The Office of Research Integrity Should Investigate Nature Medicine’s Corrupt “Proximal Origins” Paper

House investigators have already found the paper failed to list an author, which violates federal research integrity rules on plagiarism.

5 minute read

The journal Nature Medicine published one of the most corrupt COVID pandemic papers back in March 2020, by lead author Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, to distract the nation from the possibility that the COVID virus came from a lab. Since Nature Medicine published “Proximal Origins”, evidence has come to light that the paper meets the legal standard for research misconduct. The paper’s authors failed to cite contributions by Jeremy Farrar, who House investigators found should have been an author. According to former NIH Director Francis Collins, failing to cite an author meets the criteria for plagiarism, one of the three types of research misconduct currently defined by federal law.

Below, I will lay out the evidence for research misconduct by the “Proximal Origins” authors, explaining why the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) should investigate. Established in 1993, ORI oversees research integrity for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to promote quality science and to protect taxpayer-funded studies.

Readers should know that ORI does not conduct its own investigations. Instead, it assigns this work to the targeted scientists’ own institutions — in this case Scripps Research and Tulane University. However, if the reports that Scripps and Tulane send back to ORI do not contain the public evidence I am going to present, this is a sign that the ORI system has failed and ORI should be reformed.

By statute and regulation, ORI can only investigate narrowly defined actions that meet the current federal definition of research misconduct: fabrication, falsification or plagiarism. And they do not investigate private-funded studies, only research funded by the public health service.

To begin, ORI has jurisdiction to investigate “Proximal Origins” because the paper discloses funding by the NIH. In the acknowledgements section, Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research and Robert Garry at Tulane University both note their NIH funding.

Because the paper discloses NIH funding, this gives ORI the regulatory authority to launch an investigation. But what evidence do we have that the authors conducted research misconduct, defined by ORI as either fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism? That can be found in emails that have become public and from a report issued by House Democrats.

Some years after Nature Medicine published “Proximal Origins”, emails became public which show that lead author Kristian Andersen passed drafts and a final version of the paper past two of the paper’s funders: Jeremy Farrar at the Wellcome Trust, and Anthony Fauci at the NIH.

“Thank you again for your advice and leadership,” Andersen emailed Fauci, a week before Nature Medicine published the paper. “We’re still waiting for the proofs, so please let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions about the paper or press release.”

In late 2023, House Democrats released a report and supporting documents that found Wellcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar helped “organize and facilitate” the paper and “led the drafting process of the paper.” When an author helps to write a study but remains secret to hide his or her influence on the academic literature, this process is known as ghostwriting.

“Jeremy, Dr. Farrar has been an amazing leader,” wrote “Proximal Origins” co-author Robert Garry in an email released by House Democrats. “Should be author.”

Garry confirmed this view in a deposition conducted by House investigators.

Yet, the “Proximal Origins” paper fails to list Jeremy Farrar as an author, nor does it note his contributions in the acknowledgement section.

In a letter he sent me in 2011, NIH Director Francis Collins explained that when a scientist takes another person’s ideas without providing credit, that can meet the federal definition for plagiarism to be assessed by ORI for research misconduct. “For example, a case of ghostwriting involving NIH-funded researchers may be appropriate for consideration as a case of plagiarism; i.e. the appropriation of another person’s idea, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.”

Here’s a screenshot of that section in Collins’ letter. You can read the entire letter here.

The same year Collins sent me this letter, Nature published a letter by professor Xavier Bosch at the University of Barcelona, who pointed out that a Danish scientific integrity law treats misappropriation of authorship as research misconduct.

The evidence is quite clear: the “Proximal Origins” paper is funded by the NIH, which means ORI can investigate for possible plagiarism. House investigators have found that Jeremy Farrar should have been an author, and former NIH Director Francis Collins has stated in writing that failing to include an author meets federal criteria for plagiarism. So why hasn’t ORI launched an investigation?

A report in the Wall Street Journal noted that ORI is trying to improve the transparency and credibility of misconduct investigations at universities, but is being impeded by the research community. The current policy, in which universities self-investigate, limits ORI’s ability to make independent assessments of wrongdoing.

The evidence for “Proximal Origins” plagiarism, as defined by ORI, has already been made public. If Scripps Research and Tulane University ignore this evidence in their reports back to ORI, it should be greeted as a sign that the ORI system is broken and needs to be reformed.

On a final note: by failing to add funder Jeremy Farrar as an author to the paper, the authors also violated the ethics policies of Nature Medicine. According to Nature’s editorial policy, “A specific role for the funder in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, should be disclosed.”