What Elsa Flores and Tyler Jacks taught each other

Success in science needs good mentoring. It is not just her amazing creativity which allowed Elsa R. Flores to rise it to the position of Associate Director for Basic Science at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida, but also the unwavering support of her postdoctoral mentor, MIT professor, HHMI investigator and a massive heavyweight of cancer research, Tyler Jacks. I like to think that Jacks taught Flores how to rise through academic ranks, and Flores taught Jacks how to, uhm, do science most efficiently.

The Moffitt website informs us:

“Dr. Flores works to accelerate the discovery of cancer mechanisms and to enhance the translation of basic science to the clinic. Dr. Flores’s vision includes recruiting bioengineers to Moffitt to enhance translation of basic science to the clinic through the generation of novel research, biomaterials and medical devices. […] Dr. Flores has published over 85 papers including in high impact factor journals, Nature, Cancer Cell, Molecular Cell, Cell Stem Cell, Cell Metabolism, and Nature Communications.

Dr. Flores is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  Flores was named an NCI R35 Outstanding Investigator in 2015 and has won numerous prestigious awards throughout her career”

Let’s look at those papers in high impact factor journals then, shall we?

I would like to start with a paper which has most of the key figures on board: Elsa R. Flores, her postdoc mentor Tyler Jacks, and her husband Kenneth Tsai, another mentee of Jacks’ and now vice-chair of pathology at Moffitt. None of them replies to emails, but then again, they are all very important and very busy people, curing cancer and saving lives while you read this.

Elsa R. Flores , Kenneth Y. Tsai, Denise Crowley , Shomit Sengupta , Annie Yang , Frank McKeon , Tyler Jacks p63 and p73 are required for p53-dependent apoptosis in response to DNA damage Nature (2002) doi: 10.1038/416560a 

Fake gels, what a shame for the great Tyler Jacks. But he is so big, and published so many other papers in Nature, he probably doesn’t care. That two decade old Nature paper did its job, earning millions of dollars for its authors. So what if it’s fraudulent.

But it is not just fake data. Year ago, Nature defended Sam W Lee‘s mouse torture (Raj et al 2011), where poor animals were injected with tumours growing so huge they caused the mice excruciating pain and misery. The reason for the bizarre correction and its mantra that the mice didn’t really suffer and that the “scientific conclusions of the original paper stand” was that Lee was a Harvard professor supported by a bigwig bully, Stuart A. Aaronson. Eventually that Nature paper was retracted, but not for animal abuse of course, but for research fraud findings which “in aggregate undermine the confidence in the integrity of this study“. Read here:

And now, a déjà vu! Again a Nature paper by a research cheater supported by a mighty bigwig, again with mice tortured with huge ulcerating tumours.

Xiaohua Su , Deepavali Chakravarti , Min Soon Cho , Lingzhi Liu , Young Jin Gi , Yu-Li Lin , Marco L. Leung , Adel El-Naggar, Chad J. Creighton, Milind B. Suraokar , Ignacio Wistuba, Elsa R. Flores TAp63 suppresses metastasis through coordinate regulation of Dicer and miRNAs Nature (2010) doi: 10.1038/nature09459

The Nature chief editor announced to me to follow this up. Flores was, at the time of making of that mouse torture study, professor at MD Anderson in Texas. She replied on PubPeer:

“We did follow IACUC protocols approved by MD Anderson.“

Actually I think Flores is not lying. MD Anderson is a giant research fraud factory where data forgery is not just tolerated but expected, why shouldn’t animal abuse or any other form of misconduct be legal there as well. This huge research hospital in Houston was previously run by the billion-dollar-heavy cheater Ronald DePinho (30 papers on PubPeer), and here by the way is a suspicious paper by he then-MD Anderson president with Flores’ mentor Jacks:

And since we talk about MD Anderson: I previously wrote about how whistleblowers get crushed and the worst cheaters like Anil Sood get rewarded and awarded there.

But speaking about Sood… Ta-da, Flores and Sood, plus Sood’s cheating buddy Gabriel Lopez-Berestein, on one fraudulent paper which this journal announced to me to investigate:

Shouyu Wang , Ke Liang , Qingsong Hu , Ping Li , Jian Song , Yuedong Yang , Jun Yao , Lingegowda Selanere Mangala , Chunlai Li , Wenhao Yang , Peter K. Park , David H. Hawke , Jianwei Zhou , Yan Zhou , Weiya Xia , Mien-Chie Hung , Jeffrey R. Marks , Gary E. Gallick , Gabriel Lopez-Berestein , Elsa R. Flores , Anil K. Sood, Suyun Huang, Dihua Yu, Liuqing Yang, Chunru Lin JAK2-binding long noncoding RNA promotes breast cancer brain metastasis Journal of Clinical Investigation (2017) doi: 10.1172/jci91553

The Schneider Rule about following one research fraudster in order to meet many others – it always works. In this regard, Flores collaborated with Weizmann Institute professor Varda Rotter in Israel, result is the questionable gels in Bornstein et al 2011:

Chamutal Bornstein , Ran Brosh , Alina Molchadsky , Shalom Madar , Ira Kogan-Sakin , Ido Goldstein , Deepavali Chakravarti , Elsa R. Flores , Naomi Goldfinger , Rachel Sarig , Varda Rotter SPATA18, a spermatogenesis-associated gene, is a novel transcriptional target of p53 and p63 Molecular and Cellular Biology (2011) doi: 10.1128/mcb.01072-10

Rotter posted raw data for Figure 4D, but not for Figure 2A. I previously wrote about Rotter’s research here:

Or how about this PNAS collaboration by Flores with the Cell Death and Depravity team of Gerry Melino and Richard Knight, plus Xin Lu, head of cancer research institute in London (see the two articles below), which had to be corrected in 2014 with:

“The authors note that “Thanks to an alert reader, we noticed that in Fig. 3D, the control ChIP for MDM2 erroneously duplicated a p53-RE-III panel from an earlier paper (1). We thank the reader for bringing this issue to our attention, and we deeply apologize to the scientific community for the error.””

With these people, nothing is ever “erroneously” duplicated. Let’s have a look at another beautiful paper by Flores and her mentor Jacks. Its Figure 5 is outrageously fake.

Yu-Li Lin , Shomit Sengupta , Katherine Gurdziel , George W Bell , Tyler Jacks , Elsa R Flores p63 and p73 transcriptionally regulate genes involved in DNA repair PLoS Genetics (2009) doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000680 

Here, Flores explained on PubPeer:

“Agarose gels often look similar due to artifacts introduced by the comb. Image was not flipped as suggested above.”

The requests to share raw data went unanswered. Flores’ coauthor Jacks remained silent. Somehow, these fake gel bands from that evil Figure 5 from the PLOS Genetics study developed a life of their own. Must have been due to that magic comb!

Min Soon Cho , Io Long Chan , Elsa R. Flores ΔNp63 transcriptionally regulatesbrachyury, a gene with diverse roles in limb development, tumorigenesis and metastasis Cell Cycle (2010) doi: 10.4161/cc.9.12.12051 

Another nice study in Cell Cycle:

Avinashnarayan Venkatanarayan , Payal Raulji , William Norton , Elsa R. Flores Novel therapeutic interventions for p53-altered tumors through manipulation of its family members, p63 and p73 Cell Cycle (2016) doi: 10.1080/15384101.2015.1121333 

But this is nothing compared to the Flores masterpiece you will see next. How much money did Jacks, Flores and other coauthors make with this bizarre Photoshop travesty, in grants, personal salaries, cash awards, and don’t forget pharma industry consulting?

Elsa R. Flores , Shomit Sengupta , John B. Miller , Jamie J. Newman , Roderick Bronson , Denise Crowley , Annie Yang , Frank McKeon , Tyler Jacks Tumor predisposition in mice mutant for p63 and p73: Evidence for broader tumor suppressor functions for the p53 family Cancer Cell (2005) doi: 10.1016/j.ccr.2005.02.019 

You probably can guess how Flores retorted on PubPeer when caught:

“PCR reactions run on agarose gels commonly look similar due to artifacts introduced by the agarose gel and comb.“

Flores then replied to requests for raw data: “I think much of it is gone“.

People like this should be pelted with rotten tomatoes and chased out of science into alternative careers as toilet attendants. But instead, Flores, supported by Jacks, will probably chase you out of whatever job you had for raising the issue of their gels.

Good for them this is Cell Press, hence a retraction is just as unlikely as Flores ever learning to do proper science.

Here is more, by Flores and her husband Ken, luckily for them in another Cell Press journal:

Again, Ken and Elsa, the unlikely couple, solving skin cancer:

Deepavali Chakravarti , Xiaohua Su , Min Soon Cho , Ngoc Hoang Bao Bui , Cristian Coarfa , Avinashnarayan Venkatanarayan , Ashley L. Benham , Ramón E. Flores González , Jennifer Alana , Weimin Xiao , Marco L. Leung , Harina Vin , Io Long Chan , Arianexys Aquino , Nicole Müller , Hongran Wang , Austin J. Cooney , Jan Parker-Thornburg , Kenneth Y. Tsai, Preethi H. Gunaratne , Elsa R. Flores Induced multipotency in adult keratinocytes through down-regulation of ΔNp63 or DGCR8 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2014) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1319743111

At least Moffitt replied to my emails. Their Senior Member and Research Integrity Officer wrote to me:

“We thank you for your note. Moffitt takes these allegations seriously and will review confidentially in accordance with Moffitt’s research misconduct policy.”

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