In recent times, a well-known Chinese popular science blogger “Geng Talking Stories” has been extensively reporting multiple renowned scholars from well-known universities for alleged data falsification in their papers published in the top-tier academic journal “Nature,” sparking wide attention and leading to the resignation of several prestigious university deans. The latest update reveals that Su Jiacan, the dean of the School of Translational Medicine at Shanghai University, has been dismissed from his position.
On June 12, Shanghai University announced that in response to the online allegations questioning the data integrity of Su’s related papers, the school, in collaboration with relevant units, has formed an investigation team consisting of internal and external experts to evaluate the academic issues involved.
The questioned paper titled “Viral glycoprotein-mimicking peptide-functionalized micelles promote drug delivery to diseased chondrocytes for osteoarthritis alleviation” was officially published in the “Nature Nanotechnology” journal in February 2026.
After scrutinizing experimental data and interviewing relevant personnel, it was confirmed that there was data falsification in the fluorescence intensity AUC values of experimental mice under different conditions depicted in one chart of the paper, constituting academic misconduct; mislabeling was found in the column titles of liquid chromatography data in another chart, while the remaining seven charts had traceable data but lacked sufficient disclosure regulation.
The co-first author of the paper is Dr. Zhou from the Institute of Translational Medicine, and the corresponding author is Su from the School of Translational Medicine and the Director of the National Science Center for Translational Medicine (Shanghai) at Shanghai University.
The announcement stated that the employment relationship with Dr. Zhou has been terminated, the aforementioned duties of Su have been revoked, and his qualifications for job promotion, research project applications, awards, and honors have been suspended for 12 months, with a halt on the recruitment of graduate students for the same period.
On May 12, around midnight, “Geng Talking Stories” released a video report implicating Su Jiacan, the dean of the School of Translational Medicine at Shanghai University, in academic misconduct in the aforementioned paper.
Earlier, on May 12, “Extreme News” reported that the official website of the Shanghai University Institute of Translational Medicine displayed that the paper in question was one of Dean Su Jiangan’s representative academic achievements, ranked first. In a post on the institute’s public account, it was introduced that at the end of 2025, Professor Su Jiangan’s team published this research paper, pioneering the use of viral glycoprotein mimicry peptide-modified micelles to penetrate the dense cartilage matrix barrier for precise drug delivery to pathological cells and metabolic remodeling.
Following the revelations by “Geng Talking Stories,” several university deans have been ousted from their positions, including Wang Ping, dean of the School of Life Sciences and Technology at Tongji University (May 6), Kuang Dongming, vice dean of the School of Life Sciences at Sun Yat-sen University (May 30), and Chen Quan, dean of the School of Life Sciences at Nankai University (May 30).