Schneider Shorts 14.06.2024 – Promoting terrorism by publishing materials that incite violence and hatred
Schneider Shorts 14.06.2024 - - Killer surgeon goes to Spanish jail, Lion of the World whitewashed in Germany, with Italy's superstar who publishes too much, an expert of research ethics, many retractions, Dutch antivaxxery, and you won't believe what a stupid pillock Ajan is.
Schneider Shorts of 14 June 2024 – Killer surgeon goes to Spanish jail, Lion of the World whitewashed in Germany, with Italy’s superstar who publishes too much, an expert of research ethics, many retractions, Dutch antivaxxery, and you won’t believe what a stupid pillock Ajan is.
A year ago, the murderous trachea transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiariniwas sentenced in a Swedish court for aggravated assault to actual prison time of two and a half years. I wrote about it in June 2023 Shorts.
But Macchiarini lives in Barcelona, Spain where he has a huge villa. This is why his lawyers applied to a) transfer the prison sentence to Spain and b) transform the prison sentence to house arrest.
The Swedish court allowed the first request due to EU laws, and now the Spanish court rejected the second. Paolo Macchiarini will have to go to actual jail.
I obtained the original verdict from the Central Criminal Court of Madrid from 29 May 2024, but since I am not sure if it is legal to publish or directly quote from it, I will tell you what it said.
First, the court decided that Swedish sentence does not need to be adapted since the crimes for which Paolo Macchiarini was sentenced, are sanctioned in Spain with equal or even greater penalty: with up to 3 years in prison. Second, there are no reasons for denial of recognition since Macchiarini is an Italian citizen residing in Spain, where his wife and children also reside, and third, the convict expressly requested and consented to serve the sentence in Spain.
Fourth, the conviction will be carried out in accordance with the provisions of the Spanish legal system. Fifth, the Court of Sweden condemned the Italian citizen Paolo Macchiarini on 30 October 2023 to the sentence of 910 days of prison for 3 crimes of reckless injury (trachea), and the sentence hasn’t been served yet.
Macchiarini’s victim Paloma Cabeza speaks out again, fearing she doesn’t have much time left. She appeals to the Swedish prosecutor for justice in the deadly trachea transplant scandal.
A fraudulent and most obviously papermilled paper has been flagged on PubPeer. Its penultimate author is a “Top Italian Scientist in Biomedical Sciences“, the Romania-born Claudiu Supuran, since 1995 professor of medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Florence, Italy. His current h-index is 167. Supuran is the senior corresponding author here:
Hoya camphorifolia: “Fig 6. Could the authors specify the equipment they used to capture and plot flow-cytometry data? If does not seem capable of drawing within the lines.”“[left] Fig 5A,B. The panels seem to have been pillaged from [right] Fig 2A of “Overexpression of SHP2 tyrosine phosphatase promotes the tumorigenesis of breast carcinoma” (Hu et al 2014).”“Clockwise from left: Fig 6A from “Production, bioprocessing and antiproliferative activity of camptothecin from Aspergillus terreus, endophyte of Cinnamomum camphora: restoring their biosynthesis by indigenous microbiome of C. camphora” (Eldeghidy et al 2023). Fig 8 from “Exploring cytotoxicity of cordycepin loaded nanovesicles against (HCT116) colon cancer cells: Optimization and cellular evaluation” (Alhakamy & Fahmy 2022) [retracted]. Fig 4A,B.”
These figures featured in 3 more papers, as Smut Clyde noted. There are no common authors between all these studies. The authors on the retracted one are Nabil Alhakamy and Usama Fahmy, two known papermillers (read about them in November 2022 Shorts).
And Supuran’s first and co-corresponding author Haytham Tawfik of Tanta University in Egypt already has this on PubPeer:
Sholto David: “Figure S2: I do not believe that the wound images in the red and blue rectangles that I have added are sufficiently different to have been derived from different animals.”
So how did Supuran end up on that papermilled garbage by Tawfik? Well, he just likes to put his name on such things. 61 of Supuran’s papers are coauthored with a certain Zeid AlOthman (see Pubpeer) who in turn “collaborates” with known papermill teams like Rafael Luque & Leonid Voskressensky and Amit Kumar & Florian Stadler. 62 of Supruan’s papers are coauthored with a certain Sameh Osman (see PubPeer), an even closer associate of Luque and Luque’s mentee Thomas Len (son of Christophe Len, see April 2024 Shorts). Supuran also published with a certain John F Kennedy, who gets his papers from Iranian papermills (not the dead US president, read May 2024 Shorts).
“The 2017 Pratesi medal was awarded to Claudiu Supuran” (Source)
As every esteemed European professor, Supuran is not averse to Saudi money. He has a second affiliation at the King Saud University which celebrates him as a polymath genius who “published more than 1500 papers“. The number is actually outdated, Supuran’s current publication count stands at 2378 publications. His most productive year was 2019, when he published 154 papers. Basically, a paper every two days if one excludes weekends. Others can’t manage to read as many.
In 2015, a paper titled “A Key Opinion Leader interview: insight into the research and career of Prof. Claudiu T Supuran” brought an interview with the great man. Supuran was asked: “What has been the biggest success of your career?“, and he modestly replied:
“I am ranked among the top Italian scientists at position 42, with a Hirsch index of 93 and more than 37,300 citations […] I am the second in rank in my university and among the first three in chemical/biochemical sciences from Italy. A second success I consider highly important for me is the large number of collaborations that I have established all over the world […] I attribute my success probably to being rational, well organized and stubborn, in addition to working quite a lot”
Imagine how his ego grew since. As reminder, Supuran’s current h-index is 167. I fully expect it to reach 200 before he retires, 300 before his death and to continue to grow afterwards.
Guido Kroemer receives on 8 November 2019 the €1mn Lombardy Award for Healthy Ageing, at La Scala in Milan. And why not, one panel member was Carlo Croce.
Univ.-Prof. Prof. mult. Dr.-Ing. agr. Jörg Rinklebe is an innocent victim of false suspicions by losers who are jealous of his superhuman scientific genius! That is why this Lion of the World (as his University of Wuppertal in Germany calls him) has been now fully whitewashed. The university unconditionally endorses his peer review rings and his excessive publication output with the worst of papermillers like Pau Loke Show (who just retracted several papers, see below), Christian Sonne, Eder Lima, Navid Rabiee, Su Shiung Lam and Yong Sik Ok. You can see Rinklebe’s PubPeer record of peer-review rigging here, and read here:
On 10 June 2024, the Vice-Rector for Research of the University of Wuppertal Stefan F. Kirsch, informed me in a short email:
“Dear Sir or Madam,
This email aims to inform you on the results of the initial assessment and inquiry process following your allegations of research misconduct.
On March 19, 2024, the Rector of BUW received a report from the Deputy Ombudsperson regarding allegations against Mr. Rinklebe on suspicion of scientific misconduct. In this report, the Ombudsperson advises against a formal investigation. The Rectorate now decided not to initiate a formal investigation or form an investigative committee at this time, as the Ombuds report indicates there is currently not sufficient evidence of scientific misconduct.
I understand. Rinklebe used to be a Highly Cited Researcher and thanks to his, uhm, let’s call them Asian connections, he publishes papers faster than others read them. This means actual money for his university, and a lot of it. Smut Clyde wrote here about Rinklebe’s Citation Vortex:
“I focus on the sprawling parody literature devoted to the three Es of Energy, Economy and the Environment. Together they […] freeload on the authentic literature on energy efficiency and pollution reduction (while diluting, distracting and discrediting them).” – Smut Clyde
Just to be clear, the University of Wuppertal sees no problem at all with any of Rinklebe’s papers. Not even this one, coauthored by the soil researcher Rinklebe with Sonne, Show and further members of the peer-review ring: Kit Wayne Chew, Su Shiung Lam and Yong Sik Ok. The chief editor of that Elsevier journal is the split-personality-papermiller Aijie Wang (read May 2024 Shorts), I fully expect she handled this bizarre paper:
In Wuppertal, they firmly believe their Lion of the World is saving endangered species.
In September 2024, Rinklebe will join his papermilling associates as a keynote speaker at the GTSE24 conference in Poland. It’s certainly not a coincidence that Pau Loke Show and Christian Sonne are members of the Scientific Committee of this conference. Another keynote speaker is the papermiller from Spain, Damia Barcelo (see his PubPeer record here). Barcelo pushed antivaxxery as Editor-in-Chief at Elsevier and co-authored obvious papermill trash with Christian Sonne, Pau Loke Show, Mortaza Aghbashlo, Meisam Tabatabaei and even Uttpal Anand, from the gang of Abhijit Dey:
Here for example is a common paper by Rinklebe and Barcelo, “collaboration” with countless “scholars” in China, the relevant PubPeer thread reveals a massive peer review network.
Other keynote speakers are:
Ashok Pandey (see PubPeer record) – another associate of papermillers Pau Loke Show, Mohammad J. Taherzadeh and even of Rafael Luque and Changhe Li! Pandey also has common papers with Rinklebe.
Huu Hao Ngo (see PubPeer record) – an associate of Sonne, Barcelo, Su Shiung Lam, Aghbashlo, Tabatabaei and even of Aijie Wang.
Long D. Nghiem (see PubPeer record) who is obviously another papermilling Renaissance man publishing faster than others read.
Qiang Liu – an associate of Huu Hao Ngo and Long D Nghiem.
You see, this Polish conference, despite being fully sponsored by the Polish government, is actually a closed company of papermill business associates. The conference organisers and the governmental sponsor are all aware and they either didn’t reply or indicated not to care.
“Prof. Grzegorz Królczyk, Vice-Rector for Science and Development of the Opole University of Technology, was elected President of the Council for Innovation in Higher Education and Science.”
And the University of Wuppertal just can’t have enough of their Lion of the World publishing even more papers of that kind, using his peer review and citation networks.
COVID-19
We regret this impression has arisen
We haven’t had pandemic idiocies for some time, so here is this recent paper from the Netherlands:
“Excess mortality has remained high in the Western World for three consecutive years, despite the implementation of containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines. This raises serious concerns. Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality.”
The study from the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht indeed implied that COVID-19 vaccines were killing masses, while repeating long-debunked claims by John Ioannidis that COVID-19 itself was not at all dangerous. Major news outlets picked it up, The Telegraphheadlined: “Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths“.
The study was published on 3 June 2024. Only 3 days later, the publisher BMJ issued this statement:
“Various news outlets have claimed that this research implies a direct causal link between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality. This study does not establish any such link. The researchers looked only at trends in excess mortality over time, not its causes.”
The newspaper de Volkskrantwrote on 11 June 2024 (Google-translated):
“But the research, carried out by Kaspers, two other children’s oncologists from the Princess Maxima Center and the Emma Children’s Hospital in Amsterdam, plus an ‘independent researcher’, does make such a connection. For example, there would be “a serious underreporting of adverse events, including deaths, after immunization,” the authors said. There would also be “causalities” in the medical world that “mRNA vaccines could cause more harm than was initially predicted.””
“These people are anti-Cassandras… they are optimistic and always wrong, receiving endless interviews about the censorship of their views, while their confident opinionation is always taken respectively by other Public Intellectuals because they are Serious People.” – Smut Clyde
Also on 11 June 2024, the Princess Maxima Center itself renounced their own study (Google-translated):
“The Princess Maxima Center distances itself from the publication “Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022”.
There have been serious questions regarding the publication “Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022”. Therefore, we will further investigate the scientific quality of this research. The Princess Maxima Centre deeply regrets that this publication may give the impression that the importance of vaccinations is being questioned.
Originally, the idea was that the effect of the COVID measures would be looked at on, among other things, the mortality rate of children with cancer in low-income countries. Throughout the study, the focus shifted and went in one direction that, in our opinion, is too far removed from our expertise: pediatric oncology. We are not an expert in the field of epidemiology and do not want to give that impression. Maxima therefore expressly distances itself from this publication. We should have been more keen on the conclusion and results of this publication and will examine the way in which it was achieved. If it turns out that carelessness has been done in the preparation of this publication, it will be withdrawn.
As an Princess Maxima Center, we would like to emphasise that we are strongly in favour of vaccination and that this publication should certainly not be read as an argument against vaccination. The study shows in no way that there is a link between vaccinations and excess mortality, that is explicitly not the findings of the researchers. We therefore regret that this impression has arisen.”
Do they notice that the last paragraph defending the paper contradicts the rest of the statement?
Scholarly Publishing
A Bibliometric Measure to Distinguish Iranian Papermillers
It is about this paper in MDPI journal Publications which specialises on publication ethics:
Pooyan Makvandi , Anahita Nodehi , Franklin R. Tay Conference Accreditation and Need of a Bibliometric Measure to Distinguish Predatory ConferencesPublications (2021) doi: 10.3390/publications9020016
“Writing—original draft preparation, P.M., A.N.; writing—review and editing, P.M., A.N., and F.R.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.”
No, the real joke is not MDPI teaching us on how to distinguish predatory behaviour, the real joke is the author – a certain Pooyan Makvandi who declares as his academic affiliation the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Italy, where he left already in 2022. Like many Iranian scholars in Europe, Makvandi has two PhD degrees and oodles of peer-reviewed papers.
“Pooyan Makvandi holds two Ph.D. degrees” Source: LinkedIn
A number of Makvandi’s papers are on PubPeer, with clear evidence of data forgery and papermilling.
Dicksonia gigantea: “It didn’t bother the authors or reviewers that no silver was detected in the silver-doped material?”
Erratum July 2023: “”This erratum corrects the mistaken duplication of the sample shown in Figure 5b, which was inadvertently duplicated from 5c. These are different sample sets and Figure 5b is corrected in this erratum. We apologize for this error.””
Makvandi reply: “You are absolutely right. Even, with bare eyes, it is possible to see the similarity. Thank you for informing us. We have checked and found that the control sample was not correct. We will notify the journal for correction.”
Neodiprion demoides: “Fig. 2. XRD diffractograms are drawn in a peculiar way, with discontinuities.”, i.e. hand-drawn
Makvandi was also one of the founding editors of the recently opened journal Green Biomaterials which the publisher Taylor & Frances shut down before it published anything aside of an editorial. That was because Alexander Magazinov and I notified the publisher that the editorial board consists entirely of known papermillers led by Navid Rabiee (read April 2024 Shorts).
And here is Makvandi with Rabiee and other famous papermill crooks, especially Eder Lima and Rajender Varma:
Neodiprion demoides: “It is unclear why generic statements below were supported exclusively by self-citations of the last author, a certain N Rabiee. Further, it is unclear what relevant information some of these passages bring to the discussion, e.g. what silver and gold nanoparticles have to do about integration of MXenes and microfluidics.”
Or this, the forgery was corrected by ACS in January 2023 with the authors’ note: “After much investigation, we realized that there is a flaw in Figures 2 and 5. However, this correction does not change and alter the results of this study. We certify that these changes do not affect the results and conclusion, and happened by mistake“:
“I could not comprehend the situation where a university picks up on individuals with an extraordinary and sterling performance and basically destroy one of the top European institutions. ” – Raj Varma
The next one is completely ridiculous, the papermill must have had left-over cancer genetics papers on sale, so Makvandi (and Hamblin, and the Iranian papermilling rest) became cancer researchers:
Asal Jalal Abadi , Ali Zarrabi , Farid Hashemi , Amirhossein Zabolian , Masoud Najafi , Maliheh Entezari , Kiavash Hushmandi , Amir Reza Aref , Haroon Khan , Pooyan Makvandi , Saeed Ashrafizaveh , Tahereh Farkhondeh , Milad Ashrafizadeh, Saeed Samarghandian, Michael R. Hamblin The role of SOX family transcription factors in gastric cancerInternational Journal of Biological Macromolecules (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2021.02.202
“Readers should reassess the reliability of this paper as its bibliography includes 11 questioned references that are likely to be unreliable.”
“Furthermore, CP penetration to the brain is limited by presence of blood-brain barrier (BBB). During pathological conditions such as hypoxia, BBB integrity is disrupted, providing an opportunity for CP pene tration through BBB [223].”
[223] N.J. Vickers, Animal communication: when i’m calling you, will you answer too? Curr. Biol. 27 (14) (2017) R713–R715.
How did an editorial about insect pheromone communication get to receive 1200 irrelevant citations, almost all from papermills? Alexander Magazinov reveals The Secret of The Vickers Curse!
Now you see what exactly qualified this papermilling tosser named Pooyan Makvandi to prance around as an expert on science ethics.
Scientific Reports article is unaffected
The Nature family journal Scientific Reports has enough of annoying sleuths who waste its precious time and money by reporting data manipulation. Here a set of two papers from Tulane University in New Orleans, USA, published almost a year apart. One proposes a therapy of mechanochemical disruption for liver cancer, the other proposes same therapy for prostate cancer:
Left: “Representative images of DU-145 cancer cell monolayers“, right hepatocellular carcinoma Hep3B cells
These so-called scratch assays are key data for both papers claiming to prove something about mechanochemical disruption for cancer therapy. Claire Francis notified both journals on 21 May 2024. At Molecular Cancer Research, nobody replied, because this journal is run by Massimo Loda whom Claire Francis previously exposed as a massive research cheater.
But the Deputy Editor of Scientific Reports, Anam Akhtar, did reply: “I will look into this matter now and let you know once we reach an editorial resolution.” On 12 June 2024, Akhtar instructed the sleuth to bugger off:
“Dear Dr. Francis, Hope you are well! Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We have discussed with the authors and requested the original data, but given all the information received, we find that Scientific Reports article is unaffected and will not be taking editorial action at this time.“
I presume the authors explained that it doesn’t matter if the cells are of liver or prostate cancer because come on who cares. Scientific Reports experts agreed and returned to their usual task of soliciting papermill fraud.
Retraction Watchdogging
Scientific integrity cannot be guaranteed
As promised above, here some retractions, all in Frontiers, for Jörg Rinklebe’s papermilling friend, frequent co-author and peer-review ring partner, Pau Loke Show.
“I focus on the sprawling parody literature devoted to the three Es of Energy, Economy and the Environment. Together they […] freeload on the authentic literature on energy efficiency and pollution reduction (while diluting, distracting and discrediting them).” – Smut Clyde
Nr 1, coauthored by citation-superscammer Yu-Ming Chu and edited by a key member of the Rinklebe/Show peer review ring, Su Shiung Lam, and reveiwed by Show’s collaborators Nguyen Thi Dong Phuong and Chin Chen:
“Following publication, the publisher found evidence of multiple undisclosed conflicts of interest that undermined the integrity of the peer review process. As the scientific integrity of the article cannot be guaranteed, and in adherence to the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the article is retracted.”
Number 2, again Show with YM Chu, reviewed by Nguyen Thi Dong Phuong, Chin Chen and another collaborator of Show’s, Sze Shin Low, same retraction notice from 12 June 2024:
Number 3 by Show, edited and reviewed by his associates M. Mofijur and Sze Shin Low and Rambabu Krishnamoorthy, respectively, same retraction notice from 12 June 2024:
Also retracted by Frontiers was a paper Sun et al 2022 where Pau Loke Show was the only reveiwer.
I bet Show’s freshly whitewashed German buddy Jörg Rinklebe and his University of Wuppertal are currently fighting behind the scene to prevent similar retractions.
All original four authors were removed and replaced
A physics journal in Elsevier retracts 2 papers. There was indeed absolutely no way for the editors and the publisher to know prior to publication that these studies were papermill fraud. Really, no way at all.
“This paper presents a generalized exponential rational function method of finding solutions to Schrödinger’s equation. As one would expect the paper does not mention grinding, machining, wear, or lubrication so it is surprising then to find among the references a significant number of works by Li C and Zhang Y in exactly this area.”
Angus J. Wilkinson
The newly issued retraction stated:
“This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor.
Post-publication, the editor also discovered suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper. In summary, the paper was submitted by two author, Behzad Ghanbari and Dumitru Baleanu. During revision, the original author names Behzad Ghanbari and Dumitru Baleanu were removed while author names Kamsing Nonlaopon (New First Author), Mohammed Shaaf Alharthi, M.S. Alqurashi, B. Günay (New Corresponding Author), were all added to the revised paper without explanation and without exceptional approval by the journal editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.
The editor reached out to the authors for an explanation to the above points, but they failed to provide satisfactory explanation.
Overall, the editor feels that the findings of the manuscript cannot be relied upon, and the article needs to be retracted.”
Both submitting authors were removed and replaced with four new people. Dumitru Baleanu is such a famous papermilling fraudster that some smaller papermiller(s) stole his identity even as “Bunnitru Daleanu”. Read here:
“the rarest, most sought-after token of recognition is when the Chen brothers steal your identity to use as a fictive co-author on one of their plagiarism gallimaufreys. For instance, “Bunnitru Daleanu” was based on (and memorialises) the nonpareil Rumanian mathematician Dumitru Baleanu – now resident in Turkey” – Smut Clyde
The retraction notice was very similar, mentioning:
“Post-publication, the editor also discovered suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper. In summary, the paper was submitted by four authors, J. Feng, D. Ali, B. Atamuratova, and Xu Zeng. During revision, all original four authors were removed and the author names Kamsing Nonlaopon (New First Author), Musaad S. Aldhabani, Samirah H. Alsulami, S.K. Elagan and Shahram Rezapour (New Corresponding Author), were all added to the revised paper without explanation and without exceptional approval by the journal editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.”
The Editor-in-Chief is some Cong-Feng Qiao of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He is assisted by professors from Italy, Japan and USA.
During revision, all original four authors were removed and replaced by other people. How can you expect the editorial office and the publisher to notice that there might be something going on in such a situation, indeed.
Added to the revised paper without explanation
For similar reasons, Elsevier decided to retract two papers in the Journal of Energy Storage. And this even outside of the usual Special issue by Masoud Afrand and friends!
Nick Wise: “On the 16th of March 2022 an advert was placed on Facebook selling authorship of a paper with a title matching this one. This paper was submitted on the 14th of January and revised on the 4th of April.”
The recent retraction notice declared:
“This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
In investigating concerns brought up regarding inappropriate advertisement of the authorship of the article, the editor reached out to the authors for an explanation.
Post-publication, the editor also discovered suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper.
In summary, the paper was submitted by a sole author, Mahrad Feyzbaxsh. During revision, the author names Arif Sari (New First Author), Walid Kamal Abdelbasset, Maria Jade Catalan Opulencia, Himanshu Sharma, Azher Abed, Shaymaa Abed Hussein, Bashar S. Bashar, Ali Thaeer Hammid, A. S. Prakaash and Khusniddin Fakhriddinovich Uktamov were all added to the revised paper without explanation and without the exceptional approval by the journal Editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.
The Editor reached out to the authors for an explanation, but they failed to provide a satisfactory explanation to these changes.
Overall, the Editor feels that the findings of the manuscript cannot be relied upon, and the article needs to be retracted.
Mahrad Feyzbaxsh disagrees with the retraction of the article and disputes the grounds for it.”
Mahrad Feyzbaxsh is currently a humble MSc student in Turin, Italy, and definitely NOT an agent for Iran’s secret service, the likely real operator of those papermills. Maria Jade Catalan Opulencia and Khusniddin Fakhriddinovich Uktamov are two known papermillers and I insist they marry and have babies, just to see how these will be named. Age difference should never stand in their way (the former is middle-aged professor in Dubai, the latter graduated two years ago in Uzbekistan).
The second retraction is theirs as well but there is no Feyzbaxsh. Instead, the corresponding author Barno Abdullaeva is vice-rector for scientific affairs and innovations of Tashkent State Pedagogical University in Uzbekistan and winner of “The most active scientist woman of the year” award from 2022:
Nick Wise: “On the 1st of February, an advert was posted on Facebook selling authorships of a paper. I believe that the original intended journal was Wiley’s International Journal of Energy Research, which has a 2 year impact factor of 5.164. However, that submission must have been rejected. I believe that this paper, with a rearranged title, is the same work described in the advert. It has 9 authors, as per the advert, from a wide variety of institutions and disciplines. What expertise are academics of dentistry, economics and business administration contributing to this work?
Here, the notice had a similar message but didn’t reveal any names as not to embarrass anyone in Uzbekistan:
“This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
In investigating concerns regarding authorship for sale in this article, the Editor reached out to the authors for an explanation but they failed to respond.
Post-publication, the Editor also discovered suspicious email addresses used by the author during the submission process that was associated with multiple researcher accounts.
The Editor has determined that the authorship of the paper cannot be relied upon, and the article needs to be retracted.”
Maybe I should mention that Dirk-Uwe Sauer‘s successor as Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Energy Storage, the Spanish professor Luisa F. Cabeza, is a self-plagiarist and even a full plagiarist, including in this same journal (see PubPeer).
I must admit Elsevier are masters in cake eating and cake having. The journal Fuel divested itself once of a newly appointed Vietnamese chief editor, some papermilling friend of Rafael Luque. Simultaneously the journal divested itself of a troublemaker chief editor Jillian Goldfarb who wanted to put an end to papermilling in her journal. The Editor-in-Chief Bill Nimmo had to find the balance between peddling papermill fraud and occasionally doing something against it.
“Among these candidates that you “vetted” were people with no expertise in the field (either 0 or 1 publication), people with longer PubPeer profiles and more retractions than most people have articles on their CVs, and people whose names appear as authors on sold paper sites. ” – Jillian Goldfarb
So now Nimmo retracted one papermilled product by Luque and his close associate Awais Ahmad. Should be enough till the end of the year. It must be one of the papers about which Luque once personally admitted to El Paisto have generated using ChatGPT.
Alexander Magazinov: “Already in the introduction there are un-grammatical passages that are hard to parse (red, green, olive below) and reporting of results from seemingly random studies without a slightest trace of context (blue below). […] Overall, the text leaves an impression of being generated by software.”
The recent retraction notice stated:
“This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
In investigating concerns brought up regarding the article, about the reliability of text and figures from the article, as well as the appropriateness of some citations, the Editor reached out to the authors for an explanation.
Post-publication, the Editor also discovered suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper.
In summary, the author’s name Saadat Majeed was added to the revised paper without explanation and without the exceptional approval by the journal Editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.
The authors failed to provide a satisfactory explanation to the above points. Post-publication, the Editor also discovered suspicious email addresses used by authors during the submission process were associated with multiple researcher accounts. The Editor has determined that neither the content nor the authorship of the paper can be relied upon, and the article needs to be retracted.
The authors disagree with the retraction of the article and dispute the grounds for it.”
Not sufficiently robust
PLOS One finally retracts a COVID-19 paper by a quack and vitamin industry shill, who pushed Vitamin D as a pandemic cure. I wrote about Michael Holick and this very paper in this article:
On 14 October 2020, the paper received an Expression of Concern regarding “the validity of results and conclusions reported in the article and about undisclosed competing interests.”
Quite possibly it was supplied by an Iranian papermill. The retraction was published only much later, on 6 June 2024, none of the authors agreed:
“Our editorial assessment involved input from a statistical reviewer and members of the PLOS ONE Editorial Board. Having considered their feedback and the authors’ responses in detail, we have found that 1) the reported study design, including inclusion criteria and statistical analysis methods, was not sufficiently robust to address the research question, and 2) the methodology was not reported in sufficient detail to enable reproduction of this study. As such, we have concluded that the article’s conclusions are not supported by the reported data.
In light of these concerns, the PLOS ONE Editors retract this article. We regret that these issues were not identified and addressed prior to the article’s publication.”
We did not have good ones
Retraction for Maria Rosa Avila-Costa, professor of neuroscience at National Autonomus University of Mexico, about whom I wrote in September 2023 Shorts.
“Those photomicrographs were edited because we did not have good ones at the time we are sending the article,[…] it was not permitted to use the same photo, that was just illustrative, the 4a and 4b micrographs were also used in another publication that is why I edited them, but the main finding, the perforated synapses was not edited at all.”
She faked the images because she didn’t have any “good ones”. And she reiterated a month later: “you can’t use a photomicrograph that has already been published, that is why I edited them.” Sylvain Bernès reported the retraction on PubPeer, which the publisher Oxford University Press issued on 28 May 2024:
The Editors contacted the corresponding author, who said the figures in question were altered from previous publications by the same corresponding author and reused without attribution, but that the relevant results were not altered.
Specifically, Figure 2 is from Figure 2b: Avila-Costa MR, Colín-Barenque L, Aley-Medina P, et al. (2005) Bilateral increase of perforated synapses after unilateral dopamine depletion, Intern. J. Neuroscience, 115: 79–86, DOI: 10.1080/00207450490512669. Figure 4a is from Figure 11–1 of Avila-Costa MR, Gutiérrez-Valdez AL, Ordonez-Librado JL, et al. The presence of perforated synapses in the striatum after dopamine depletion. Is this a sign of negative brain pasticity? (2008) In: Kaiser TF and Peters FJ (eds) Synaptic Plasticity: New Research: pp. 113–143, (Nova Science Publishers, Inc.). Figure 4b is from Figure 11–2 of the same work.
The Editors have decided to retract the article as the image manipulation described above undermines the reliability of the study. “
Avila-Costa’s equally fake Elsevier papers are safe as houses.
In eigener Sache
Promoting terrorism by publishing materials that incite violence and hatred
In May 2024 Shorts, I told you how Ajan Reginald, the British struck-off dentist, pathological liar, research fraudster and business associate of the Nobel laureate Sir Martin Evans, submitted fake DMCA Take-down claims to get Google to de-list my reporting about his scams. For that, Ajan stole identity of various people and media, but he didn’t triumph for long. Soon after I lodged my objections, Google re-installed the links to my website. As you can check by googling for “Ajan Reginald” or for “Celixir”, the failed stem cell biotech he and Sir Martin founded based on lies, fraud and patient abuse.
Prior to that, Ajan must have spent tons of money to SEO services to flood Google search with all possible positively-themed links to himself and Celixir. But obviously For Better Science still comes through, so what was Ajan to do next?
Ajan now did something only a particularly stupid and unhinged idiot could think of. He paid some cheap Pakistanis to threaten me with lawsuits. On 9 June 2024, a Nazir Habib of Dera Ghazi Khan in Pakistan used my site’s contact form to write this message (highlight mine):
“I am writing this to let you know that I am authorized to file a legal lawsuit in court against your website for defaming my client “Parviz Emami” spreading misinformation. Personal details are doxxed without permission and baseless allegations. The allegations includes defamatory accusations without providing any proper evidence which is clear violation of DMCA act.
The article is also sharing private informations of my client by sharing his photo,address and place of work which is causing deep concern to my client and his whole family. Therefore, I request immediate removal of this defamatory article from your website. https://forbetterscience.com/tag/ajan-reginald/“
Who is Parviz Emami? A search of my site returns nothing. An hour or so later, Nazir Habib wrote to me again with the same text but a small difference in one sentence (highlight mine):
“I am writing this to let you know that I am authorized to file a legal lawsuit in court against your website for defaming my client “Philmartin100” spreading misinformation.”
What? “Philmartin100” is defamed? This sketch is getting too silly.
Sir Martin Evans, winner of Nobel prize 2007, founded in 2009 the stem cell start-up Celixir, together with a struck-off dentist Ajan Reginald. With the help of the British heart surgeon Stephen Westaby, they ran a very profitable clinical trial in Greece, which now moved into UK.
A few minutes later, this message from Nazir Habib:
“I am hereby the legal representative of my client I am contacting you to make a removal request about the infringing content uploaded on your website without any permissions from the rights owner. The content in the following reported link is taken from the website of my client. We are requesting that remove these infringing links from your website to make your platform a beautiful one. orignal link of my client Website: https://forbetterscience.com/ Details of fake content are given below. Links to infringing content : https://forbetterscience.com/tag/ajan-reginald/ I am hoping a quick response from you. I have a good faith that all the provided info are correct and I will be responsible under the penalty of perjury.”
Let Ajan own For Better Science to “make your platform a beautiful one“!
A bit later same evening, two very brief messages arrived from another Pakistani named Liaqat Ali:
Patricia Murray uncovers the business secrets of the Nobelist Martin Evans and his partner Ajan Reginald. It seems the magic iMP cells used to treat patients in Greece were drawn from the blood of patients in Swansea, for the purpose of a secret PhD thesis. There is no serious science behind it, only serious investor…
I think Ajan’s cunning plan was to kill me by causing me a laughing fit, because soon he delivered the coup de grâce. Specifically, Ajan’s fellow idiots in Pakistan lodged DMCA Take-Down complaints with my site’s host WordPress (who dismissed those claims right away as illegitimate). Here is one of them, placed by the same Liaqat Ali of Dera Ghazi Khan:
Description of original materials:
I am writing to bring to your attention the presence of a website on the internet that is uploading illegal and defaming posts against people for their personal gains. The website in question is promoting terrorism by publishing materials that incite violence and hatred against individuals and organizations.
As an active user of the internet, I came across the website by chance and was shocked at the type of content it is promoting. The website is manipulating people’s personal information with the intention of defaming and blackmailing them. It is evident that the website’s contents are defamatory and violate the rights of individuals to online privacy and protection.
I strongly urge your help center to take action and remove the website as it is promoting terrorism and violates the laws of the land. Additionally, the website is asking for money to remove the posts in question, which is unethical and an abuse of people’s freedom of expression.
I believe that the help center’s role in monitoring and removing such websites is paramount, and your action will be appreciated in curbing terrorism by removing these sites. I, therefore, urge you to take swift action to investigate and remove the website, take legal action against the owners and ensure that such content cannot be uploaded again.Thank you once again.
I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.
I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. […]
Digital signature:
LIAQAT ALI
Signed on: 2024-06-10 15:19:04
There was another “Request to remove fake article” by a Munir Khan, again from Dera Ghazi Khan, targetting the same links.
It was indeed very funny, but I survived. What will that stupid plonker Ajan deploy next?
One-Time
Monthly
I thank all my donors for supporting my journalism. You can be one of them! Make a one-time donation:
I thank all my donors for supporting my journalism. You can be one of them! Make a monthly donation:
Will Rinklebe face any retractions? Or will Elsevier just allow him (if even) to write some corrections for his papermill garbage? And worst case scenario, if he gets retractions, I assume he will just retire with all honors and full pension as if nothing happened…
“The Netherlands Foundation is not a financier of the publication “Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022”.
World Child Cancer is wrongly referred to as a financier.”
Checking Rinklebe his pubpeer record it is crystal clear he is an unethical editor/paper mill author. I wonder what the ombudsperson was smoking when investigating the case. Or perhaps there is more to it and was the ombudsperson simply told to state ‘nothing’ was found. Wouldn’t be the first time the institute knew from the start on that ‘nothing was found’ bla bla bla. At least now we know that at Wuppertal ethics are of no interest.
Well, then I guess you can only hope that German media picks up the story and writes about it or nothing will happen! Or Rinklebe needs to get retractions like Pau Loke Show, perhaps then Wuppertal might consider that perhaps, maybe, potentially, possible, it could be that Rinklebe is not as ‘clean’ as they think. Maybe he can still be the lion of the world, but just the lion of the world of paper mill authors!
Coincidence or not: HC Ong, one of Pau Loke Show his paper mill friends is no longer employed at UTS since shortly! https://profiles.uts.edu.au/HwaiChyuan.Ong/professional Rather suspicious no? Especially given the fact UTS is investigating him due to his participation in the paper mill fraud.
They are all part of the Pau Loke Show paper mill! At least the first 2, the last name does not immediately ring a bell, but so many (too many) names to remember!
It is my understanding that Senthil Kumar is quite independent, as in: an equal partner of Loke. He used to write phase-torturing reviews and was quite prolific in that: PubPeer has the record. Of course, with shitGPT the methods changed.
Yeah, you migt be right. I admit: I throw these idiots all on the same ‘pile’ if they publish with Pau Loke Show. Perhaps it is not even Pau Loke Show who is organizing it all and he is just the main idiot that buys a lot of these papers (although, I suspect he has a ‘high role’ in the paper mill). Senthil Kumar is indeed also a very active paper mill author.
If you look at the editorial board of this journal, it’s rather clear who the real papermiller here is. https://link.springer.com/journal/13399/editors
Martin Kaltschmitt, Hamburg University of Technology
His Associate Editors are his current PhD students! Yes, the EiC’s PhD students. As Associate editors. Because they are qualified. Ok, and one of his postdocs. https://www.tuhh.de/fsp-energieumwelt/mitglieder/martin-kaltschmitt
MSc Theresa Siegmund, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
MSc Jana Schultz, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
MSc Luka Bornemann, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
Dr. Jelto Lange, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
MSc Felix Mendler, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
BSc Paula Alberts, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
BSc Madlen Rogel, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
BSc Johanna Spansel, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) Hamburg, Germany
… the paper was submitted by two author, Behzad Ghanbari and Dumitru Baleanu. During revision, the original author names Behzad Ghanbari and Dumitru Baleanu were removed …
Interesting to see the name the world’s top <strike>scientist</strike> popup here. Did the papermill just forget change the names before submission? I see quite a few Ghanbari+Baleanu publications, related to allegedly finding solution to nonlinear PDEs, already published. I took a moment to flag one of them, https://pubpeer.com/publications/2FAEA05BBD53106094DF4277D0DFD1
This is a nasty template. If I understand it correctly, it’s like: find yet another weird combination of parameters so that there is a solution of yet another weird form. No difference between this activity and exercises in wankery, both in how meaningful those are, and how infinitely many ways there are to do it.
Ghanbari is a guru of this template. Not sure about Baleanu’s role – perhaps he just needs to keep belching out papers.
For Better Science 
Will Rinklebe face any retractions? Or will Elsevier just allow him (if even) to write some corrections for his papermill garbage? And worst case scenario, if he gets retractions, I assume he will just retire with all honors and full pension as if nothing happened…
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See https://worldchildcancer.nl/reactie-world-child-cancer-inzake-recente-publicatie-oversterfte-corona/ for a statement of the funder of the BMJ Public Health paper. Last author Gertjan Kaspers is (co)founder of this funder and he was until April 2021chair of the board of this funder. Last author Gertjan Kaspers is since April 2021 ‘advisor’ of the board of this funder.
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“The Netherlands Foundation is not a financier of the publication “Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022”.
World Child Cancer is wrongly referred to as a financier.”
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See https://www.amstelveenz.nl/nieuws/koninklijke-onderscheiding-voor-professor-dr-gertjan-kaspers.html for some backgrounds about last author Gertjan Kaspers [in Dutch]. Second author Marcel Hoogland seems to be the husband of first author Saskia Mostert.
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“Scientific Reports experts agreed and returned to their usual task of soliciting papermill fraud.”
I think that’s exactly what the Scientific Report experts wanted you to write.
Much better than a paid advert.
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Checking Rinklebe his pubpeer record it is crystal clear he is an unethical editor/paper mill author. I wonder what the ombudsperson was smoking when investigating the case. Or perhaps there is more to it and was the ombudsperson simply told to state ‘nothing’ was found. Wouldn’t be the first time the institute knew from the start on that ‘nothing was found’ bla bla bla. At least now we know that at Wuppertal ethics are of no interest.
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To be fair, no professor was ever responsible for their own papers in Germany. Always the same whitewash. Except when there’s media pressure.
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Well, then I guess you can only hope that German media picks up the story and writes about it or nothing will happen! Or Rinklebe needs to get retractions like Pau Loke Show, perhaps then Wuppertal might consider that perhaps, maybe, potentially, possible, it could be that Rinklebe is not as ‘clean’ as they think. Maybe he can still be the lion of the world, but just the lion of the world of paper mill authors!
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Coincidence or not: HC Ong, one of Pau Loke Show his paper mill friends is no longer employed at UTS since shortly! https://profiles.uts.edu.au/HwaiChyuan.Ong/professional Rather suspicious no? Especially given the fact UTS is investigating him due to his participation in the paper mill fraud.
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As a scientist or a wannabe one I am like speechless. Did that mexican professor just said “I edited the pic because I did not have another good one”?
Why the hell should I even try doing science at this point? This field is completely rotten.
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“It didn’t bother the authors or reviewers that no silver was detected in the silver-doped material?”
Homeopathy!!!
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While Frontiers started to retract the bullshit from Pau Loke Show, Springer Nature is allowing him to host a special issue! Take three guesses in which journal…..Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery : https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13399-024-05794-w#citeas
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Dai-Viet N Vo, Ponnusamy Senthil Kumar and Saravanan Rajendran are no less remarkable authors / guest editors here.
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They are all part of the Pau Loke Show paper mill! At least the first 2, the last name does not immediately ring a bell, but so many (too many) names to remember!
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It is my understanding that Senthil Kumar is quite independent, as in: an equal partner of Loke. He used to write phase-torturing reviews and was quite prolific in that: PubPeer has the record. Of course, with shitGPT the methods changed.
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Yeah, you migt be right. I admit: I throw these idiots all on the same ‘pile’ if they publish with Pau Loke Show. Perhaps it is not even Pau Loke Show who is organizing it all and he is just the main idiot that buys a lot of these papers (although, I suspect he has a ‘high role’ in the paper mill). Senthil Kumar is indeed also a very active paper mill author.
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If you look at the editorial board of this journal, it’s rather clear who the real papermiller here is.
https://link.springer.com/journal/13399/editors
Martin Kaltschmitt, Hamburg University of Technology
His Associate Editors are his current PhD students! Yes, the EiC’s PhD students. As Associate editors. Because they are qualified. Ok, and one of his postdocs.
https://www.tuhh.de/fsp-energieumwelt/mitglieder/martin-kaltschmitt
MSc Theresa Siegmund, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
MSc Jana Schultz, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
MSc Luka Bornemann, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
Dr. Jelto Lange, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
MSc Felix Mendler, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
BSc Paula Alberts, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
BSc Madlen Rogel, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany
BSc Johanna Spansel, Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) Hamburg, Germany
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Crazy! Did you inform nature/springer about this?
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Interesting to see the name the world’s top <strike>scientist</strike> popup here. Did the papermill just forget change the names before submission? I see quite a few Ghanbari+Baleanu publications, related to allegedly finding solution to nonlinear PDEs, already published. I took a moment to flag one of them, https://pubpeer.com/publications/2FAEA05BBD53106094DF4277D0DFD1
LikeLike
This is a nasty template. If I understand it correctly, it’s like: find yet another weird combination of parameters so that there is a solution of yet another weird form. No difference between this activity and exercises in wankery, both in how meaningful those are, and how infinitely many ways there are to do it.
Ghanbari is a guru of this template. Not sure about Baleanu’s role – perhaps he just needs to keep belching out papers.
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