Schneider Shorts of 5.08.2021: ivermectin-flavoured cigarettes, homeopathy, Ayurveda, and the scientists I have harassed in the past, am harassing in the present and will harass in the future.
Table of Discontent
Updates on For Better Science
- Journalism Ethics, or the Dark Matter of Science
- Editor’s notes, or why Anil Sood is innocent
COVID-19
- New Israeli Scientists Joke! With ivermectin.
- Ivermectin-flavoured cigarettes
- Ministry of Homicidal Quackery
Science Breakthroughs
- Neanderthals bled, too
- Homeopathy W0rks! In Scientific Reports.
News in Brief
Updates on For Better Science
Journalism Ethics
In case you didn’t know, For Better Science is like dark matter of science. Never detected, its existence denied and ignored, but it does exert a non-neglectable effect. You have read about my work many times, in the most renowned media, mostly attributed to someone else.
So here is the Indian newspaper The Print, which basically ripped-off the main content of my article about the medical researcher and Hindu nationalist politician Gobardhan Das, without ever mentioning me of For Better Science. As often in such cases, the journos pretend to be experts in molecular biology and research integrity who diligently study PubPeer and who just happen to have completely independently collated exactly the same background information as I did (or, in this case, as my sources and contributor did).
Here another Indian journalist, this time with The Wire. Them and this newspaper have been recently driving a campaign to discredit my exclusive reporting on the research fraud and bullying affair at NCBS in Bangalore.
Now these same ethics heroes of The Wire credit my investigation to themselves in their most recent article.
I was accused by The Wire journalists on Twitter of witness harassment, extortion, falsification of evidence, and worse. Simply because they were “butthurt” (their word choice, not mine) that the story wasn’t originally theirs. Here is my follow-up, with an exclusive interview with that same student The Wire sought to protect from me.
Editor’s Notes
Clare Francis alerted me to a serious of Editor’s Notes regarding the papers by the ovarian cancer researcher Anil Sood at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, all issued by the journal Clinical Cancer Research (which is published by the society American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)). Sood has over 50 papers on PubPeer, and he never retracted a single one (with one exception, a collateral from a collaboration). Until today, I assumed MD Anderson never investigated Sood, to further enrich themselves via research fraud. How wrong I was!
All these editor’s notes inform the reader which data was faked, but then state:
“MD Anderson’s Office of Research Oversight and Integrity evaluated these errors and the original data from the authors; while the Office concluded it had no concerns regarding this publication, it recommended correction of the scientific record. The authors apologize for these errors.”
Did you really think MD Anderson would have sanctioned Sood? Come on, you will believe in Santa Clause next. MD Anderson is probably the biggest cancer fraud factory in USA. Sood is just one of the many research cheaters they employ, protect and are literally ready to kill for (or do you think such a abysmally unethical person as Sood should be let upon helpless ovarian cancer patients?).
So these were the notes, illustrated with PubPeer evidence:
Editor’s Note: Biologic Effects of Platelet-Derived Growth Factor Receptor α Blockade in Uterine Cancer Ju-Won Roh, Jie Huang, Wei Hu, XiaoYun Yang, Nicholas B. Jennings, Vasudha Sehgal, Bo Hwa Sohn, Hee Dong Han, Sun Joo Lee, Duangmani Thanapprapasr, Justin Bottsford-Miller, Behrouz Zand, Heather J. Dalton, Rebecca A. Previs, Ashley N. Davis, Koji Matsuo, Ju-Seog Lee, Prahlad Ram, Robert L. Coleman and Anil K. Sood Clin Cancer Res August 1 2021 27 (15) 4449-4449; DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-21-2115
Editor’s Note: Targeting Src in Mucinous Ovarian Carcinoma Koji Matsuo, Masato Nishimura, Justin N. Bottsford-Miller, Jie Huang, Kakajan Komurov, Guillermo N. Armaiz-Pena, Mian M.K. Shahzad, Rebecca L. Stone, Ju Won Roh, Angela M. Sanguino, Chunhua Lu, Dwight D. Im, Neil B. Rosenshien, Atsuko Sakakibara, Tadayoshi Nagano, Masato Yamasaki, Takayuki Enomoto, Tadashi Kimura, Prahlad T. Ram, Kathleen M. Schmeler, Gary E. Gallick, Kwong K. Wong, Michael Frumovitz and Anil K. Sood Clin Cancer Res August 1 2021 27 (15) 4450-4450; DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-21-2116
Editor’s Note: Dopamine Blocks Stress-mediated Ovarian Carcinoma Growth Myrthala Moreno-Smith, Chunhua Lu, Mian M.K. Shahzad, Guillermo N. Armaiz Pena, Julie K. Allen, Rebecca L. Stone, Lingegowda S. Mangala, Hee Dong Han, Hye Sun Kim, Donna Farley, Gabriel Lopez Berestein, Steve W. Cole, Susan K. Lutgendorf and Anil K. Sood Clin Cancer Res August 1 2021 27 (15) 4451-4451; DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-21-2117
Editor’s Note: Functional Roles of Src and Fgr in Ovarian Carcinoma Hye-Sun Kim, Hee Dong Han, Guillermo N. Armaiz-Pena, Rebecca L. Stone, Eun Ji Nam, Jeong-Won Lee, Mian M.K. Shahzad, Alpa M. Nick, Sun Joo Lee, Ju-Won Roh, Masato Nishimura, Lingegowda S. Mangala, Justin Bottsford-Miller, Gary E. Gallick, Gabriel Lopez-Berestein and Anil K. Sood Clin Cancer Res August 1 2021 27 (15) 4452-4452; DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-21-2118
Editor’s Note: Targeted Gene Silencing Using RGD-Labeled Chitosan Nanoparticles Hee Dong Han, Lingegowda S. Mangala, Jeong Won Lee, Mian M.K. Shahzad, Hye Sun Kim, Deyu Shen, Eun Ji Nam, Edna M. Mora, Rebecca L. Stone, Chunhua Lu, Sun Joo Lee, Ju Won Roh, Alpa M. Nick, Gabriel Lopez-Berestein and Anil K. Sood Clin Cancer Res August 1 2021 27 (15) 4453-4453; DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-21-2119
Editor’s Note: Therapeutic Targeting of ATP7B in Ovarian Carcinoma Lingegowda S. Mangala, Vesna Zuzel, Rosemarie Schmandt, Erik S. Leshane, Jyotsna B. Halder, Guillermo N. Armaiz-Pena, Whitney A. Spannuth, Takemi Tanaka, Mian M.K. Shahzad, Yvonne G. Lin, Alpa M. Nick, Christopher G. Danes, Jeong-Won Lee, Nicholas B. Jennings, Pablo E. Vivas-Mejia, Judith K. Wolf, Robert L. Coleman, Zahid H. Siddik, Gabriel Lopez-Berestein, Svetlana Lutsenko and Anil K. Sood Clin Cancer Res August 1 2021 27 (15) 4454-4454; DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-21-2120
Editor’s Note: The Paradoxical Expression of Maspin in Ovarian Carcinoma Anil K. Sood, Mavis S. Fletcher, Lynn M. Gruman, Jeremy E. Coffin, Sarvenaz Jabbari, Zhila Khalkhali-Ellis, Nancy Arbour, Elisabeth A. Seftor and Mary J.C. Hendrix Clin Cancer Res August 1 2021 27 (15) 4456-4456; DOI:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-21-2122
COVID-19
New Israeli Scientists Joke!
The Israeli Quack Bulletin (Jerusalem Post) brings the headline:
Israeli scientist says COVID-19 could be treated for under $1/day
It’s ivermectin of course.
“Prof. Eli Schwartz, founder of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease at Sheba [Medical Center, affiliated with Tel Aviv University, -LS], conducted a randomized, controlled, double-blinded trial from May 15, 2020, through the end of January 2021 to evaluate the effectiveness of ivermectin in reducing viral shedding among nonhospitalized patients with mild to moderate COVID-19. […]
In Schwartz’s study, some 89 eligible volunteers over the age of 18 who were diagnosed with coronavirus and staying in state-run COVID-19 hotels were divided into two groups: 50% received ivermectin, and 50% received a placebo, according to their weight”
As it happens, Eli Schwartz is not even the first Sheba Medical Center quack peddling a phony COVID-19 cure via Israeli newspapers. Here is another one, Shai Efrati:
The Jerusalem Quack Post goes on extolling the opinion paper by the US ivermectin quack Pierre Kory, reminding that his crap appeared in some peer reviewed journal, and forgetting to mention it was previously retracted, actually deleted, by Frontiers.
Ivermectin is no less than 100% efficient says the Israeli professor:
“Our study shows first and foremost that ivermectin has antiviral activity,” Schwartz said. “It also shows that there is almost a 100% chance that a person will be noninfectious in four to six days, which could lead to shortening isolation time for these people. This could have a huge economic and social impact.”
This is Schwartz’ preprint:
Asaf Biber, Michal Mandelboim, Geva Harmelin, Dana Lev, Li Ram, Amit Shaham, Ital Nemet, Limor Kliker, Oran Erster, Eli Schwartz Favorable outcome on viral load and culture viability using Ivermectin in early treatment of non-hospitalized patients with mild COVID-19 – A double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial medRxiv (2021) doi: 10.1101/2021.05.31.21258081
Schwarz also explains how he ended up savign the world while fighting a conspiracy of Big Pharma:
“Since ivermectin was on my shelf, since we are using it for tropical diseases, and there were hints it might work, I decided to go for it,” he said.
Researchers in other places worldwide began looking into the drug at around the same time. But when they started to see positive results, no one wanted to publish them, Schwartz said.
“There is a lot of opposition,” he said. “We tried to publish it, and it was kicked away by three journals. No one even wanted to hear about it. You have to ask how come when the world is suffering.”“This drug will not bring any big economic profits,” and so Big Pharma doesn’t want to deal with it, he said.
This is the registered clinical trial, NCT04429711, it actually had 100 patients with mild to moderate COVID-19, but somehow only 89 made it into the final manuscript. But otherwise, either myself or the trial investigator Professor Schwartz is a bit stupid here, but according to the registration both trial arms (Placebo Comparator: IVERMECTIN and Active Comparator: PLACEBO) of this double blind trial with quadruple masking fed the participants with ivermectin, in both cases with “3mg Capsules, 12-15mg/ day for 3 days“.
Maybe this is why even Jerusalem Post is a bit wary, they even quote an expert:
“Prof. Ya’acov Nahmias, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher, has questioned the safety of the drug.
“Ivermectin is a chemical therapeutic agent, and it has significant risks associated with it,” he said in a previous interview. “We should be very cautious about using this type of medication to treat a viral disease that the vast majority of the public is going to recover from even without this treatment.”“
Problem is, also Professor Nahmias has not just lab-grown meat, but also a questionable COVID-19 cure of his own to sell, fenofibrate. Read here:
Ivermectin-flavoured cigarettes
We remain on the topic of ivermectin as COVID-19 miracle cure. Now the prestigious European learned society EMBO, and their journal, weigh in. A study from the famous Institut Pasteur in Paris, France:
Guilherme Dias Melo , Françoise Lazarini , Florence Larrous , Lena Feige , Etienne Kornobis , Sylvain Levallois , Agnès Marchio , Lauriane Kergoat , David Hardy , Thomas Cokelaer , Pascal Pineau , Marc Lecuit , Pierre‐Marie Lledo , Jean‐Pierre Changeux , Hervé Bourhy Attenuation of clinical and immunological outcomes during SARS‐CoV‐2 infection by ivermectin EMBO Molecular Medicine (2021) doi: 10.15252/emmm.202114122
The Pasteur scholars conclude:
“Here, we show that standard doses of ivermectin (IVM), an anti-parasitic drug with potential immunomodulatory activities through the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, prevent clinical deterioration, reduce olfactory deficit, and limit the inflammation of the upper and lower respiratory tracts in SARS-CoV-2-infected hamsters. Whereas it has no effect on viral load in the airways of infected animals,[bla bla bla] which might account for the more favorable clinical presentation of IVM-treated animals. Altogether, this study supports the use of immunomodulatory drugs such as IVM, to improve the clinical condition of SARS-CoV-2-infected patients.”
You may have recognised the penultimate author, the Institut Pasteur emeritus, nicotine receptor researcher and tobacco industry shill, Jean-Pierre Changeux. The professor previously tried to convince the world that tobacco products prevent COVID-19 infection. Now Changeux went for ivermectin, probably as a flavour for cigarettes.
Ministry of Homicidal Quackery
The Indian Ministry for AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Homeopathy and other Hindu-Fascist Quackery) claims to have struck a deal with the English to prove that Ayurvedic herb (Indian cherry in this case) can cure C#OVID-19.
The Hindu reports:
“The Ministry of Ayush has collaborated with the U.K.’s London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) to conduct a study on ‘Ashwagandha’ for promoting recovery from COVID-19.
A Ministry release said that the All India Institute of Ayurveda (AIIA), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Ayush, and the LSHTM recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding to conduct clinical trials of ‘Ashwagandha’ on 2,000 people in three U.K. cities — Leicester, Birmingham and London (Southall and Wembley).”
Allegedly, the trial has already been approved by UK authorities:
“It took over 100 meetings spanning about 16 months through both diplomatic as well as regulatory channels for signing of the MoU, Dr. Nesari said. She added that the study had been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and certified by WHO-GMP.”
The trial’s outcome is already decided by the AYUSH officials:
““After the trial’s success, ‘Ashwagandha’ will be a proven medicinal treatment to prevent infection and be recognised by the scientific community worldwide,” the Ministry noted.”
Smut Clyde is unimpressed, apparently the trial is not even registered. It is very well possible that AYUSH forgot to inform the British about all these decisions.
Science Breakthroughs
Neanderthals bled, too
Groundbreaking and game-changing anthropological discovery from the scientists at the Didier-Raoult-University in Marseille, France, or Aix-Marseille University as it was previously known. Turns out, Neanderthals were closer related to the modern humans than to the red-faced uakaris. Behold, the press release:
“While it was long assumed that Neanderthals all possessed blood type O, a new study of previously sequenced genomes of three Neanderthal individuals shows polymorphic variations in their blood, indicating they also carried other blood types found in the ABO blood group system.
This means Neanderthal blood not only came in the form of blood type O – which was the only confirmed kind before this, based on a prior analysis of one individual – but also blood types A and B.”
It does sound like surprising, sure, thing is… The ABO blood type is present not just in all hominids, but in all apes. Here the info the Marseille experts of the department of Biologie des Groupes Sanguins may have failed to google:
“The presence of ABO polymorphism is highly variable across all primates. Chimpanzees have been found thus far to have primarily type A blood, with type O less commonly. Gorillas appear to be exclusively type B. Orangutans express all three blood types.“
The authors obviously fought hard to find additional significance to their genetics studies of fossil DNA to press out some clickbaity news. So they may have proved that Neanderthals’ closest ancestor is the Orang-Utan, wait wouldn’t that explain the red hair? This was the paper:
Silvana Condemi , Stéphane Mazières, Pierre Faux, Caroline Costedoat, Andres Ruiz-Linares, Pascal Bailly, Jacques Chiaroni Blood groups of Neandertals and Denisova decrypted PLOS One (2021) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254175
I don’t know who assumed Neanderthals had different blood as we do, just by judging from a tiny sample of fossil DNA. Is meeting the IHU Marseille director and a couple of his henchmen enough to declare everyone in France to be a fraudulent and sociopathic nutcase? Anyway here is why Neanderthals died out:
“…genetic variants in the archaic blood borne by the Neanderthals would have made them much more likely to develop hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDFN), an alloimmune condition in which a mother’s immune system attacks the blood cells of her unborn fetus.
“These elements could have contributed to weakening the descendants to the point of leading to their demise especially combined with the competition with H. sapiens for the same ecological niche,” the researchers write.”
Apparently, Neanderthal were so dumb and inept they could only find a mate via incest, so they soon died out as haemophiliacs.
Homeopathy W0RKS!
Sylvie Coyaud informed me of a major scientific breakthrough in the Springer Nature pay-to-publish-any-crap journal Scientific Reports, or, as many prefer to call it, Nature Scientific Reports.
Maria Olga Kokornaczyk, Sandra Würtenberger , Stephan Baumgartner Impact of succussion on pharmaceutical preparations analyzed by means of patterns from evaporated droplets Scientific Reports (2020) doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-57009-2
In case you are that scientifically illiterate as not to know what succussion is: this is a key part of homeopathy woo circus, specifically the act of shaking the astronomically diluted substance and striking it with a Bible, which, as the Prophet Hahnemann taught, allows the magic to unfold. I can’t give you more details, unlike Scientific Reports editors and reviewers, I am not an expert in homeopathy. Maybe the reviewers came from the University of Strasbourg?
Unlike some other papers which hide their homeopathy agenda behind a scientific pretence, this one did not:
“….five pharmaceutical preparations (Echinacea 10−2, Baptisia 10−3, Baptisia 10−4, Luffa 10−4, and Spongia 10−6) were prepared according to the European Pharmacopoeia guidelines for the production of homeopathic remedies, in three variants each: with varying numbers of succussion strokes (i) 100, (ii) 10 (succussed samples), and (iii) zero (gently mixed, unsuccussed sample). System stability was studied by means of systematic positive control experiments. Patterns were evaluated by means of computerized image analysis regarding grey level distribution, texture, and fractality. For all investigated pharmaceutical preparations, significant differences were found between the succussed and gently mixed samples…”
The authors are two Swiss-German homeopaths affiliated with the Hiscia Institute, which seeks to cure cancer with homeopathy. The coauthor in the middle is an employee of Hevert, the maker of homeopathic “medicines”. Sylvie also pointed out to me the reference 21 of that masterpiece, from the University of Bologna in Italy:
Lucietta Betti , Grazia Trebbi , Maria Olga Kokornaczyk , Daniele Nani , Maurizio Peruzzi , Giovanni Dinelli , Paolo Bellavite , Maurizio Brizzi Number of succussion strokes affects effectiveness of ultra-high-diluted arsenic on in vitro wheat germination and polycrystalline structures obtained by droplet evaporation method Homeopathy : the journal of the Faculty of Homeopathy (2017) doi: 10.1016/j.homp.2016.12.001
You can’t expect much from a journal named Homeopathy, but apparently you can’t trust Scientific Reports not to publish homeopathy quackery if the authors paid good money for it.
News in Brief
- After many months relentless scaremongering in Russian state-controlled TV and other media against “western” COVID-19 vaccines by Astra Zeneca and Biontech/Pfizer, Russian government was successful in making its population afraid of ALL COVID-19 vaccines, in particularly Russia’s own like Sputnik V. Thing is, Russians don’t trust their government either, so when forced to get a Sputnik V jab or else lose their jobs, Russians resort to buying fake vaccine certificates. (Daily Beast)
- A mass resignation of academic editors was achieved by the activist Yves Moreau, bioinformatics professor at the University of Leuven in Belgium, who specialises in flagging papers on racial forensic profiling. After the editor of a Wiley journal Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine refused to act on a string of Chinese papers about gene forensics technology against Uigurs and other minorities, Moreau contacted other editorial board members, some resigned. Wiley is now torn between basic ethics and pleasing their biggest customer, the Chinese state. (The Intercept)
- Also by The Intercept, as podcast with transcript: how Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) managers bullied experts into approving dangerous chemicals, including the so-called “hair-on-fire” category of highest toxicity and without any testing whatsoever.
- A story of “the former Amsterdam Free University (VU) cultural anthropologist, Professor Mart Bax, who received international acclaim during the last three decades of the twentieth century for his fieldwork and research in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and for applying his “theory” of competing religious regimes. Despite earlier suspicions, it was only a decade after his retirement in 2002 that a university commission reached the conclusion that more or less his whole oeuvre was built on quicksand: fraudulent, fake, or non-existent source material.” Margry P., “On Scholarly Misconduct and Fraud, and What We Can Learn from It”, Ethnologia Europaea (2020) doi: 10.16995/ee.1646
- Scientists now discover that also giraffes, quite unexpectedly, have complex social structures, and compare them to those of elephants, dolphins and chimps (Gizmodo). Of course it’s possible that many other animals have very complex social systems, too, and we were never bothered to find out, and soon it will be too late because we are driving them all to extinction.
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For Better Science 
“MD Anderson is probably the biggest cancer fraud factory in USA. Sood is just one of the many research cheaters they employ, protect and are literally ready to kill for (or do you think such a abysmally unethical person as Sood should be let upon helpless ovarian cancer patients?).”
MD Anderson, a “special place” let Anil Sood , Paul Chiao, Kapil Bhalla, James Abbruzzese, and Cullen Taniguchi off.
https://faculty.mdanderson.org/profiles/paul_chiao.html
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=paul+j+chiao
Kapil Bhalla/K Bhalla, previously Moffitt Cancer center, Tampa, and Miami before that.
https://faculty.mdanderson.org/profiles/kapil_bhalla.html
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=kapil+bhalla
Kapil Bhalla has 1 Retraction and 2 Expressions of Concern.
http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?auth%3dBhalla%252c%2bKapil%2bN
Kapil Bhalla has a retraction with Jin Q Cheng.
https://www.jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(20)35747-1/fulltext
This article has been withdrawn by the authors. The same data were used to represent different experimental conditions. Specifically, lanes 1–3 of the H2B panel of Fig. 4B were reused in lanes 1–3 of the H2B panel from Fig. 6B. Lanes 1 and 6 of the phospho-Akt panel from Fig. 4C were duplicated. Lanes 3 and 4 of the lower FLAG panel in Fig. 4C were reused in lanes 7 and 8 of the lower FLAG panel in Fig. 5A. The PI(3,4)P2 spots from lanes 1 and 2 from Fig. 7 were reused in lanes 7 and 8 of the same panel. Additionally, some PI(4)P1 spots were pasted in. The authors state that the overall conclusions of this work are not affected.
Part of the 19 Jin Q Cheng retractions.
https://retractionwatch.com/2016/11/29/researchers-request-correct-one-paper-turned-19-retractions/
If the Moffit Cancer Center had looked in 2016 they would have unearthed Kapil Bhalla.
James Abbruzzese
https://medicine.duke.edu/medicinenews/md-andersons-james-abbruzzese-selected-chief-division-medical-oncology
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=james+abbruzzese
Just because you publish many papers does not mean you are any good. He was happy enough to be on Fazlul Sarkar papers.
Cullen Taniguchi. Harvard, Stnaford, now M.D. Anderrson.
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=cullen+taniguchi
https://faculty.mdanderson.org/profiles/cullen_taniguchi.html
https://retractionwatch.com/2017/01/23/prominent-harvard-researcher-issues-second-retraction-citing-duplication/
One of the authors on the latest retraction, Cullen Taniguchi, now based at MD Anderson Cancer Center, was the first author on the JCI paper that was retracted late last year. Taniguchi told his contributions to the JBC paper were “minimal:”
I had performed a few pilot experiments for this project under the direct supervision of Dr. Pearsall (née Entingh) as a rotating summer student, and none of these data were used in the paper.
http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?auth%3dTaniguchi%252c%2bCullen%2bM
Cullen Taniguchi has 3 retractions
The correction listed in the Retraction Watch Database is a retraction.
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/90689
Original citation: J Clin Invest. 2005;115(3):718–727. doi:10.1172/JCI23187.
Citation for this retraction: J Clin Invest. 2016;126(11):4387. doi:10.1172/JCI90689.
At the request of the corresponding author, the JCI is retracting this article. The authors were recently made aware of duplicated bands in Figures 1B, 3C, and 4C. After an extensive internal review, it was discovered that these duplications were introduced during figure assembly. The authors have stated that experimental data generated in the lab from the same time period support the original conclusions of the study and that other studies have subsequently confirmed and extended the primary conclusions of the manuscript. However, in the interest of maintaining accuracy in the published scientific literature and because the initial figures were not up to the standards of the JCI, the authors wish to retract this article. The authors apologize for these errors.
All is fair in love and war, but not in “science”.
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I too have been unimpressed with MD Anderson’s approach to research publication integrity. Their “investigations” seem only aimed at making sure the grant money keeps flowing.
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I received this message from Professor JP Changeux, referencing this article:
“Just an information to have a fait debate
the picture of Changeux with a cigarette reproduced in Shneider Shorts 6 08 2021 harassed scientists about Ivermectin- flavoured cigarette is a fake : it is a photoshop montage from a portrait taken by Pasteur photo and widely published on the webb and from the picture of an unidentified smoker. Fist changeux never smoke in his life and second the incidence of light on the face and on the hands of the montage picture are not coherent revealing the falsification.
Also, changeux never received a single dollar directly for any tobacco company in the past 50 years but only a grant from the Council of Tobacco Research in 1994 to help financing the postdoctoral stay of an american student in his laboratory. It was approved at that time by the direction of the Pasteur Institute and openly acknowledged in the thanks of the paper published as an outcome of that research in Piciotto et al 1998 Nature 391 173. The program of the research was the genetics of nicotine action and the paper demonstrate: 1. the self administration of nicotine in the mouse as a model of nicotine addiction and 2. the direct contribution of the beta2 nicotinic receptor in nicotine addiction. It has been much quoted (1500 citations) and is still a key reference in the scientific analysis of nicotine addiction. Moreover the date of its publication coincide with that of the Tobacco Master Settlement of 365 billion dollar penalty over 25 years. Did our paper contributed to the condemnation of the Tobacco companies? …possibly but still an open question…
Last a scientific point of considerable importance. Nicotine is a drug of abuse but as most other drugs of abuse shows also positive therapeutic action ie on degenerative diseases like Parkinson disease. This is known as the “dual use” of drugs. This is a considerable difficulty if one wishes to develop news therapeutics from these drugs….and I may say that it is not helpful for us to create additional difficulties in suggesting that to work on nicotine therapeutics ie on degenerative diseases is a support of the disastrous consequences of tobacco smoking on human health. Most of us are not only aware of the dramatic consequences of tobacco smoking but actively fight against it…
jean-Pierre Changeux”
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Changeux denies in an email to me that he ever promoted nicotine as COVID-19 treatment:
“1. I never made, as a fact, the statement that nicotine does protect against COVID-19. What we mentioned in the Note of Compte Rendus of April 2020 (published following referees) is «the hypothesis» that «the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) plays a key role in the pathophysiology of Covid-19 infection and might represent a target for the prevention and control of Covid-19 infection».
An hypothesis is not a fact … at this stage.
The nicotinic acetylcholine receptor is not nicotine. A receptor for a drug should not be confused with the drug itself. Here this is specially relevant here. I can explain that to you more extensively if necessary.
See also the conclusions of our paper in EMBO mol med.”
Well, here is, among other things, his own interview at Human Brain Project, from April 2020:
“The nicotine hypothesis of Covid 19 is presently followed up along two lines of research. One is clinical and carried out by Prof. Amouras team. It is to assess the effect of nicotine patches: 1. in the prevention of SARS-Cov2 infection in health care workers; 2. on worsening of Covid-19 hospitalized patients, and 3. on severely ill Covid-19 patients. The other includes biological studies carried out mostly at the Institut Pasteur on a possible interaction of the virus spike protein in vitro with the nAChR by Electron Microscopy and other physical methods, and in vivo on cellular and animal model systems about a possible relationship between SARS-Cov2 virus action and nicotine. In all these experimental studies the effect of nicotine and allosteric modulators of the nAChR, including a nonaddictive one like Ivermectine, shall be tested on Covid 19 infection. “
Ivermectin and nicotine combo is the solution, it seems?
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You seem a bit desperate for the Homeopathy article, the only thing you have against it are defamations and ad hominem attacks. The funny thing about it all is that Twitter suspended your account, I am not surprised now to see several “skeptic” morons crying because their accounts are suspended when they used to be the champions in responding and suspending accounts. I hope you soon get the same hate you do on your blog.
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