The ongoing animal research controversy surrounding the University of Michigan has intensified after yet another article linked to a disgraced researcher has been retracted due to fabricated or falsified data.
Stop Animal Exploitation Now! (SAEN) , a national watchdog group that investigates animal abuse and illegal activities at research facilities, is calling on federal authorities to declare Chung Owyang guilty of research misconduct.
In early January, Gastroenterology retracted an article published in 2009 about “visceral pain responses in rats” after the University of Michigan raised concerns about falsified or fabricated data. It’s at least the ninth research article connected to Owyang that has been retracted in the past two years.
In a letter this week to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Serivces’s Office of Research Integrity (ORI), SAEN points out that nearly $1.4 million in federal funds were used on the fraudulent research.
“In other words, an article connected to roughly $1.4 million in annual funding given to two UM researchers, which subjected rats to intentionally inflicted pain, generated nothing more than potentially falsified data,” SAEN Executive Director Michael A. Budkie wrote in the letter. “In other words, animals suffered horribly and died for nothing more than potentially falsified/ fabricated data.”