanoma skin cancers, was published in May in the journal Cancer Letters.

Professor Khachigian did not respond to the ABC's request for comment, but has previously denied suggestions of research misconduct, saying there has been no deliberate misrepresentation of data.

UNSW said there are currently no outstanding allegations against Professor Khachigian under investigation by the university.

Read Professor Levon Khachigian's previous statement in full.

Topics:medical-ethics,health,sydney-2000,australia,melbourne-3000

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UNSW skin cancer researcher Levon Khachigian hit with string of retractions - ABC News