Sun Yat-sen University released a situation report on May 30, identifying issues of academic impropriety and misconduct in relevant papers by Kang, from the Cancer Prevention and Treatment Center, and Kuang, from the School of Life Sciences, and handling the individuals involved according to regulations. According to Xinhua News Agency, Kang was removed from the positions of Deputy Director of the State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China and Deputy Director of the Experimental Research Department of the Cancer Prevention and Treatment Center, had his technical post rank reduced, was disqualified from promotions, project applications, and awards for 12 months, was suspended from recruiting graduate students for 12 months, and was ordered to issue corrections or retract the papers; Liao, the first author of the relevant paper, received the same term of punishment. Kuang was removed from the position of Deputy Dean of the School of Life Sciences, had his technical post rank reduced, was disqualified from related qualifications for 24 months, was suspended from recruiting graduate students for 24 months, and was ordered to issue corrections or retract the papers; Wan, the first author of the relevant paper, had his degree conferral postponed for one year, and other co-authors received academic admonishment talks or criticism education depending on the extent of their responsibility.
Sun Yat-sen University stated that it maintains a “zero tolerance” policy toward research misconduct, will take this as a lesson to strengthen research integrity warning education, improve the whole-process management mechanism for paper submissions, image usage, and experiment records, and improve the normalized supervision and verification system. This report was triggered by previous public concern and reports regarding questions about the images and data in the above-mentioned papers.