Concerns on 10.1371/journal.pone.0315913
The authors, all of whom are the Wangjing Hospital, the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, stated on this article [1] that "the animal study was performed following institutional guidelines for ethical animal studies and approved by the institutional Animal Ethics Committee, Penney Testing Co., Ltd. (PONY-2020-FL-65)", suggesting either that the affiliation of the authors did not approved the animal studies, or that the animal studies were conducted out the authors' affiliation without disclosing it. Either of them is violation of research ethics.
What is more, according to the ethics approval number (PONY-2020-FL-65), the animal studies were approved/conducted by "Pony Testing Co., Ltd." (listed number: 300887.sz) instead of "Penney Testing Co., Ltd.", a research provider in China.
Authors also acknowledged Suzhou PANOMIX Biomedical Tech Co., Ltd and Jinyu Gu on the article [1] without stating specifically their contributions.
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