Schneider Shorts of 26 November 2021 – Molecular Cell generously retracts 2 papers after almost 6 years of begging, Australian cancer researcher loses job over fudged results again, dirty old man in Marseille was faking chloroquine data all along, plus the secret bats from Laos, Frontiers in Eugenics and Racism, the joys of coffee and chocolate, academic nepotism, and: we found the most stupid paper ever.
Table of Discontent
Science Elites
- Fousteri’s belated retractions – Elsevier has mercy with a Dutch university
- Mark Smyth out – not the first time Australia’s top cancer researcher was caught
- President’s Award Winner out – creative mathematician En-Bing Lin retires
- Raoult’s chloroquine fraud – who knew, research fraud and threats of physical violence at IHU
COVID-19
- Lab Leak Theory – EcoHealth Alliance and the bats from Laos
Science Breakthroughs
- Frontiers in Eugenics – why you and your kids are genetically inferior (unless you are rich)
- Coffee and chocolate with Lüscher – Guardian groupies celebrate a star
- The most stupid paper ever – University of Maryland saves the planet
News in Tweets
Science Elites
Fousteri’s belated retractions
Almost 6 years after the research misconduct investigation by Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), two papers by the Greek biologist Maria Fousteri are finally being retracted by Molecular Cell. I covered the affair already in 2016, when an uncensored LUMC report was leaked to me, which also implicated her then-boss, Leon Mullenders, who was then sent into retirement.
Fousteri’s fraud was exposed by her PhD student PhD student Saskia Vorstenbosch, who as a reward, was denied graduation. Using Freedom of information, I later obtained LUMC letters to the journal asking for retractions of two Fousteri papers from Mullenders lab. Two more papers were found to be fake also, but LUMC had no authority to retract those. One was made in the lab of Fousteri’s former postdoc advisor, Alan Lehmann, whose University of Sussex ran a whitewashing counter-investigation. The fourth fake paper was made in the lab of Jesper Svejstrup, who happened to be a member of the ERC board, which is probably why ERC decided to ignore the letter LUMC sent to them and instead paid out Fousteri’s €1.5mn ERC grant to the last day and the last cent.
Molecular Cell simply refused LUMC retraction requests, because obviously research fraud is Elsevier’s business, simple as that. LUMC even twisted Mullenders’ arm till in October 2019 this corresponding author finally wrote to the journal asking for retractions. Still nothing.
So now let’s be eternally grateful, down on our knees, to Cell Press and Elsevier for generously retracting at least 2 of the 4 fraudulent papers merely 5 and a half years after receiving a retraction request.
The retraction notices declare:
“This article has been retracted at the request of the editors. Molecular Cell has retracted this article following the results of an investigation carried out by Leiden University Medical Center’s Committee of Scientific Integrity, which concluded that unacceptable data manipulation by the last author Maria Fousteri led to breaches of scientific integrity, making these results unreliable.”
Maria Fousteri, Wim Vermeulen, Albert A. van Zeeland, Leon H.F. Mullenders Cockayne Syndrome A and B Proteins Differentially Regulate Recruitment of Chromatin Remodeling and Repair Factors to Stalled RNA Polymerase II In Vivo Molecular Cell 2006, DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2006.06.029 RETRACTION
Jill Moser, Hanneke Kool, Ioannis Giakzidis, Keith Caldecott, Leon H.F. Mullenders, Maria Fousteri Sealing of Chromosomal DNA Nicks during Nucleotide Excision Repair Requires XRCC1 and DNA Ligase IIIα in a Cell-Cycle-Specific Manner Molecular Cell (2007) DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2007.06.014 RETRACTION
The Fousteri lab at Fleming Centre near Athens is now 10 members strong. After a recent paper in Nature Communications, this year the lab published in Nucleic Acids Research.
Mark Smyth out
The Sydney Morning Herald reported a fraud scandal around the Australian star cancer researcher Mark Smyth:
“The Brisbane-based QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute confirmed to The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Monday it had referred Mark Smyth, until recently the institute’s head of immunology in cancer, to the commission following an external investigation into complaints about his research conduct.
The external investigation, headed by retired Appeal Court judge Robert Gotterson, found Professor Smyth had seriously breached codes of responsible research, the institute said in a statement. The findings of the investigation were referred to the Crime and Corruption Commission, it said. […]
A second independent review, to be headed by Bruce Lander, South Australia’s former Independent Commissioner Against Corruption, had also been commissioned into what the institute called a “broad range of issues” arising from the initial investigation, the institute said.”
It appears, Smyth has been forced to resign already. On 24 November, I wrote him an email, and got this auto-reply:
“Professor Mark Smyth has ceased employment with QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. If you have any queries related to his laboratory or research activities, please direct them to Professor Greg Anderson (greg.anderson@qimrberghofer.edu.au).“
As I learned, Smyth’s key to success were beautiful mouse survival graphs, bordering on “too good to be true”, with standard deviation bars which were unusually small and surprisingly uniform. These graphs typically show measurements of tumours in very large numbers of mice every second day, including weekends, because Australia’s top cancer researcher and academician Prof Smyth still generates all the animal data himself.
If trouble arises, it was someone else who did it. Smyth has one retraction (Hayakawa et al Nature Immunology 2004) and a PubPeer record, for which a postdoc was once blamed. But several lab members blew the whistle, which led to the current investigations, starting January 2021.
As I was also informed, Smyth was previously investigated by his former employer, the University of Melbourne, where a PhD student allegedly accused him of making up knockout mice. The investigators eventually found the records in an animal technician’s lab book, who then said the notes were in Smyth’s handwriting. Smyth denied that. The University of Melbourne hired a handwriting expert, who believed it looked like Smyth’s handwriting, but without certainly, the charges were dropped. Still, Smyth left the University of Melbourne and moved to QIMR in Queensland.
Incidentally, Smyth’s research collaborators are, what a surprise, the Parisian power-duo Guido Kroemer and Laurence Zitvogel.
President’s Award Winner out
On a much smaller scale, but still: mathematics professor En-Bing Lin first won the “President’s Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity” at his Central Michigan University, then I published a guest post by a certain “Samuel Pickwick” about his patronising of predatory journals and conferences as well about his fantasy research grants, and now…
According to the records from department meeting on 18 November, Dr Lin retired (aged ~65):
“This is En-Bing Lin’s last department meeting – he is retiring from the University in December 2021.
Congratulations En-Bing!”
Congratulations from me and Sam Pickwick also!
Raoult’s chloroquine fraud
Hands up who is surprised to learn that the results of Didier Raoult‘s COVID-19 clinical trials with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, done at his own IHU Marseille, were fabricated? Who is surprised that Raoult and his right-hand men Michel Drancourt and Eric Chabriere were bullying and threatening everyone who dared to protest against the data manipulation and ethics breaches?
Well, I don’t know about you, but I am not surprised at all. Merely puzzled why it took so long to come out. Anyway, here is the scoop by Mediapart, referencing the interviews with IHU members by their official employers, the University of Aix-Marseille, l’Assistance publique – hôpitaux de Marseille (AP-HM), the Research Institute for Development (IRD) and Inserm.
“The testimonies describe a reality very far from that presented by Professor Didier Raoult, who prides himself on having 10% of French researchers in the most cited publications among his teams, but who did not respond to our requests. “There has been no real science behind the IHU publications for years,”says one of the doctors interviewed. “The results presented must correspond to the assumptions made by Didier Raoult. Otherwise, the people concerned may be publicly humiliated with questioning of their skills,” is reported in a recording of these hearings that we were able to consult.”
This was the atmosphere at IHU, thanks to complicity of French media and the nation’s president Emmanuel Macron (who even visited Raoult at IHU):
““The reinforced media coverage of Didier Raoult” then nourishes a “climate of cult of personality” with the “distribution of videos of Didier Raoult in a loop, inside the building”. In this context, they explain, any criticism of the treatment becomes impossible. “The absence of contradictory debates within the IHU” reaches such a climax that the slightest question is unwelcome. In a staff meeting, where the professor, interns and managers meet to monitor the indicators,“If we ask questions, the answer is often: ‘Shut up, you are not paid to think” , testifies another member of the IHU.”
And this is how the chloroquine clinical trial data was faked:
“It is in this ambient climate that these interviewed personnel witnessed the falsification of biological results making it possible to conclude on the beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine by biasing the results of PCR tests in a study comparing IHU patients, taking treatment and patients at the CHU de Nice who were not taking it.
As the results “did not go in the direction of Didier Raoult”, the positivity threshold of the PCR tests has been modified thus rendering a greater number of results negative for the patients followed in Marseille and thus making it possible to conclude a beneficial effect of hydroxychloroquine.
The strategy was as follows: for the patients of Marseille, the cut-off value for the virus detection test by PCR was lowered to 34 cycles; on the other hand, for the patients from Nice, the initial threshold value of 39 cycles was retained. A patient with a value of 37 cycles was therefore declared negative in Marseille (on hydroxychloroquine) but positive in Nice (control group without hydroxychloroquine). The two groups of patients were therefore analyzed using different criteria in order to make it possible to falsely conclude the efficacy of the molecule.
To do this, Professor Didier Raoult “removed the biologists from the schedules” so that they could take rest” and in return set up a software to automate the declaration of results in the AP-HM software [with a different amplification cycle favoring negativity – note] without prior validation by medical biologists.
“These members of the IHU were slow to testify for fear of being physically attacked.”
Well, Chabriere threatened Raoult’s critics with death on Twitter, so who knows what he and Raoult’s other thugs threatened to people at IHU.
Raoult had his army of violent far-right covidiots outside (and occasionally inside) of IHU, waiting to attack anyone who criticises him:
“Some list the demonstrations of “patriots” on the steps of the IHU, at the hours of exit of the personnel. Others, the proximity of Didier Raoult with conspiratorial and extremist personalities such as Louis Fouché, founder of a “Réinfocovid” collective, disseminating false scientific information.”
Chabriere’s violent threats were covered by Le Monde before, also how he and Raoult engaged the Marseille public prosecutor to terrorize Elisabeth Bik. About Drancourt, the Mediapart article mentions:
“The intimidations also emanate from the professor’s entourage. The anger of his assistant Michel Drancourt is frequent and feared. So much so that some come out “in tears from meetings”. Others go there with “a lump in the stomach ”. Several testimonies state ” aggression and violence”.“
I believe the only consequence here is to sack the entire leadership of IHU, put the worst perpetrators like Raoult, Drancourt, Chabriere, Gautret, Parola et al on trial, dismantle the institute completely, force resignations of all those responsible for covering up the affair at the University Aix-Marseille and the Institute for Research for Development (which “have done nothing against the practices of Didier Raoult they could not have missed“), as well as the Marseille public prosecutor, and open a parliamentary inquiry into this massive national disaster.
Alas, none of that will happen. Raoult is 69 and was just forcibly retired from active clinical duties and as university professor. He will soon be made to retire as IHU director also, once a successor is negotiated who will promise to keep everything as it was. The whistleblowers expect nothing:
“During their recent hearing, several members expressed “a feeling of abandonment” from their guardianship, which has remained inactive. “ They consider that nothing has changed despite the few alerts in the functioning of the IHU. “ Alas, they believe that “ Didier Raoult and his department heads remain untouchable ”.“
Meanwhile, Raoult continues slipping into insanity and paranoia. Here his new video, titled: “Civilisations die from jealousy“.
A reader sums up:
“Of course he praizes Brazil.
There is a correlation between the decrease of scientist stars […] and the increase in the number of covid death. France has regressed a lot since the XIXth century […] Raoult judiciary problems are a sign of civilizationnal collapse.
And people are jealous, they want to suppress chloroquine, and doing so they suppress Raoult“.
COVID-19
Lab Leak Theory
A Newsweek article by Rowan Jacobsen sums up all the lies and cover-ups about Peter Daszak‘s EcoHealth Alliance and the kind of gain-of-function research with bat coronaviruses they have been doing in Wuhan with US money.
This bit is new:
“In September, scientists from France’s Pasteur Institute announced the discovery of just such a virus—SARS-CoV-2’s closest known relative—in a bat cave in Laos. Although still too distant from SARS-CoV-2 to have been the direct progenitor, and lacking the all-important cleavage site, it was a kissing cousin.
The discovery was hailed by some scientists as evidence that SARS-CoV-2 must have had a natural origin. But the plot turned in November, when another trove of NIH documents—released in response to a FOIA request by the White Coat Waste Project—brought the evidence trail right to EcoHealth’s doorstep.
In 2017, EcoHealth had informed the NIH that it would be shifting its focus to Laos and other countries in Southeast Asia, where the wildlife trade was more active, relying on local partner organizations to do the sample collecting and to send the samples to the WIV for their ongoing work.”
So now there is Laos, which borders on the Yunnan province where the Mojiang mine lies in which 3 people died in 2012 of mysterious pneumonia, and where Wuhan researchers have been sampling bats for coronaviruses since 2013.
The Newsweek article continues:
“…it’s clear that for years, a large number of bat samples from the region that harbors viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 were sent to the WIV. In other words, EcoHealth’s team was in the right place at the right time to have found things very close to SARS-CoV-2 and to have sent them to Wuhan. Because there’s a lag of several years between when samples are collected and when experiments involving those viruses are published, the most recent papers from EcoHealth and the WIV date to 2015. The identity of the viruses found between 2016 and 2019 are known only to the two organizations, neither of which has been willing to share that information with the world.”
Science Breakthroughs
Frontiers in Eugenics
A breakthrough research finding from Sweden, just published in Frontiers:
Kimmo Eriksson, Jannika Lindvall, Ola Helenius and Andreas Ryve Socioeconomic Status as a Multidimensional Predictor of Student Achievement in 77 Societies Frontiers in Education (2021) doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.731634
It deals with direct causation vs trait transfer of educational attainment and socioeconomic status. The authors conclude that educating the poor is pointless because the rich are simply genetically superior. Do not fall for the anti-science lies that the rich are privileged, fact is their children are simply genetically superior, due to “genetic transfer of skills across generations“:
“In most societies, the independent effect of wealth possessions on student achievement was zero or even slightly negative”
The scholarly masterpiece explains:
“An alternative theory is trait transfer. This theory builds on the combination of two assumptions that are well supported by studies. The first assumption is that achievement in school and achievement of high socioeconomic status (in terms of educational attainment and high-status and high-paying jobs) partly rely on a common set of traits, such as intelligence, self-efficacy, and a conscientious personality (Briley et al., 2014; Krapohl et al., 2014). The second assumption is that these achievement-promoting traits are, to a large extent, genetically transferred from parents to children (Krapohl et al., 2014; Ayorech et al., 2017; Garon-Carrier et al., 2017).”
It’s very simple really. The rich are rich because they are more intelligent due to their genetic superiority. I suggest reading modern science’s greatest thinker and highest ethics authority, Dr Stuart Ritchie, lecturer on Progressive Eugenics at Imperial College London, in this regard.
Simply put: it is a waste of time to educate the poor beyond teaching them to read, write, count and pray. The Swedish scholars focus on books, and whether those are of any use to proles’ children:
“A direct effect of the number of books at home on reading achievement could arise if children tend to read the books they find at home, but this hypothesis does not account for our finding of an equally strong effect of books at home on achievement in mathematics. For these reasons, our findings suggest that direct causation is not the main reason behind the SES effect. This conclusion is in line with studies of adopted children finding no clear influence of socioeconomic factors among adoptive parents, such as their education, on children’s educational attainment (Kendler et al., 2015; Ludeke et al., 2021).”
Genetic transfer. Science has spoken. This is my favourite kind of eugenics, the new, progressive kind which those on the “left” can finally identify with, its racism hidden well enough. We sure would love to help the lower classes and those poor immigrants, but come on, there are limits for the education these rubes can get, due to their genetic inferiority.
Ladies, if you want an intelligent and successful, i.e., genetically superior child, forget books and education, with your family’s primitive genes it’s pointless. Rather, sneak as a cleaning help into a rich family and seduce the husband. Btw, Professor Dr Andreas Ryve is quite good-looking, just saying.
“Here we speculate that, to the extent that people can afford buying books they desire, the number of books at home indicates parents’ general interest in, and enjoyment of, reading. It is plausible that these traits facilitate schoolwork and that they are subject to genetic transfer.”
Here another interesting Frontiers paper, in same journal, but by authors from Latin America:
Carmen Flores-Mendoza, Ruben Ardila, Miguel Gallegos and Norma Reategui-Colareta General Intelligence and Socioeconomic Status as Strong Predictors of Student Performance in Latin American Schools: Evidence From PISA Items Front. Educ. (2021) doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.632289
It is also about progressive eugenics, but this time with a hearty dose of racism in it:
“This study concludes that education policy must incorporate individual differences in intelligence, beyond socioeconomic variables, as an important predictor variable in student performance studies.”
Ohhh, look, they even quote eugenics’ most favourite racist uncle Richard Lynn (his research sponsored by actual Nazis):
“According to these studies, the intelligence of the nation relates to several educational outcomes such as technological achievement over a millennium (from 0.42 for 1000BC to 0.75 for 2000 AD; Lynn and Becker, 2019), adult literacy (r = 0.64; Lynn and Becker, 2019), patents indexes (r = 0.51; Gelade, 2008); Nobel prize in science (r = 0.34; Rindermann et al., 2009); technology exports (r = 0.38; Rindermann et al., 2009).”
Now you will surely understand this study properly:
Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler, and Tyler Ransom Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard J Labor Economics (2021) doi: 10.1086/713744
Abstract:
“We use public documents from the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University lawsuit to examine admissions preferences for recruited athletes, legacies, those on the dean’s interest list, and children of faculty and staff (ALDCs). More than 43% of white admits are ALDC; the share for African American, Asian American, and Hispanics is less than 16%. Our model of admissions shows that roughly three-quarters of white ALDC admits would have been rejected absent their ALDC status. Removing preferences for athletes and legacies would significantly alter the racial distribution of admitted students away from whites.”
But of course the children of the the rich, the Harvard donors and Harvard professors are admitted on merit. On the merit of their genetic superiority, peer reviewed science has spoken. Maybe Frontiers is competing with MDPI?
Coffee and chocolate with Lüscher
Guardian‘s science and health journalists remind me of rock band groupies. They really don’t care about the actual music and whether it’s any good. They just want to have sex with the rock stars, with the same zeal other people do stamp collecting.
So here is Guardian editors bedding another “rockstar”, a rather questionable one, but the songs he sings are paid by the chocolate industry, so sweet. It’s Thomas Lüscher, who at a pensioner age left Switzerland to start anew in London, I wrote twice about his chocolate research (here and here).
But now, The Guardian:
“Dark chocolate is a “joy” when it comes to keeping your heart healthy, coffee is likely protective, but wine is at best “neutral”, according to one of the world’s leading cardiologists.
As editor of the European Heart Journal for more than a decade, Prof Thomas Lüscher led a team that sifted through 3,200 manuscripts from scientists and doctors every year. Only a fraction – those deemed “truly novel” and backed up with “solid data” – would be selected for publication.”
The article never mentions that Lüscher’s own chocolate research was sponsored by the chocolate industry, even if his own paper openly states so: “Work of the author on chocolate and epicathecin was in part funded by Nestle and MARS, Inc by unrestricted grants to the institution“.
Instead we hear from The Guardian:
““Are wine, chocolate, coffee forbidden joys? Well, wine is truly a joy but at best neutral when consumed in moderation. Chocolate is a joy for our CV [cardiovascular] system, if consumed in dark, bitter form. And coffee? It wakes us up, less so if you drink it regularly, and at that dose of up to four cups a day, might even be protective.”
Speaking to the Guardian about his article, Lüscher, who has himself published extensively with more than 500 research papers, more than 200 reviews and book chapters on cardiovascular medicine, said despite the keen interest in the merits or otherwise of coffee, wine and chocolate for health, there is much that is still not known.
“The optimal dose of chocolate, ie dark, bitter chocolate, is not known as this has not been properly investigated.””
And so on. Here is Lüscher’s rigorously peer reviewed paper in the journal he used to be Editor-in-Chief of (2009-2020):
Thomas F Lüscher Wine, chocolate, and coffee: forbidden joys? European Heart Journal, (2021) doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehab654
The most stupid paper ever
Dear readers, we found the most stupid research paper ever, and it’s from University of Maryland, USA. It is a preprint submitted to the European Geosciences Union preprint platform Copernicus, where it’s currently being openly peer reviewed:
Xueyuan Gao, Shunlin Liang, Dongdong Wang, Yan Li, Bin He, and Aolin Jia Exploration of a novel geoengineering solution: lighting up tropical forests at night Earth Systems Dynamics (2021) 10.5194/esd-2021-85
The abstract:
“Plants primarily conduct photosynthesis in the daytime, offering an opportunity to increase photosynthesis and carbon sink by providing light at night. We used a fully coupled Earth System Model to quantify the carbon sequestration and climate effects of a novel carbon removal proposal: lighting up tropical forests at night via lamp networks above the forest canopy. Simulation results show that additional light increased tropical forest carbon sink by 10.4 ± 0.05 petagrams of carbon per year during a 16-year lighting experiment, resulting in a decrease in atmospheric CO2 and suppression of global warming. In addition, local temperature and precipitation increased. The energy requirement for capturing one ton of carbon is lower than that of Direct Air Carbon Capture. When the lighting experiment was terminated, tropical forests started to release carbon slowly. This study suggests that lighting up tropical forests at night could be an emergency solution to climate change, and carbon removal actions focused on enhancing ecosystem productivity by altering environmental factors in the short term could induce post-action CO2 outgassing.”
I wrote to the senior authors of that brainfart, the University of Maryland professors Shunlin Liang and Dongdong Wang, who specialise on remote sensing of forests, so you see the science of that crucial research field is in good hands. The scholars didn’t reply are busy saving the planet, you see.
One reader (not an invited peer reviewer), Richard Rosen, wrote in a public comemnt:
“There are many problems with this proposed article, but let’s start with the biggest ones. Line 165 states that the authors estimated the amount of energy needed to produce the light that would lead to one ton of CO2 being removed from the atmosphere, yet they do not show their calculations. These calculations and all data that are assumed in these calculations must be provided. They should also show the total amount of energy needed to produce the light in their scenarios per year.
Secondly, they do not even mention where all this energy is going to come from, and how such a network of lamps as noted on line 306 could be constructed. How much ecological damage would that cause? How much additional energy would it take to manufacture and install such a network of lamps to yield the 200w per m-squared intensity they site? Where would all this energy come from, renewable electricity? The authors must answer all these kinds of questions and more that I have not thought of yet to make their scenario even remotely plausible. This all must be addressed in this article. Off hand, the entire scheme seems crazy, and the potential negative impacts only seem to have been partially addressed.
The authors should also address the basis for their cost estimate per ton of CO2 removed, which is not given, if they have made a cost estimate.”
Also, as every plant scientist would confirm, plants die when exposed to light 24h a day. But I am sure this preprint will pass peer review because its authors are American professors.
News in Tweets
- Pope is a catholic, bears shit in the woods, and academics nepotistically use buddy networks to publish their papers in “peer reviewed” journals (Scanff et al PLOS Biology 2020). Sure, Clara Locher and her colleagues did a great analysis here (they also previously exposed Raoult’s chloroquine networks, Locher et al 2021), but… knowing how academic publishing works, would their paper have made it into such a selective journal if they didn’t have the academic bigwigs Dorothy Bishop and David Moher as co-authors?
- Frontiers uses AIRA, which is futuristic AI which we are told can detect plagiarism, image manipulation, COI, plus peer-review papers, and make coffee for Kamila Markram. So look what AIRA approved of as quality science, Wang et al Front Cell Neurosc 2020, its blots are so fake one sees it straight away with an untrained eye, and it’s just for starters. Elisabeth Bik found much more:
- PLOS One is catching up on retractions, belatedly. Here Wang et al 2013, reported to the journal by Bik in 2015. It’s different from Molecular Cell case though, the author’s institution most certainly never begged the journal to retract a fake paper for the past 6 years.
- Former dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey Flier, wrote something on the topic of research misconduct in bioscience, 3 cases he was personally privy to. Maybe I should mention that Flier’s best friend is C Ronald Kahn, who has 50 papers on PubPeer with massive fraud in them, and 3 retractions. But for his “close friend and colleague (and neighbor)“, Flier never allows any criticism.
- “The Daily Pennsylvanian spoke to 11 current and former GTP [Gene Therapy Program] employees, all of whom said they endured a dysfunctional workplace environment at the hands of GTP management. Some of these employees, both current and former, requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. The program, which employees said is marred by extreme work disorganization and inappropriate office behavior, resulted in low morale and unusually high turnover rates among employees.Several have filed formal complaints and spoken to GTP’s human resources department, the Perelman School of Medicine’s human resources department, the University’s Title IX Office and confidential Ombuds Office, and some even hired their own lawyers to demand an end to the abuse. ” (The Daily Pennsylvanian)
- The Royal Papworth hospital in Cambridge informed Patricia Murray that what the company Videregen tells its
victimspatients in order to get them to agree to an experimental airway patch transplant (based on Macchiarini’s technology, read here) is their own corporate secret. The patient information sheet will not be released.
Make a one-time donation
Make a monthly donation
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
DonateDonate monthly
For Better Science 
I really love the Frontiers papers and the wording suggesting books are genetically inherited. Actually, I believe they belong to those people who believe inheritance = genetics. Talking about that, here is how the tsar of Russia Peter the Great reacted when offered a black kid as a gift: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal
Or when a 18th century monarch knew better than peer-reviewed science.
LikeLike
Seriously that “let’s light up the Amazon” preprint must be some kind of sting operation. I refuse to believe one can be that stupid.
LikeLike
“Fousteri’s belated retractions”.
“One was made in the lab of Fousteri’s former postdoc advisor, Alan Lehmann, whose University of Sussex ran a whitewashing counter-investigation.”
Mol Cell Biol. 2005 Sep;25(18):8368-78. doi: 10.1128/MCB.25.18.8368-8378.2005.
Transcription-associated breaks in xeroderma pigmentosum group D cells from patients with combined features of xeroderma pigmentosum and Cockayne syndrome
Therina Theron 1, Maria I Fousteri, Marcel Volker, Lorna W Harries, Elena Botta, Miria Stefanini, Mitsuo Fujimoto, Jaan-Olle Andressoo, Jay Mitchell, Nicolaas G J Jaspers, Lisa D McDaniel, Leon H Mullenders, Alan R Lehmann
Affiliation
1Genome Damage and Stability Centre, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RQ, United Kingdom.
PMID: 16135823 PMCID: PMC1234319 DOI: 10.1128/MCB.25.18.8368-8378.2005
Figure 7. Much more similar and different.
LikeLike
Figure 7 Mol Cell Biol. 2005 Sep;25(18):8368-78. doi: 10.1128/MCB.25.18.8368-8378.2005. continued.
Much more similar and different than expected.
LikeLike
“the fraudulent customer is king with this Elsevier outlet of elite science.”
Elsevier took over J Biol Chem at the start of 2021.
Since then J Biol Chem has stopped (bar 2) retracting papers from its best paying customers.
Elsevier is a Dutch firm thwarting the scientific integrity of a Dutch University (Leiden).
LikeLike