Bullying and harassment COVID-19 Lawyering-up

Dirty Old Man harasses Elisabeth Bik

Mad chloroquine guru Didier Raoult is becoming an embarrassment for France, who would've known.

The chloroquine quack, patient abuser, publisher of fake science and IHU Marseille sect guru Didier Raoult reported the image integrity sleuth Elisabeth Bik to the French state prosecutor, on phony charges of harassment and extortion. Psychologists call such behaviour “projection”. Raoult did this together with his IHU colleague Eric Chabriere, captain of French Army, antisemite and Twitter troll who loves issuing threats of violence.

Tweeting their criminal complaint was probably by far the stupidest act Chabriere ever committed (and the professor is not very smart to start with), without the secrecy their whole cunning plan to silence Bik went tits up. Right away, the scientific community and media, French and international, came to Bik’s defence, and Raoult seems to become a national liability. So the desperate chloroquine druid now openly threatens Bik with violence.

This was Chabriere’s tweet, the other person he and Raoult reported to state prosecutor was PubPeer co-founder and CNRS researcher Boris Barbour (for hosting Bik’s comments on PubPeer):

Various media reported, starting with Le Monde who even quoted IHU’s lawyer, Brice Grazzini. The French newspaper also mentioned that the Marseille prosecutor refused investigating Raoult for the illegal human experiments at IHU, because this is how well connected Raoult is. Maybe the corrupt prosecutor would have charged Bik with harassment and extortion instead, had Chabriere kept his trap shut. But now things truly exploded. The Guardian was next to report Raoult’s legal attack on Bik, even Nature and Science covered the affair. An Open Letter in support of Bik drew thousands of signatures by now:

Bik meanwhile continues exposing Raoult’s and Chabriere’s fake and unethical science, visit her blog for the whole gallery of fraud. The threats escalate. Many people claim to have solid evidence that this Twitter profile @LeProfessionne9, inciting violence against Bik and others, belongs to Chabriere:

Chabriere’s university thinks it’s funny. And so does the French army, which finances IHU.

Now even France’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) issued a statement:


Courts are not laboratories

June 07, 2021

“The CNRS has learned with dismay in the press of the complaint allegedly filed by the IHU in Marseille against Elisabeth Bik, and Boris Barbour, a researcher at the CNRS, as manager of the PubPeer site.

The CNRS has always expressed the greatest reservations about the fact that PubPeer can publish anonymous reviews of scientific articles, and thus contributes to the abuses of certain social networks in which anonymous insult and accusation have become commonplace. The CNRS has made the fight against scientific fraud one of its battles, by creating the mission for scientific integrity. However, it does not accept anonymous accusations, while guaranteeing complete confidentiality to their perpetrators.

However, the CNRS cannot come to terms with the judicialization of criticism and scientific controversy, which are essential when they are constructive and well-argued. They are, and must remain, one of the fundamental principles of research. They are essential for the advancement of knowledge.

This judicialization can only lead to harmful drifts to the scientific approach. It can only refer to the lawsuit brought against Galileo when he dared to claim that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and not the other way around. The health crisis has reminded everyone how much we need science, as we need it to deal with issues of global warming, energy transition or loss of biodiversity. It would be tragic to suggest that scientific truth could be decided in the courts, or on television sets.

Scientific validation must remain above all based on that of peers. This is the current practice at the international level, and it is imperative. A courtroom is not a laboratory.”

Translated, it means CNRS never liked Bik and PubPeer (especially since it was Bik who posted on PubPeer some of the evidence against CNRS’ former chief biologist Catherine Jessus. But CNRS now dislikes Raoult even more, which means a lot.

Also, it is not entirely clear why CNRS seems to accuse Bik of commenting on PubPeer anonymously, she always signs her comments. But then, again, CNRS has an unhealthy fetish with anonymity. Its president Antoine Petit once considered to deploy secret intelligence technology to reveal the PubPeer users’ identities, while the CNRS report which whitewashed Jessus in full, while denouncing “slanderous bloggers“, was anonymous. It was then criticised by 10 anonymous French scientists, and CNRS went berserk demanding their heads on a platter. When a Le Monde journalist found out who actually wrote the Jessus report (her close associate Francis-Andre Wollman assisted by… Jessus herself), CNRS started a signature campaign to have the journalist sacked.

Extra irony: Raoult himself attacked Jessus in this blog article from 2018, protesting against her data manipulations. Prior to that, CNRS withdrew its funding of IHU due to Raoult’s bullying and the sexual harassment he allowed to happen. Even if the research misconduct affair of Petit’s predecessor Anne Peyroche made CNRS hate PubPeer and its commenters even more, especially nowadays CNRS seems to hate Raoult even more.

Btw, Galileo was put on trial for insulting the Pope and the church censorship, not for discussing heliocentricity as such (read Thony Christie’s blog in this regard). This is how versed CNRS is in basic facts of science and history.

While CNRS leadership is still undecided whom they hate more, CNRS’ own Office for Research Integrity (COMETS) issued its own statement in defence of Bik and PubPeer:


Statement by COMETS on the complaint filed by Professors Didier Raoult and Éric Chabrière against Elisabeth Bik and Boris Barbour 

07/06/2021

 At the initiative of Professor Didier Raoult and his colleague, Professor Éric Chabrière, legal proceedings were opened against two scientists, Elisabeth Bik and Boris Barbour, for harassment. Let us clarify the facts: a microbiologist by training, specialist in vaccines and microbiomes, Elisabeth Bik has been tracking down misconduct in scientific research for several years. As such, she noted anomalies (in particular duplicated images) and raised questions about the methodology used in several publications signed by Didier Raoult and his colleagues; she then submitted them, transparently, to the PubPeer online discussion forum for scientific papers. The administrator of PubPeer, himself CNRS research director, Boris Barbour, is accused of complicity in having relayed these questions, by hosting them on his site.

Scientific articles made public are intended to transmit research results and be the subject of discussion in the research community; it is thus, by accumulating and questioning scientific results that science has always progressed and continues to do so. As long as they are based on hard factual data, discussing hypotheses and challenging evidence procedures are part of the normal activity of researchers. By asking Didier Raoult and Éric Chabrière to report on the articles they wrote, Elisabeth Bik and Boris Barbour are just doing their job. Controversy is indeed a matter of scientific activity, as long as it obeys the rules of intellectual debate and is based on objectifiable facts.

The complaint filed by Didier Raoult and Éric Chabrière follows a number of threats they (or their supporters) have launched on social networks. These processes are unacceptable strategies of intimidation. COMETS would like to express its concern over such practices, which should be strongly condemned.

Beyond that, COMETS deplores the progressive judicialization of questions of integrity in research, which above all fall under scientific expertise and authority.

By the way, Raoult is indeed a miracle healer druid. A PubPeer user noticed a peculiar statement in IHU’s recent preprint Lagier, Million & Raoult 2021:

Treatment with [hydroxychloroquine- azithromycin], used in 1,270 patients, was an independent protective factor against death (0.68 [0.52 – 0.88]), including in the subgroups of patients for which the treatment was contraindicated, or refused or not proposed.

The anonymous commenter asks:

Can the authors of this study tell us how their treatment may have had any effect on patients who were not treated with it?

Simple, silly: either Raoult’s research fraud or his divine radiance!

On a less funny note, Raoult now spoke on video directly threatening Bik with violence:

Here a translation by one of Bik’s Twitter followers:

You have noticed, harassment is everywhere, it doesn’t prevent me from sleeping, but that being the case, you mustn’t imagine that it can go on forever insulting me or rolling me in the mud without it being risky business. There is a risk.

You don’t know when it will happen. And you know everything we do has consequences. So you have to be careful. My mother used to say one thing, because I lived for a long time in Africa, when I was a kid and I was acting stupid, she used to tell me “Didier, you hunt buffaloes, they are the most dangerous animals in the bush”. You have to be careful.

So I tell you, don’t bother me too much because you are hunting the buffalo. And so I’m [not?] going to let it happen and the actions that you have [done?] will have consequences that will come when they come, in the from that they will come [five unintelligible words]. But you can’t imagine that I’m going to get beaten up and I’m going to say thank you. That’s it.”

Consequences for Raoult and Chabriere so far: zero. Interesting country, France.

Update 21.06.2021

IHU issued a press release today. It’s the first time ever IHU or Raoult name me directly.

“The Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection has been harassed by Ms. Bik, Mr. Barbour, and Mr. Schneider through the Pubpeer site. This was started the moment we talked about the Hydroxychloroquine which seems to have turned them on. […]

We also see that this is gang harassment because the same reproaches were copied and pasted in 60% of the different publications. We have carried out an exhaustive analysis of all these comments, which we will not send to Pubpeer, which clearly is a deeply dishonest institution against which we are also filing a complaint after having lodged a complaint against Ms. Elisabeth Bik, against Mr. Boris Barbour who had it relayed in France, we are also filing a complaint against Mr. Leonid Schneider who has already been convicted of defamation in Germany.”

Update 23.06.2021

Chabriere now tweeted that IHU lawyer Brice Grazzini opened a lawsuit in France against me and Alexander Samuel for “harassment”.

Because of these two articles:


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13 comments on “Dirty Old Man harasses Elisabeth Bik

  1. Ana Pedro

    This is what happens when someone unveils incongruences from some VIP scientist work.. Good luck Elizabeth Bik!

    Liked by 2 people

  2. Smut Clyde

    Ocasapiens will have fun with Raoult’s presence in the Buffalo-park.

    Like

  3. Anthony Guihur

    Thx a lot Leonid for this summary ! 🙂

    Like

  4. Jean-François Brunet

    You can remove the [five unintelligible words], he is just repeating the last part of the previous sentence by correcting a grammatical mistake. And it is indeed: “I am not going to let it happen”.

    Like

  5. Interesting developments!

    Like

  6. ENS-PSL defends Boris Barbour:
    https://www.ens.psl.eu/actualites/la-judiciarisation-des-debats-scientifiques-des-fins-d-intimidation-est-inacceptable
    “The IHU in Marseille, headed by Professor Didier Raoult, announced that it had filed a complaint against Elisabeth Bik and our colleague Boris Barbour (member of theIBENS), after the former published several reviews of IHU articles on the independent website PubPeer, of which Boris Barbour is co-administrator. This is clearly an attempt to judicialize the scientific debate for the purpose of intimidation which is unacceptable.”

    Like

  7. Hydroxychloroquine isn’t about Didier Raoult (though he was an early pioneer in treating with it). Followed by heroes like Dr. Brian Tyson, whose team by last summer had treated 1,700 elderly and high-risk individuals with 0 deaths and only one hospitalization of 4 days:
    https://www.covid-19forum.org/index.php?topic=359.0
    His team has since treated over 5,000 COVID patients.
    And then there are the “305 studies, 224 peer reviewed, 255 comparing treatment and control groups.”
    https://c19hcq.com/
    But perhaps that’s insufficient for some.

    Like

  8. oh you ask why all this can happen? Reason: mediocre professors promote mediocre postdocs to be professors, and HR are run by managers not suited to a better work. CNRS actually is like a secondary school, where a group of DRs and CRs examine candidates and chose always the grey ones to be promoted. So they mediocre nature remains unnoticed forever. Bonus: French people have the highest level of arrogance and are the most unlikeable people I ever met.

    Like

  9. Police raid at IHU today, 14 June 2021.
    https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/exclu-perquisition-en-cours-a-l-ihu-du-professeur-raoult-a-marseille-1623667123
    “A search is underway this Monday since 9:30 am at the IHU Méditerranée, located near the La Timone hospital in the 5th arrondissement in Marseille.
    According to information from France Bleu Provence, around ten police officers are mobilized for this search,”accompanied by a public prosecutor”, indicates a judicial source. The investigators are in the offices of the IHU,”on the 4th floor”, indicates a source, “the floor where Professor Raoult’s office is located”.”

    Apparently, the charges are some financial fraud, unrelated to chloroquine or research ethics.
    Raoult’s lawyer Brice Grazzini (the one who reported Bik to the same prosecutor) protests:
    “One wonders about the modus operandi because there was quite the possibility of requesting the same documents directly from the IHU without going through a search. We also wonder about this moment: why now a spectacular and media search?”
    An employee says that new scientific studies are about to come out and explain that Professor Raoult’s treatment, based on hydroxychloroquine in particular, would be effective against Covid-19 “

    These people, eh?

    Like

  10. Pingback: Qi-Gong Master’s Bigu Diet – For Better Science

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