Imperial Irishman Hugh Brady (and his Dublin leprechauns)

The Imperial College London is a place of diversity and tolerance. They have an Irish president, you see. Hugh R Brady, appointed last year, brings exactly the kind of scientific ethics an elite London university expects.

Imperial College is so elite they previously drove their German professor Stefan Grimm into suicide, sacked a Chinese fraudster (Eric W Lam) while protecting all the white and English ones, even Justin Stebbing they still can’t really let go of. Currently Imperial is trying to defend a bunch of piss-takers behind the trash startup Melico for no other obvious reason but their white Englishness.

To be fair, it’s not like other elite English universities and research institutions are any better. Still, let’s talk about the new president of Imperial and his Irish mates.

Hugh Redmond Brady, born 1959, previously acted as President of University College Dublin in his home town in Ireland and in 2015, after 9 years in this office, he moved to England to lead the University of Bristol as president. In 2022, he went to London to head the Imperial College. He has also industrial interests, as non-executive director of a pharma company ICON and the cheese company Kerry.

Brady became a full-time businessman and bureaucrat, but as every university rector, he used to be a humble professor and do research once. Medicine in fact, specifically nephrology. His close collaborator back at UCD used to be Professor Catherine Godson, director of the UCD Diabetes Complications Research Centre and member of the Royal Irish Academy. The earliest Godson-authored paper with Brady dates to 1985. When Brady was UCD President, Godson held the office of Vice President Innovation and Corporate Partnerships.

Now look what Godson and Brady published in the journal where the former is member of the editorial board. This and other evidence was posted on PubPeer by the pseudonymous sleuth Clare Francis:

Good for the authors that this once zero-tolerance society journal was assimilated by Elsevier, got rid of every decent editorial office member and stopped retracting fake papers.

So here is another Brady-Godson coproduction in JBC:

Michael R. Clarkson , Madeline Murphy , Sunil Gupta , Teresa Lambe , Harald S. Mackenzie , Catherine Godson, Finian Martin, Hugh R. Brady High glucose-altered gene expression in mesangial cells. Actin-regulatory protein gene expression is triggered by oxidative stress and cytoskeletal disassembly Journal of Biological Chemistry (2002) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m109172200

Their coauthor Finian Martin is another professor at UCD, now retired as emeritus. How about this lovingly forged gel?

Madeline Murphy, Neil G. Docherty , Brenda Griffin , Jillian Howlin , Emmett McArdle , Ruth McMahon , Holger Schmid , Matthias Kretzler , Alejandra Droguett , Sergio Mezzano , Hugh R. Brady , Fiona Furlong , Catherine Godson , Finian Martin IHG-1 amplifies TGF-beta1 signaling and is increased in renal fibrosis Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (2008) doi: 10.1681/asn.2007101080 

Another fudged gel figure, by Martin, Godson, and Brady:

Who cares, it’s just the loading control again, right? Here is something coauthored by Godson, but without Brady. The last author Derek Brazil used to be at UCD at that time. He is now in Belfast.

For years ago, UCD was very excited that the International Association of Inflammation Societies decided to celebrate Godson with the Women in Science Award , because all other women in science were not as great as she.

Maybe it is worth mentioning that the former UCD Vice President Innovation and Corporate Partnerships also collaborated with the by now infamous duo Jesmond Dalli (queen Mary University London) and Charles Serhan (Harvard), recently exposed in Science for massive biotech scam based on research fraud:

An important critique in Science about data involving specialised pre-resolving mediators (SPMs)https://t.co/Uy2meH7AVf
Critics found “at least 70 papers between the Serhan [Harvard] and Dalli [QMUL, UK] research groups with chromatograms that they considered suspicious.”

— Patricia Murray (@PMurray_65) May 6, 2022

Emma Börgeson , Andrew M.F. Johnson , Yun Sok Lee , Andreas Till , Gulam Hussain Syed , Syed Tasadaque Ali-Shah , Patrick J. Guiry , Jesmond Dalli , Romain A. Colas , Charles N. Serhan, Kumar Sharma , Catherine Godson Lipoxin A4 Attenuates Obesity-Induced Adipose Inflammation and Associated Liver and Kidney Disease Cell Metabolism (2015) doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2015.05.003

A PubPeer user commented, excerpt:

“This article is one of a group of around 70 which contain LC/MS/MS data on “specialized proresolving mediators” from the Dalli and Serhan laboratories, published between 2015-2019. In these, mass spectrometry chromatograms appear abnormal with odd-shaped peaks and features indicative of “cut and paste”.

These figures were recently confirmed by Drs Serhan and Dr Dalli to be “illustrations”. See here for confirmation: https://pubpeer.com/publications/D87ED91A403E679FE2508B741521E6“

Let’s go back to fake gels. This paper looks rather innocent (a spliced gel lane) but wait till you see what Brady’s mentee John Crean (now UCD’s associate professor), achieved as group leader later on:

Behold, artworks by Crean, Godson, Brazil and Martin, all done under Brady’s watch as UCD president:

Noel Faherty , Simon P. Curran , Helen O’Donovan , Finian Martin , Catherine Godson, Derek P. Brazil, John K. Crean CCN2/CTGF increases expression of miR-302 microRNAs, which target the TGFβ type II receptor with implications for nephropathic cell phenotypes Journal of Cell Science (2012) doi: 10.1242/jcs.105528

I wonder who faked those. Team effort, maybe? Now without Brazil:

Noel Faherty , Helen O’Donovan , David Kavanagh , Stephen Madden , Gareth J McKay , Alexander P Maxwell , Finian Martin , Catherine Godson , John Crean TGFβ and CCN2/CTGF mediate actin related gene expression by differential E2F1/CREB activation BMC Genomics (2013) doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-14-525

I wrote to Brady, Godson, Crean and the research integrity responsibles at UCD and the Imperial College, asking to comment on the PubPeer evidence. Nobody replied. Meh.

Ok, here is the last one, featuring Godson and Crean, who made fine careers thanks to Brady’s patronage. I would never trust a research paper containing such a bizarrely fake gel figure:

Derick Mitchell , Sarah J. O’Meara , Andrew Gaffney , John K.G. Crean, B. Therese Kinsella , Catherine Godson The Lipoxin A4 receptor is coupled to SHP-2 activation: implications for regulation of receptor tyrosine kinases Journal of Biological Chemistry (2007) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m611004200 

Now, the last author and yet another UCD professor, Therese Kinsella, was also originally exposed by Clare Francis for research fraud. She has 15 papers on PubPeer, and retracted 6 in total, there was Retraction Watch coverage in 2018. It is not clear if Kinsella still works at UCD, her institutional profile page was wiped clean. She probably decided to focus on running her company ATXA Therapeutics. Clare Francis arrived at Godson (and then to Brady) by following the Kinsella track.

If you want to meet research cheaters, follow one of them around.

Update 7.02.2023

I should have mentioned that Brady’s predecessor s Imperial College President, Alice Gast resigned after she was exposed as a bully:

“Britain’s highest-paid university chief and another senior executive created a culture of favouritism and exclusion at Imperial College, according to damning details of a report released after she had attempted to suppress its publication.

Imperial’s president, Alice Gast, last year apologised after an independent report found that she and the college’s chief financial officer had bullied members of staff. However, they have resisted calls by student and academic representatives to resign, while she attempted to block the report’s release under freedom of information.”

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