It is now quasi official: do not mess with Frontiers. My earlier reporting made it a credible possibility that this Swiss publisher was behind the January 2017 shut-down and removal of Jeffrey Beall’s list of “potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers”, and it was now indeed verified by an article in Chronicle of Higher Education. The librarian Beall used to be constantly under attack from Open Access (OA) publishers who were unhappy about his personal opinions and his private decisions to place them on his blog list. With those, his University of Colorado in Denver supported Beall. But the trouble started when he placed in October 2015 the Swiss publisher Frontiers onto his list, thus effectively declaring this Holtzbrinck-owned outlet a predatory publisher, after hearing of scientists’ complaints and reading my reports. To be fair, Frontiers are still defended by a much bigger number of scientists who see the advantage of having a reliable business partner who will publish certain manuscripts which hardly any respectable journal might consider.  Especially certain kinds of psychologists figured out that with the life-science-oriented Frontiers they can easily get merited as proper neuroscientists, or even biomedical polymaths (e.g., here). Regardless of the bunk they place there for $2500 a pop.

Frontiers first tried it nicely with Beall, when the Chief Executive Officer Frederick Fenter and journal manager Mirjam Curno (who is also trustee at Committee for Publication Ethics, COPE, read here) visited the librarian before Christmas 2016 in Denver (see my report here). Since Beall still did not remove Frontiers from his list, Fenter rallied its loyal journal editors and started together with them in August 2016 a campaign against Beall, demanding that his university punishes the librarian or at least forces him to remove Frontiers from his private list (read here). That information on my site served as (utterly uncredited) template for the aforementioned Chronicle of Higher Education article (as its author Paul Basken admitted to me, but his editor Brock Read denied). Basken then contacted Beall, who then also revealed to him that in January 2016 the University of Colorado Denver caved in to Frontiers demands and opened a misconduct case against its librarian. At this point, Beall decided to delete his list and save his job. An academic disagreement was resolved in a honed and cherished academic tradition: with a call to the employer and a threat of sacking.

There was also plenty of trolling of Beall’s list, most likely from the side of Frontiers. I was blocked on Twitter by Frontiers, but this was all they could do: there was no employer of mine for them to pressure.  Different with Beall, where Frontiers eventually succeeded. When Beall’s list disappeared on January 15th 2017, a certain heckler’s site celebrating it has been widely shared. The layout theme of the site was coincidently exactly the same as mine. That article from January 15th 2017 was the last ever posted since, but when the site was set up on March 21st 2016, it immediately started with a whole collection of anti-Beall posts, some of them openly defending Frontiers from the allegedly unjust placing on Beall’s list; a post from next day, March 22, was a copy-paste of a relevant Nature News article from October 2015. The site’s fake owner, “Mark Dini” came into existence 3 days after his WordPress site, and he disappeared right away:

A certain copy of Beall’s list then resurfaced online, described to be operated by an anonymous postdoc. Yet for Frontiers, a note was added, with a link to the Nature News article mentioned above:

“Frontiers (note: it has been pointed out that this publisher is probably not predatory, read here to decide on your own)”.

With Beall’s List gone, Frontiers became a major sponsor and propagandist of open science, or their definition thereof: pay-to-publish open access (OA). Frontiers CEO Kamila Markram was invited to discuss the future of the multi-billion Euro heavy Horizon 2020 funding programme, where she educated the research funders that “open science” can only be achieved by publishing in Gold OA, meaning by transferring vast amounts of public money to her Frontiers as article processing charges (APCs). Thing is, her Frontiers don’t have any data sharing mandates in place, and they never publish peer reviewer reports (which sometimes consist only of an approval-tack, read here). It is worth remembering that Frontiers reviewers and editors are not allowed to reject papers, unless their rejection recommendation is unanimous (read here).

Other publishers, but also many in the OA movement love this new definition of open science, even scientists and their research institutions see the advantage. The laurels of pretend research transparency and open science can be achieved by simply paying Frontiers a lump sum of $2500 per article. German Max Planck Society adores Frontiers, and happily pays their APC. In fact, Max-Planck researchers published in 2016 about just as much in Frontiers as they did in PLOS One. The consortium OpenAire (funded by EU with €13Mn, of which €4Mn “are targeted towards the FP7 post grant gold OA pilot”) organised in September 2017 an Open Science Fair in Greece.  Its only platinum sponsor was Frontiers, and Fenter naturally used the occasion to advertise for his publishing house. OpenAire never bothered to explain to me their decision to team up with Frontiers

I remain blocked on Twitter by Frontiers and nearly all their journals. The decision was made centrally, not by the journal’s individual chief editors, as I learned. I was however unblocked transiently, for half a day or so, after I did this:

To celebrate this new power pose by Frontiers, I bring below some of their most amazing articles which I stumbled upon during last months. The common feature of those articles, some of which seem more like crackpot lunacies than actual science: they all come from wealthy universities, in US, Western Europe, Japan. If it is bunk, it is quality bunk, because it carries a quality institutional affiliation and was certainly not cheap to publish. In the past I already wrote about clairvoyance and mindreading, or mad bread, while Beall wrote about a tinhattery paranoid chemtrails paper in Frontiers. Feel free to add your favourites in comments.

Frontiers Best Of

1. The founder and Editor-in-Chief of all Frontiers, Henry Markram, return to publish in his own outlet (which he and his wife Kamila actually originally founded in 2007 also to distribute their own strange autism theories, read here). Now, Markram and his Blue Brain (part of Human Brain Project) discovered a 11-dimensional universe inside a mouse brain, an amazing and earth-shattering discovery (see also this blog post by Neuroskeptic). One wonders if maybe no other journal was interested, hence Markram’s return to publish with his own Frontiers? Quote from Frontiers press release:

“We found a world that we had never imagined,” says neuroscientist Henry Markram, director of Blue Brain Project and professor at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, “there are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.”

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Comput. Neurosci., 12 June 2017 |DOI: 10.3389/fncom.2017.00048

Cliques of Neurons Bound into Cavities Provide a Missing Link between Structure and Function

Michael W. Reimann1†, Max Nolte1†, Martina Scolamiero2, Katharine Turner2, Rodrigo Perin3, Giuseppe Chindemi1, Paweł Dłotko4‡, Ran Levi5‡, Kathryn Hess2*‡ and Henry Markram1,3*‡
1Blue Brain Project, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Geneva, Switzerland
2Laboratory for Topology and Neuroscience, Brain Mind Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
3Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry, Brain Mind Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
4DataShape, INRIA Saclay, Palaiseau, France
5Institute of Mathematics, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom

 

2. Speaking of outlandish causes of autism, apparently a Frontiers evergreen. Gut microbiome causes autism and schizophrenia, according to some Irish scientists. Obviously Frontiers is not only publisher proposing this far-fetched link, but still. Here, the claims became scientific facts and it is time for a review.

REVIEW ARTICLE

Front. Neurosci., 15 September 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00490

Cross Talk: The Microbiota and Neurodevelopmental Disorders

John R. Kelly1,2, Chiara Minuto1,2, John F. Cryan2,3, Gerard Clarke1,2 and Timothy G. Dinan1,2*
1Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioural Science, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
2APC Microbiome Institute, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
3Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

3. Speaking of bacteria. Scientists from University of Bristol claim Alzheimer’s patients have bacteria in their brains. In a normal world, unless you analysed a rotting brain, or your brain samples were contaminated, brain tissue is always totally bacteria-free, thanks to blood-brain barrier and other physiological mechanisms. But in Frontiers, these Bristolean bacteria cause inflammation which leads to Alzheimer’s disease. A Nobel Prize is too minor an award for this discovery. If it made any sense, that is.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Aging Neurosci., 20 June 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2017.00195

16S rRNA Next Generation Sequencing Analysis Shows Bacteria in Alzheimer’s Post-Mortem Brain

David C. Emery1, Deborah K. Shoemark2, Tom E. Batstone3, Christy M. Waterfall3, Jane A. Coghill3, Tanya L. Cerajewska4, Maria Davies4, Nicola X. West4 and Shelley J. Allen1*
1School of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
2School of Biochemistry, University Walk, Bristol, United Kingdom
3School of Biological Sciences, Life Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
4School of Oral and Dental Sciences, Bristol, United Kingdom

Update 21.09.2017. Speaking of Alzheimer’s and bacteria: a reader alerted me to this 2016 Frontiers paper. “A Randomized, Double-Blind and Controlled Trial” from Iran proved that eating fermented milk can help against cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients (press release here). Sadly, no cure, but maybe if the yoghurt dosage is further increased? Or how about combining it with kefir?

CLINICAL TRIAL ARTICLE

Front. Aging Neurosci., 10 November 2016 | DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2016.00256
Effect of Probiotic Supplementation on Cognitive Function and Metabolic Status in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Randomized, Double-Blind and Controlled Trial

Elmira Akbari1, Zatollah Asemi2*, Reza Daneshvar Kakhaki3, Fereshteh Bahmani2, Ebrahim Kouchaki3, Omid Reza Tamtaji1, Gholam Ali Hamidi1 and Mahmoud Salami1*
1Physiology Research Center, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran
2Research Center for Biochemistry and Nutrition in Metabolic Diseases, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran
3Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran

4. More brain disorders, and we reach the area of conspiracies. The governments, controlled by the Illuminati, don’t want us to know of the dangers of vaccines. Thanks to these US researchers, we can now be on our guard, again. Vaccines namely cause neuropsychiatric disorders in children (namely: “compulsive disorder (OCD), anorexia nervosa (AN), anxiety disorder, chronic tic disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, major depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder”)

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Psychiatry, 19 January 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00003

Temporal Association of Certain Neuropsychiatric Disorders Following Vaccination of Children and Adolescents: A Pilot Case–Control Study

Douglas L. Leslie1*, imageRobert A. Kobre2, imageBrian J. Richmand2, imageSelin Aktan Guloksuz2 and imageJames F. Leckman2*
1Department of Public Health Sciences, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, USA
2Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

That reminds me of a previous attempt by Frontiers to peddle anti-vax conspiracies, where a tweet of mine somehow led to a retraction:

5. Now for some lighter entertainment, but staying in faux-neuroscience. A question many great minds tried to solve for decades, and failed. Why do pictures of clocks often show 10 past 10?

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Psychol., 23 August 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01410

Why Is 10 Past 10 the Default Setting for Clocks and Watches in Advertisements? A Psychological Experiment

Ahmed A. Karim1,2,3*, Britta Lützenkirchen1, Eman Khedr4 and Radwa Khalil5
1Department of Prevention and Health Psychology, SRH Fernhochschule – The Mobile University, Riedlingen, Germany [not an actual academic affiliation, but likely a customer relation, -LS]
2Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
3Department of Neuropsychology, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany
4Department of Neuropsychiatry, Assiut University Hospital, Assiut, Egypt
5Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Behavioral and Neural Sciences Graduate Program, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, United States

6. fMRI is an amazing tool in the hands of attention-seeking psychologists and other neuroscience enthusiasts. Since the method allows to detect cognitive activities in a dead salmon, it can be used to detect anything else. Here, French scientists found the neurophysiological patterns behind the dislike of cheese (see this blog post by Neuroskeptic). Even if this makes no sense scientifically, and is only funny in its barging incompetence, the story made it to 2017 IgNobel Prize for medicine.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Hum. Neurosci., 17 October 2016 | DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00511

The Neural Bases of Disgust for Cheese: An fMRI Study

Jean-Pierre Royet1*, David Meunier1, Nicolas Torquet2, Anne-Marie Mouly1 and Tao Jiang1
1Olfaction: From Coding to Memory Team, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, CNRS UMR 5292 – INSERM U1028 – Université de Lyon 1, Lyon, France
2Sorbonne Universités, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Institut de Biologie Paris Seine, UM 119, CNRS, UMR 8246, Neuroscience Paris Seine, Paris, France

7. Frontiers in Psychology do publish strange stuff regularly, as per their namesake scope, but this paper is utter lunacy, even for most psychologists. The text makes no sense outside its author’s mind, but probably not even there. It is a reminder of the infamous Janecka nonsense paper, also in Frontiers (read here).

CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS ARTICLE

Front. Psychol. | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01593

The psychoanalytic concept of jouissance and the kindling hypothesis

Yorgos Dimitriadis1*
1UFR d’études psychanalytique, Paris-Diderot university, France

 

A related earlier masterpiece, on similar topic, according to the words used:

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY ARTICLE

Front. Hum. Neurosci., 06 November 2013 | DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00709

On the physiology of jouissance: interpreting the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward functions from a psychoanalytic perspective

Ariane Bazan1,2* and Sandrine Detandt3
1Service de Psychologie Clinique et Différentielle, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Bruxelles, Belgium
2Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, Wallenberg Research Centre at Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
3Research fellow Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique FNRS-FRESH, Service de Psychologie Clinique et Différentielle, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium

8. If you liked the above challenge, have a look at the following Frontiers article from USA. If you understand what it is supposed to say, please tell me. The individual words make sense, but not their combination.

OPINION ARTICLE

Front. Psychol., 14 July 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01149

Wild Bodies Don’t Need to Perceive, Detect, Capture, or Create Meaning: They ARE Meaning

J. Scott Jordan*, Vincent T. Cialdella, Alex Dayer, Matthew D. Langley and Zachery Stillman
Department of Psychology, Institute for Prospective Cognition, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, United States

9. Enough of loony psychology, now for some hardcore applied neuroscience. Here German authors propose to usher elderly citizens into dancing lessons, even if they are reluctant to. Apparently it is the mandated physical act dancing which makes seniors mentally agile, unconfounded by their interest to actually go dancing (or do any other activity they enjoy). Dancing it is then. I see lots misery unfold in assisted care homes, with dance step orders barked in German at defenceless grandparents by sadistic nurses, when this paper becomes official therapy guideline in Germany.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Hum. Neurosci., 15 June 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00305

Dancing or Fitness Sport? The Effects of Two Training Programs on Hippocampal Plasticity and Balance Abilities in Healthy Seniors

Kathrin Rehfeld1,2*†, Patrick Müller1,3†, Norman Aye1,2, Marlen Schmicker1, Milos Dordevic1,2, Jörn Kaufmann4, Anita Hökelmann2 and Notger G. Müller1,3,5
1German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Magdeburg, Germany
2Institute for Sport Science, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
3Medical Faculty, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
4Department of Neurology, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany
5Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany

10. More interesting stuff from Germany. Soon, self-driving cars will start making moral decisions, just like human drivers do. Presumably, the car will decide autonomously if it should self-drive home drunk  (then drive, but slowly), or what to do if it ran over a cat (drive away, quickly, or try to find the owner and apologise?). From the press release:

“Prof. Gordon Pipa, a senior author of the study, says that since it now seems to be possible that machines can be programmed to make human like moral decisions it is crucial that society engages in an urgent and serious debate, “we need to ask whether autonomous systems should adopt moral judgements, if yes, should they imitate moral behavior by imitating human decisions, should they behave along ethical theories and if so, which ones and critically, if things go wrong who or what is at fault?””

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Behav. Neurosci., 05 July 2017 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00122
Using Virtual Reality to Assess Ethical Decisions in Road Traffic Scenarios: Applicability of Value-of-Life-Based Models and Influences of Time Pressure

Leon R. Sütfeld*, Richard Gast, Peter König and Gordon Pipa
Neuroinformatics, Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany

11. Secrets of intelligence, courtesy of some very clever Japanese scientists: Horse-riding improves children’s cognitive capacities. No, come back, it’s not about boring explanations like exciting experiences and activities etc. It’s because horses’ bodies send mysterious waves towards children’s brains. From press release, quoting paper’s author.

““One important characteristic of the horse steps is that they produce three-dimensional accelerations. The movement of the horse’s pelvis may provide motor and sensory inputs to the human body and in this study, I believe some of the differences among the rider’s performances might be due to these accelerations”

Ohta explains that results may be due to the vibrations produced from the horse’s motion activating parts of the sympathetic nervous system, leading to improved behavioral test results”.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Public Health, 06 February 2017 |DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2017.00008

Horseback Riding Improves the Ability to Cause the Appropriate Action (Go Reaction) and the Appropriate Self-control (No-Go Reaction) in Children

Nobuyo Ohtani1, Kenji Kitagawa1, Kinuyo Mikami1, Kasumi Kitawaki1, Junko Akiyama1,2, Maho Fuchikami3, Hidehiko Uchiyama3 and Mitsuaki Ohta1,3*
1Laboratory of Effective Animals for Human Health, Azabu University School of Veterinary Medicine, Chuo-ku, Kanagawa, Japan
2Faculty of Animal Health Technology, Yamazaki Gakuen University, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan
3Laboratory of Animal Facilitated Therapy, Faculty of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Agriculture, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan

12. Another way to improve cognitive abilities, from Finland: if you shine bright light into athletes’ ears, especially during the dark Nordic winter, you will increase their brain function, especially their psychomotoric performance. Give it a try!

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Physiol., 12 May 2014 | DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2014.00184

Effects of bright light treatment on psychomotor speed in athletes

Mikko P. Tulppo1*, Heidi Jurvelin2, Eka Roivainen1, Juuso Nissilä3, Arto J. Hautala1, Antti M. Kiviniemi1, Vesa J. Kiviniemi4 and Timo Takala5
1Department of Exercise and Medical Physiology, Verve, Oulu, Finland
2Department of General Practice, Institute of Health Sciences, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
3Department of Biology, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
4Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
5Department of Sports and Exercise Medicine, Oulu Deaconess Institute, Oulu, Finland

13. Not convinced of horse riding or lights into your ears? Get drunk to get smart! Drinking wine is good for your brain (so just disregard the hangover and other effects of alcohol toxicity). These scientists claim certain metabolites produced in your body after wine drinking have a neuroprotective effect. They studied a brain tumour cell line in a dish, and were funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Wine drinkers know that Spain is one of world’s major wine exporters.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Nutr., 14 March 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2017.00003

Neuroprotective Effects of Selected Microbial-Derived Phenolic Metabolites and Aroma Compounds from Wine in Human SH-SY5Y Neuroblastoma Cells and Their Putative Mechanisms of Action

A. Esteban-Fernández1,2, C. Rendeiro3, J. P. E. Spencer2, D. Gigorro del Coso1, M. D. González de Llano1, B. Bartolomé1 and M. V. Moreno-Arribas1*
1Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Alimentación (CIAL), CSIC-UAM, Madrid, Spain
2Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy, University of Reading, Reading, UK
3Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA

14. Now for some bunk-science debunking of science bunk which hardly anyone knew it was ever proposed: Is the vision of artistically talented people biologically fundamentally different from the rest of humans? Do they see their retinas? These French researchers found out, that surprisingly, no!

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Hum. Neurosci., 30 December 2011 | DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2011.00171

Do artists see their retinas?

Florian Perdreau* and Patrick Cavanagh
Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Centre Attention Vision, CNRS UMR 8158, Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France

FOCUSED REVIEW ARTICLE

Front. Neurosci., 31 January 2013 | DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00006

Is artists’ perception more veridical?

Florian Perdreau* and Patrick Cavanagh
Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France

15. And now or something completely different: bunk medicine. Good thing Fenter once mass-sacked 31 Frontiers medical chief editors who asked for some editorial standards. A paying customer, even if it is a clinician with questionable therapy ideas, is king! A certain doctor from Finland, whose private practice was raided by health authorities, proposed to treat patients affected by domestic dampness and mold with the thyroid hormone tri-iodothyronine. Medically, this makes very little sense, but can certainly have severe side effects on patients whose thyroid gland is fully functional. The Finnish editor of that Frontiers paper came on PubPeer to the rescue of the author (both are also friendly with a Finnish society promoting homoeopathy, massage therapy and other “alternative medicine”). See PubPeer debates here.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Immunol., 07 August 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2017.00919

Non-Thyroidal Illness Syndrome in Patients Exposed to Indoor Air Dampness Microbiota Treated Successfully with Triiodothyronine

Taija Liisa Somppi*
Amplia Clinic, Medical Center, Tampere, Finland

A related paper, also from Finland, which proposed that dampness affected people can develop a “electromagnetic field sensitivity”, discussed on PubPeer here:

MINI REVIEW ARTICLE

Front. Immunol., 10 August 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2017.00951

Clinical Diagnosis of the Dampness and Mold Hypersensitivity Syndrome: Review of the Literature and Suggested Diagnostic Criteria

Ville Valtonen*
Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki, Finland

16. This paper is actually not funny at all. It is looks like monkeys were abused for some scientifically very shaky research. Did anyone at Frontiers noticed, or cared? Pregnant macaque monkeys were fed high-fat food for the purpose to sacrifice their children and analyse their brains for evidence of mental problems such as anxiety allegedly caused by their mothers’ high-fat diet. Aside of the question of ethics (not very likely this US experiment could be ever approved by authorities in Western Europe), were the authors intending to scare people into avoiding fat and thus divert attention from the much more real dangers of high-sugar diet, like the food industry desperately tries to?

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Front. Endocrinol., 21 July 2017 | DOI: 10.3389/fendo.2017.00164

Exposure to a High-Fat Diet during Early Development Programs Behavior and Impairs the Central Serotonergic System in Juvenile Non-Human Primates

Jacqueline R. Thompson1,2, Jeanette C. Valleau1,2, Ashley N. Barling3, Juliana G. Franco1,2, Madison DeCapo1,2, Jennifer L. Bagley1,2 and Elinor L. Sullivan1,2,3*
1Division of Neuroscience, Oregon National Primate Research Center, Beaverton, OR, United States
2Division of Cardiometabolic Health, Oregon National Primate Research Center, Beaverton, OR, United States
3Department of Biology, University of Portland, Portland, OR, United States

---