Schneider Shorts of 25 February 2022 – with lots of advice on life extension and exercise, featuring an anti-Hobbit contrarian on meat diet, a sexual harasser’s academic family, a peculiar COVID-19 cure from Japan, new trouble for a dirty old man in Marseille, and other toxic men of science.
Table of Discontent
Science Elites
- Stand up for sexual harasser – why Comaroff’s peers defend him
- Raoult’s trouble – fake ethics approval and bizarre patient abuse
- Toxic Larry – Toxicology Reports founder caught cheating himself
Science Breakthroughs
- Henneberg vs vegetarians – anthropology troll now with nutrition advice
- Stool transplants or bear bile for COVID-19? – cure found in Japan
- Yale’s Life Extension – longevity gene found in blood cells!
- Exercise drug found – but can we trust the discoverers?
News in Tweets
Science Elites
Stand up for sexual harasser
Michael Balter brings an update on the John Comaroff affair, who was allowed to sexually harass his students for over four decades. When the scandal became public thanks to student newspaper The Crimson, Harvard tried to bury the affair while Comaroff’s US peers swiftly published an open letter of support, when the victims released details in their lawsuit, many signatures were retracted (read here).
Balter references an article by Sean Jacobs, editor of Africa is a Country, who writes:
“But equally significant was a second letter published the day before, February 3, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This one was signed by 50 academic luminaries. Similar to the Harvard letter, most of them were well known in anthropology and all work in African Studies. A number of them work on questions of power and gender. A few were at American universities, such as Adam Ashforth, Nancy Hunt, Louise White, and Kenda Mutongi. (Interestingly, Mutongi is the only black woman who signed the Chronicle letter.) Also, a signatory is Ann Stoler from The New School, a scholar of Dutch and French colonialism.
Another group was from European universities; among them were Peter Geschiere of the University of Amsterdam and Birgit Meyer at Utrecht University.
But the most significant group of signatories to the Chronicle letter are or were based at South African universities. Among these are Max Price, Dennis Davis, Deborah Posel, Hylton White, Jane Taylor, Robert Morrell, Mike Morris, Neil Roos, Mugsy Spiegel, Imraan Coovadia, and Steven Robins.
They are mostly white and quite influential in South African academia. […]
The Chronicle letter was more strident than the Harvard letter. It minimized the accusations against Comaroff, referring to the process at Harvard—which is hardly favorable to victims of sexual abuse—as “a Kangaroo court” and “a show trial.”
And this is why the anthropology community defended Comaroff’s right to sexual harassment – they owe him:
John and Jean Comaroff trained generations of professors who went on to populate various disciplines all over the globe. They sat on countless dissertation defenses, had a say in what work was good and important, what topics are worthy of study (as someone asked in exasperation, “Why was witchcraft such a thing for so long in anthropological studies of Africa?”), and through it, bred all sorts of loyalties with former students. Former students who were “in their favor” were given all sorts of awards and positions. Those who spoke out or made noises were not. As the lawsuit implies, the discipline of anthropology is now populated by Comaroff loyalists. Many who opposed them or who spoke up against them, ended up with their careers stalled or quit altogether in a field where there was a shrinking number of academic positions already.
Finally, Balter references a recent article by The Crimson on the Comaroff affair:
Yet among all the disturbing allegations, amid the descriptions of harassment-themed brunches and retaliatory blacklisting, one detail stands out. High-level Harvard affiliates — including a Title IX Coordinator, a department chair, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Dean for Faculty Affairs and Planning — allegedly encouraged the complainants to talk to the press, not University investigators, if they wanted to see results. In the words of the lawsuit, faculty and administration members alike consistently relayed the same twisted message: “Only a public article” would give Harvard “cover to take action” against Comaroff.
Yeah, let the journalists take the risk of Comaroff’s lawsuits as Harvard kept providing new victims for him to prey upon.
Raoult’s Trouble
France’s chloroquine guru Didier Raoult faces even more trouble as he lost his professorship and clinical privileges by force retirement and is about to be removed as IHU Marseille director.
The newspaper Mediapart revealed an investigation at IHU by the French health authority Agence nationale de sécurité du médicament et des produits de santé (ANSM):
“The inspectors note in particular that the IHU does not have any department or a person in charge of ensuring the regulatory framework for the research. Worse, some patients cared for in AP-HM health services have been used by the IHU for trials without the AP-HM being kept informed.
The ANSM notes possible violations of the law and patient safety, especially for those those with tuberculosis. Their medical records do not indicate any consent on their part, for prescriptions considered risky by the inspectors, taking into account “a high frequency of the serious adverse events”.
The AP-HM, for its part, is implicated for its lack of vigilance with regard to the IHU, in particular for a trial involving minors and for which it lacks several parental authorizations.
The AP-HM and the IHU had two weeks to respond to this preliminary report, the final conclusions must be rendered before the end of March.
But without waiting, the ANSM inspectors already announced to communicate to the public prosecutor of the Republic about the documents which the IHU might have falsified on a test carried out on students.”
This is what Raoult and his gang exactly did, as another newspaper, La Provence, reported:
“Research taking place in 2019 on medical students was launched before the agreement of the comité de protection des personnes (committee for integrity of person – approximate translation). ANSM (note: this is the national agency for safety in medicine) confirms information published by the newspaper l’Express that student have been subject to nasal, vaginal and rectal swabs without prior authorization. For that very same research, the IHU only transmitted an approval from its own ethic committee. But, the person who is supposed to have signed that documpent, told the agency they did not sign it.“
Mediapart describes how the ANSM investigation took place:
“As soon as they arrived, the investigators faced “a climate of hostility and mistrust”, as well as “inappropriate verbal aggression by of the deputy director of the IHU [Michel Drancourt]”, they say in their report.
By way of presentation, they received from Didier Raoult a singular pamphlet in which the professor poses with ministers and elected politicians. […] And to close the album: a snapshot of the professor alongside of the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, during of his visit to the IHU on April 9, 2020.”
Medical ethics was an utterly unknown concept to the criminal clowns of IHU, as ANSM investigators discovered. Mediapart continues:
“From their first observation, they mention the absence knowledge of IHU staff regarding the research regulations. Except an internal ethics committee responsible for evaluating research projects, no-one within the IHU is tasked with controlling the framework regulatory. These aspects are taken care of by the project leaders, “some of whom have spontaneously recognized during the inspection to not fully master the regulatory aspects” of research relating to the human person.
A series of worrying malfunctions ensue: certain studies involving humans (RIPH) are launched without having received a favorable opinion from the committee for the protection of persons (CPP), while mandatory in this case.
Several trials would thus be conducted by the IHU outside of the legal framework. This is the case of a study on the antibiotic-resistant bacteria and based on self-sampling (nasal, skin, rectal and vaginal) from students, from 2017 to 2019. According to the investigation, the IHU dispensed with the opinion of the committee protection of persons and has overridden that by its internal ethics committee, requested two years after sampling began.”
As we read, Raoult’s gang simply faked the forgery of the ethics authority. This is a very serious crime in France, but so far Raoult was above the law, so let’s see. Also about this:
“As Mediapart had revealed, the IHU prescribed a combination of four antibiotics, whose effectiveness in the treatment of tuberculosis has never been demonstrated or even evaluated, and which could even be toxic.
Difficult for investigators to ignore the dangers of such treatment. In fact, in August 2019, the IHU requested from the ANSM an authorization for prescribe this treatment as part of a trial. In its response, dated September 12, 2019, the ANSM is categorical: for two of the proposed antibiotics by IHU, sulfadiazine and monocycline, it there is no data, “in vivo”, “not even in an animal model” which would allow to advance the effectiveness of these antibiotics in combating tuberculosis. It is therefore impossible to use such drugs against tuberculosis since “these data do not allow in the current state of the scientific knowledge to make a study directly on humans.
However, the IHU has, from 2017 to 2021, prescribed this treatment, ignoring this refusal. After their control, the inspectors note the dangerous character of these prescriptions but, for all that, do not not conclude that they were made within the framework of an unauthorized clinical trial, the follow-up procedures patients not corresponding to those of a clinical trial.
Despite this observation, which is contradictory to say the least, their conclusions on these prescriptions are alarming: no trace of patient consent on this treatment which they describe as “atypical”, apart from national and international recommendations.”
The patients got predictably poisoned and had to be treated in the ER. Raoult’s crimes are numerous, but ANSM is powerless to deal with him. They ask Marseille state prosecutor, who happens to be a friend of Raoult’s to investigate him.
“The ANSM takes refuge behind the freedom of doctors to prescribe medication outside the indications of its marketing authorization (MA), i.e. for a pathology other than that for which it is marketed. And regarding so-called “off-label” prescriptions, the ANSM declares itself incompetent to intervene, its missions and prerogatives being thus defined by the health code public.”
Toxic Larry
Lawrence Lash, professor at the Wayne State University in USA, and founding editor of the antivax and fraud pipeline, Toxicology Reports, is truly a piece of work. We already know he is a bully who loves to threaten people.
Now Cheshire found a duplicated image in his recent one-author MDPI paper (yeah, Larry works in the lab all by himself, or so he insinuates).
Lawrence H. Lash, Unexpected Enhancement of Cytotoxicity of Cisplatin in a Rat Kidney Proximal Tubular Cell Line Overexpressing Mitochondrial Glutathione Transport Activity International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2022) doi: 10.3390/ijms23041993
Larry replied on PubPeer:
“The two panels do indeed look very similar. I have checked the original data files, which were from experiments conducted in 2006 and 2007, and those are the correct pictures for the two conditions, i.e., 10 µM CDDP at 4 hr and 50 µM CDDP at 4 hr in NRK-52E-OGC cells. When selecting fields to take photos, we tried to find fields that were representative of the entire culture plate. Typically, few differences were observed between 10 and 50 µM CDDP; the largest differences were seen when increasing the CDDP concentration to 100 µM. Thus, as far as I can tell, these are correct photos.”
The images are not similar, but identical. It’s a copy-pasted picture.
But maybe Lash is not as untouchable as he thought. He soon announced a correction.
Science Breakthroughs
Henneberg vs Vegetarians
The Polish-born Australia-based anthropologist Maciej Henneberg is a contrarian who loves to troll and to play the media. Some years ago, Henneberg kept making headlines by insisting that Homo floresiensis (The Hobbit), an extinct dwarf human species discovered on an Indonesian island, was actually “just one of the local island inhabitants suffering from a medical condition,” first it was microcephalia, then “cretinism”, and later Down syndrome (Trisomy 21). Henneberg had the authority of the elite society journal PNAS on his side, where he and his colleagues published these claims as Jacob et al 2006, Eckhardt et al 2014 and Henneberg et al 2014, all without a proper peer review, because the Academy member Kenneth Hsü contributed those.
The geniuses were unfazed by genetic analysis or the fact that eventually it was not just one, but several Hobbit specimens found, fifteen in fact. Later on, their theory was debunked in a journal with a much smaller impact factor Baab et al PloS One 2016. Worth noting that Henneberg’s co-author Teiku Jacob was accused of severely damaging the Hobbit specimens:
“Jacob eventually returned the remains with portions severely damaged[6] and missing two leg bones on February 23, 2005.[7] Reports noted the condition of the returned remains included “long, deep cuts marking the lower edge of the Hobbit’s jaw on both sides, said to be caused by a knife used to cut away the rubber mould”; “the chin of a second Hobbit snapped off and glued back together. Whoever was responsible misaligned the pieces and put them at an incorrect angle”; and, “The pelvis was smashed, destroying details that reveal body shape, gait and evolutionary history”.[8] This prompted the discovery team leader Morwood to remark “It’s sickening, Jacob was greedy and acted totally irresponsibly”.”
Henneberg himself was also accused of misconduct. Wikipedia mentions:
“In 2008, Henneberg was suspended from the University of Adelaide pending an investigation of possible fraud. As head of department, the university held him technically responsible for the disappearance of $400,000 in an account he did not personally manage.[29] Henneberg was later cleared of wrongdoing and reinstated by the university with an official apology published in The Advertiser.”
Now Henneberg is back in world’s science news with another genius claim. Meat eating extends life while vegetarianism and veganism shortens it! You might wonder: was it published in PNAS again? Not really, in Dove Press, how pathetic. One of the authors is Henneberg’s wife, Renata Henneberg, who works in his department at the University of Adelaide.
Wenpeng You , Renata Henneberg , Arthur Saniotis , Yanfei Ge , Maciej Henneberg Total Meat Intake is Associated with Life Expectancy: A Cross-Sectional Data Analysis of 175 Contemporary Populations International Journal of General Medicine (2022) doi: 10.2147/ijgm.s333004
The University of Adelaide swiftly issued a press release:
“Has eating meat become unfairly demonised as bad for your health? That’s the question a global, multidisciplinary team of researchers has been studying and the results are in – eating meat still offers important benefits for overall human health and life expectancy. […]
Published in the International Journal of General Medicine today, the study examined the overall health effects of total meat consumption in 170+ countries around the world.
The researchers found that the consumption of energy from carbohydrate crops (grains and tubers) does not lead to greater life expectancy, and that total meat consumption correlates to greater life expectancy, independent of the competing effects of total calories intake, economic affluence, urban advantages, and obesity.”
Henneberg, introduced as Emeritus Professor, is quoted:
“Meat of small and large animals provided optimal nutrition to our ancestors who developed genetic, physiological, and morphological adaptations to eating meat products and we have inherited those adaptations.”
His wife is quoted:
“..when all meat types for all the populations are considered, as they are in this study, the positive correlation between meat consumption and overall health at a population level is not sporadic.”
Another University of Adelaide co-author and a Polish scholar is quoted:
“While this is no surprise to many of us, it still needs to be pointed out,” Dr Saniotis says. It highlights that meat has its own components contributing to our overall health beyond just the number of calories consumed, and that without meat in our diet, we may not thrive.“
Now, traditional Polish kitchen is indeed extremely meat-heavy. But it is also potato-heavy, so I suspect the Hennebergs and Saniotis will make their next discovery about health benefits of potatoes as opposed to unhealthy rice. But then again, who am I to give Henneberg ideas: in 2018 he invented the “Endomyccorhizae like interface” as “nanocognitive device” to treat Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and published it in Frontiers.
There is an extra joke. In 2016, the University of Adelaide announced in another press release:
“Meat consumption contributing to global obesity
Should we be warning consumers about over-consumption of meat as well as sugar? […]
“Our findings are likely to be controversial because they suggest that meat contributes to obesity prevalence worldwide at the same extent as sugar,” says Professor Maciej Henneberg, head of the Biological Anthropology and Comparative Anatomy Research Unit.
“In the analysis of obesity prevalence across 170 countries, we have found that sugar availability in a nation explains 50% of obesity variation while meat availability another 50%. After correcting for differences in nations’ wealth (Gross Domestic Product), calorie consumption, levels of urbanization and of physical inactivity, which are all major contributors to obesity, sugar availability remained an important factor, contributing independently 13%, while meat contributed another 13% to obesity.
“While we believe it’s important that the public should be alert to the over-consumption of sugar and some fats in their diets, based on our findings we believe meat protein in the human diet is also making a significant contribution to obesity,” Professor Henneberg says.”
Huh, meat consumptions extends lifespan by making you obese? Also, did you notice that Henneberg used the same database of 170 countries to make two exactly opposite findings for meat effect on health? The study also has same first author, Henneberg’s loyal student Wenpeng You:
Wenpeng You, Maciej Henneberg. Meat consumption providing a surplus energy in modern diet contributes to obesity prevalence: an ecological analysis. BMC Nutrition, (2016) DOI: 10.1186/s40795-016-0063-9
I told you Henneberg is a contrarian who loves to troll.
Stool transplants or bear bile for COVID-19?
The Conversation tells us of Japanese scientists who found “The crucial connection between gut bacteria and Covid-19 symptoms”:
“A recent Japanese study has proposed an answer. It reports that the risk of people dying of Covid-19 in Japan is related to the microbes present in their guts. This isn’t the first study to indicate a link between gut microbes and how severe a form of Covid-19 people get. A link between gut bacteria and Covid-19 has already been reported in research from Hong Kong and China. “
This is the study:
Masaaki Hirayama , Hiroshi Nishiwaki , Tomonari Hamaguchi, Mikako Ito, Jun Ueyama, Tetsuya Maeda, Kenichi Kashihara, Yoshio Tsuboi, Kinji Ohno Intestinal Collinsella may mitigate infection and exacerbation of COVID-19 by producing ursodeoxycholate PLOS One (2021) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260451
It found that Ursodiol or Ursodeoxycholate (originally found in bear bile, hence the name) is the cure for COVID-19:
“Ursodeoxycholate produced by Collinsella may prevent COVID-19 infection and ameliorate acute respiratory distress syndrome in COVID-19 by suppressing cytokine storm syndrome.”
A stool transplant from a Japanese citizen or some bear bile medicine from a TCM vendor of your choice does sound like the miracle solution! The Conversation continues:
“What appears to make having more ursodeoxycholate helpful is that it blocks the coronavirus from binding to cells, which is what the virus needs to do to infect them, reproduce and cause disease.
Not only that, but ursodeoxycholate has also been shown in lab experiments to reduce inflammation in rats with a spinal injury and to help them recover faster. This could also help reduce the severity of COVID, as in bad cases the disease can be made worse by the immune system overreacting to the virus and damaging the body’s own tissues. By lowering the inflammatory response to COVID, ursodeoxycholate could have a secondary protective effect. […]
The good news is that ursodeoxycholate is safe and available to be taken as a drug – it’s used to treat some liver diseases. What this Japanese study implies is that we could potentially use ursodeoxycholate as a drug to reduce the severity of COVID.”
Genius.
Yale’s Life Extension
Science has spoken, and a great scientific breakthrough announced by Yale University:
“Now a new study led by Yale researchers confirms the health benefits of moderate calorie restrictions in humans — and identifies a key protein that could be harnessed to extend health in humans.
The findings were published on February 10, 2022, in Science.
The research was based on results from the Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy (CALERIE) clinical trial, the first controlled study of calorie restriction in healthy humans. For the trial, researchers first established baseline calorie intake among more than 200 study participants. The researchers then asked a share of those participants to reduce their calorie intake by 14% while the rest continued to eat as usual, and analyzed the long-term health effects of calorie restriction over the next two years.”
This is the study, led by Vishwa Deep Dixit, Director of Yale Center for Research on Aging:
O. Spadaro , Y. Youm , I. Shchukina , S. Ryu , S. Sidorov , A. Ravussin , K. Nguyen , E. Aladyeva , A. N. Predeus , S. R. Smith , E. Ravussin , C. Galban , M. N. Artyomov , V. D. Dixit Caloric restriction in humans reveals immunometabolic regulators of health span Science (2022) doi: 10.1126/science.abg7292
Of course those claims that going hungry extends lifespan are very old and very boring, because what’s the point of extending your life if you don’t enjoy it? So where is the decisive impact and novelty to make it a Science paper, and even an editorial by its presumed reviewers:
Timothy W. Rhoads and Rozalyn M. Anderson, Caloric restriction has a new player Science. (2022) DOI: 10.1126/science.abn6576
The Yale press release explains:
“…the researchers then set out to see if any of the genes they identified in their analysis might be driving some of the beneficial effects of calorie restriction. They honed in [sic!] on the gene for PLA2G7 — or group VII A platelet activating factor acetylhydrolase — which was one of the genes significantly inhibited following calorie restriction. PLA2G7 is a protein produced by immune cells known as macrophages.
This change in PLA2G7 gene expression observed in participants who were limiting their calorie intake suggested the protein might be linked to the effects of calorie restriction. To better understand if PLA2G7 caused some of the effects observed with calorie restriction, the researchers also tracked what happened when the protein was reduced in mice in a laboratory experiment.
“We found that reducing PLA2G7 in mice yielded benefits that were similar to what we saw with calorie restriction in humans,” said Olga Spadaro, a former research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study. Specifically, the thymus glands of these mice were functional for a longer time, the mice were protected from diet-induced weight gain, and they were protected from age-related inflammation. […]
“These findings demonstrate that PLA2G7 is one of the drivers of the effects of calorie restriction,” said Dixit. “Identifying these drivers helps us understand how the metabolic system and the immune system talk to each other, which can point us to potential targets that can improve immune function, reduce inflammation, and potentially even enhance healthy lifespan.”
For instance, it might be possible to manipulate PLA2G7 and get the benefits of calorie restriction without having to actually restrict calories, which can be harmful for some people, he said.”
I am sure it’s all is about to be marketed.
Exercise drug found
Science also keeps discovering genius solutions to exercise, where you can get slim and fit without actually doing sports.
Now, it’s interleukin-6 (IL-6).
Aurel B. Leuchtmann, Regula Furrer, Stefan A. Steurer, Konstantin Schneider‐Heieck, Bettina Karrer‐Cardel, Yves Sagot, Christoph Handschin Interleukin‐6 potentiates endurance training adaptation and improves functional capacity in old mice Journal of Cachexia Sarcopenia and Muscle (2022) doi: 10.1002/jcsm.12949
The study concluded that old people can be treated by IL-6 to make them fit and agile:
“Our results demonstrate that the application of pulsatile, low-dose rIL-6 can potentiate the beneficial effects of a low-volume endurance training on muscle intrinsic and systemic parameters in old mice. […] Therefore, following a careful evaluation of safety, tolerability, and adverse effects in the elderly, the use of combined rIL-6 training interventions in the prevention and treatment of age-associated functional decline could be initiated in a relatively short amount of time and help to overcome the reduced training response or even exercise intolerance often observed in this population.41
One of the authors, Yves Sagot, is a “consultant for Sonnet Biotherapeutics CH SA, a company promoting the development of low-dose IL-6 treatments for peripheral neuropathies.” But it gets better, look who these Swiss scholars collaborated with: “We thank M. Donath, M. Böni-Schnetzler, and the rest of their group for providing equipment and assistance with the cytokine measurements.“
Now, Marc Donath is the mentor of Kathrin Maedler, a zombie scientist and one of the most toxic cheaters in diabetes research. Together, Donath and Maedler once postulated Il-6 to be the cure for diabetes, thousands of patients were treated in clinical trials based on preclinical research already exposed as falsified. Of course the therapy didn’t work, as even Donath eventually quietly admitted.
Do you also think that Sagon and Handschin can stuff their great IL-6 discovery where the sun doesn’t shine and stay away from clinician trials?
But look, the results for IL-6 as magic exercise drug were reproduced!
Timothy M. Kistner, Bente K. Pedersen & Daniel E. Lieberman Interleukin 6 as an energy allocator in muscle tissue Nature Metabolism (2022). doi: 10.1038/s42255-022-00538-4
The study summed up:
“We predict that during bouts of physical activity, myokine IL-6 fulfills the three main characteristics of a short-term energy allocator: it is secreted from muscle in response to an energy deficit, it liberates somatic energy through lipolysis and it enhances muscular energy uptake and transiently downregulates immune function. We then extend this model of energy allocation beyond myokine IL-6 to reinterpret the roles that IL-6 plays in chronic inflammation, as well as during COVID-19-associated hyperinflammation and multiorgan failure.”
The Copenhagen University professor Bente Pedersen had 4 retractions on this very same topic already, the über-fraudster Milena Penkowa got the full blame, Pedersen was also found guilty of research misconduct, but she then went to court and had the decision overruled, as Nature reported in 2015:
“In a decision issued in 2013 and affirmed in 2014, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) ruled that Bente Klarlund Pedersen, a physiologist at the University of Copenhagen, had acted in “a grossly negligent manner” that constituted “scientific dishonesty”. The DCSD found that she had misrepresented experiments on biopsied muscle tissue and failed to detect manipulations of microscope images by a scientist she oversaw. […]
In a unanimous decision, the High Court of Eastern Denmark cleared Klarlund Pedersen of the charges and ordered the DCSD to pay 400,000 Danish kronor (US$61,000) in court and legal fees. The court found that Pedersen’s actions did not amount to scientific dishonesty.”
Same court found Penkowa guilty in full as the sole culprit, even her PhD was revoked by the Copenhagen University.
But Pedersen’s court victory reminds me of this case elsewhere in Scandinavia, where May Griffith had her research misconduct findings overruled by a Swedish court:
And this, where former Karolinska Institutet rector Karin Dahlman-Wright had her research misconduct findings overruled by a Swedish court:
Doe these new publication all mean Penkowa, Pedersen, Maedler and Donath were always innocent? That their research was true?
Was the fraudster Pontus Boström also innocent? His mentor Bruce Spiegelman is prepared to tear off the head of everyone who will question the existence of the exercise hormone irisin.
Or maybe they all are not to be trusted in that exercise hormone field.
News in Tweets
- There is definitely no shortage of male geniuses in French academia, especially in Marseille. Here another one, Jean-Marc Sabatier, editor with predatory publishers Bentham, MDPI and OMICS, and an antivaxxer who declares in a media interview: “For my part, it is clear that the objective pursued by the majority of countries in the world is the vaccination of all against SARS-CoV-2. This mass vaccination is unreasonable and often comes at the expense of potential alternative treatments, such as vitamin D, Ivermectin and others.“
- The pseudonymous Haklak writes: “Juhun Ha, a professor at Kyung Hee University, has corrected 11 published papers, expressed concern in 1 paper, and retracted 3 papers. On PubPeer, there are comments for 26 papers from 2003 (38 years old?) till 2019 (54 years old?), Which is a surprising suspicion of fraud. The university does not conduct a nekato [falsification, fraud, theft] survey. No disposal. The amount of damage to the public is (estimated) 300 million yen (roughly).”
- A badly faked papermill product Wang et al 2020 with a picture of a cute wild rodent instead of a cancer cell culture assay is still not retracted by Taylor & Francis.
- For those academics still unsure if they should boycott Russian research institutions: Anna Abalkina uncovers more Russian papermill customers.
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For Better Science 
Dear Leonid, you have made a mistake with your Vishva Dixits – the photo you have is of Genentech’s Vishva M Dixit, whereas your (otherwise excellent) piece is about Yale’s Vishwa Deep Dixit.
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Oh. It was about his brother. Will fix!
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Someone should tell Henneberg et al. that it’s Endomycorrhizae they mean. The chimps at Frontiers sure won’t.
Another gem from that paper: “Brain-machine interfaces (BCI)…” They can’t even make a 3-letter acronym properly!
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