Schneider Shorts 24.03.2023 – Do not permit to write again
Schneider Shorts 24.03.2023 - a Chinese double-bluff with raccoon dogs, an Italian professor defends his Iranian papers, other Italian professors honored with Swedish medals, with green energy retractions In USA, a Spanish papermiller in russia, a Persian fallen star in Germany, and finally, yet another pervert German professor unnamed.
Schneider Shorts of 24 March 2023 – a Chinese double-bluff with raccoon dogs, an Italian professor defends his Iranian papers, other Italian professors honored with Swedish medals, with green energy retractions In USA, a Spanish papermiller in russia, a Persian fallen star in Germany, and finally, yet another pervert German professor unnamed.
Table of Discontent
Science Elites
Sex for grades – philosophy professor can be sacked, appeal court says
A German court decided that a philosophy professor at the University of Erfurt in Germany can be finally sacked for sexual harassment. MDRreported on 21 March 2023, translated:
“The Thuringian Higher Administrative Court has decided that a suspended Erfurt philosophy professor must be dismissed from his employment after having sexual contact with female students. He had been accused of forcing female students to have sex with the promise of good grades. Among other things, the man is said to have forced a student to perform oral sex and harassed another in a similar way. Another student had rejected his sexually motivated contact attempts. The incidents happened in 2015.
In its 2020 judgment, the administrative court in Meiningen found that the university teacher had “seriously” violated his official duties. Nevertheless, the initiation of sex in the university between teachers and students does not justify the Meiningen court to remove the person concerned from the civil service. […]
The Thuringian Ministry of Science and the philosophy professor both appealed the verdict . According to a spokeswoman, the ministry was aiming for final dismissal from university service. The Higher Administrative Court granted this application. An appeal to the Federal Administrative Court was not admitted.”
As usual in Germany, we are not told who this nasty character might be. Because he will sue to protect his privacy. Funny how professors once nationally celebrated in media deploy lawyers to keep their names secret when they are exposed as sexual harassers. Like these cases in Cologne or in Göttingen earlier, where I was able to find their real names.
Sometimes one really has to be grateful to the yellow press for clues, here Bild:
Carsten H then, philosophy professor at University of Erfurt. This is what a Google search delivers – a Prof Dr Carsten Held, specialising in philosophy of science, currently listed as “suspended”. According to internet archive, the suspension was imposed between July and September 2020.
When I wrote to Held’s institutional email address, my email bounced with “Reason: Over quota”.
And if you think his institutional profile picture looks different from the court photo in Bild, well, here on the right is Held giving a talk at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012. Only the beard is gone and the hair greyed since.
What a loss for the philosophy of science! Held wrote book chapters on the topic of “Truth in Science and Ethics” (a 2008 Festschrift to honour his mentor Winfried Franzen, and on “Quantum Mechanics – The Kochen-Specker Theorem” (in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006). Oh yes, Held is an expert not just on philosophy of science and sexual harassment, but also on Quantum Mechanics! See Held 2008, Held 2012a, Held 2012b, or this book chapter from 2006: “The Bohr-Einstein Debate and the Fundamental Problem of Quantum Mechanics“.
Independent Researcher
Meet the Iranian nanotechnologist Goshtasp Cheraghian, who used to make great discoveries in materials science at the Technische Universität (TU) Braunschweig in Germany.
In June 2022, the university celebrated a discovery in a press release:
“The results of this research, recently published in Nanotechnology Reviews, focus on the impact of nanocomposites on the aging resistance of road asphalt binders. “The used nanoparticles act like a shield against moisture and aging, thus making the asphalt mixture less prone to brittleness and cracking,” explains Professor Michael P. Wistuba, head of ISBS [Braunschweig Pavement Engineering Center]. For the development of the next generation of road asphalt materials, the modification of asphalt binders by nanoparticles could be of great benefit, he adds. “Clay/fumed silica nanocomposite with a large surface area is an ideal candidate as a cost-effective and non-toxic material that can meaningfully impact on shielding asphalt in WMA [warm mix asphalt] technology,” says Dr Cheraghian. “In addition, our findings on the concept of the molecular interaction between nanoparticles and asphalt binders can open new avenues for the application of nanotechnology in asphalt engineering.”
This was the groundbreaking study:
Goshtasp Cheraghian, Michael P. Wistuba, Sajad Kiani, Ali Behnood, Masoud Afrand, Andrew R. Barron: Engineered nanocomposites in asphalt binders. In: Nanotechnology Reviews, (2022) doi: 10.1515/ntrev-2022-0062.
Did you notice the known papermiller and a Highly Cited Researcher Masoud Afrand among the authors? Read about him here:
Already in 2018, Dr Cheraghian was celebrated by TU Braunschweig for another scientific breakthrough with Afrand. Translated:
“Scientists from the Institute for Road Science at the TU Braunschweig, the Islamic Azad University in Tehran (Iran), the Louisiana State University in the USA, the Curtin University in Australia and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in India have synthesized a nanocomposite from clay and silicon dioxide , developed for drilling fluids. The researchers led by Goshtasp Cheraghian from the TU Braunschweig and Professor Jitendra S. Sangwai from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras reported their results in the Elsevier magazine “Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects”. […]
“The nanoparticles are of particular value to industry as they are easily synthesized and can also improve the rheological stability of drilling muds at higher temperatures,” says Cheraghian.”
It was this paper:
Goshtasp Cheraghian, Qinglin Wu, Masood Mostofi Mei-Chun Li, Masoud Afrand, Jitendra S.Sangwai; “Effect of a novel clay/silica nanocomposite on water-based drilling fluids: Improvements in rheological and filtration properties“; Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects; (2018) doi: 10.1016/j.colsurfa.2018.06.072
Cheragian didn’t end up on Afrand’s papermill trash by accident. They are a team, the former was a proud recipient of whooping 128 citations from a “special issue” scam which Afrand used to run at the Journal of Energy Storage. See for example Li et al 2022, and read the backstory here:
Cheraghian has his own record on PubPeer. Examples include his collaboration with another papermilling fraudster from Iran, Mohsen Sharifpur. The works were flagged for inappropriate citations to irrelevant papers by other papermillers primarily Changhe Li, but also Nader Karimi, Davood Torghaie, and of course also Afrand, Sharifpour and Cheraghian themselves.
Alexander Magazinov: “The context suggests that references [24-28] should be about battery cooling. They are not. Instead, this batch consists of references co-authored by a certain C Li.” Hai et al 2023
N. H. Wise: “The numbering of the references in this paper makes it obvious that references 65-85 were added after peer review at the final proof stage. References 65-77 have been added in the introduction, meaning they shouldn’t have those numbers.”
More recently, after acting as project leader at TU Braunschweig, Cheraghian came to be affiliated with the Humboldt University in Berlin, specifically as a member of the group of Michael J. Bojdys, as press releases from 2022 mentioned (here and here). Bojdys has a second affiliation at King’s College London, and Cheraghian started to wear it, too.
Cheraghian also acted as guest editor for MDPI. The Special Issue, titled “Advance in Nanocomposites and Nanofluids” and edited all by himself, contains 9 papers. 8 of which are authored (and likely also peer reviewed) by the editor Cheraghian. His co-authors are of course Sharifpour and other Iranian crooks. Curiously, while the 2022 paper provides a Humboldt University affiliation for Cheraghian, and the oldest 2021 paper credits TU Braunschweig, the in-between 2021 papers from this Special Issue list the following:
Both TU Braunschweig and Humboldt University opened research misconduct investigations after Alexander Magazinov contacted them.
And these investigations already had an effect. A recent paper in MDPI, co-authored with Sharifpur and Alqaed, lists this sole affiliation for Cheraghian:
“Independent Researcher, 14169 Berlin, Germany”
Where next?
MDPI announcement in 2023: “Dr. Goshtasp Cheraghian is currently a postdoctoral scientist in the Functional Nanomaterials group at the Humboldt University of Berlin and King’s College, London. Dr. Cheraghian’s research interests focus on polymer nanocomposites, nanotechnology for energy and environmental applications and materials characterization. He has been among the top 2% of scientists in the world for three consecutive years and the top 500 scientists in the field of energy. Dr. Cheraghian has also published over 80 research papers (citation>2700, h-index: 33, i10-index: 55), 3 chapters in books, obtained 9 granted patents.“
Spanish bomb
Remember Rafael Luque? The Highly Cited Researcher from Spain, the King of Papermillers, with a huge PubPeer record? His papermill collaborations spanning all of Asia: China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, russia, you name it? Well, there are some news in Luque’s professional development.
News Nr 1: Luque is not employed as professor at the University of Cordoba (UCO) anymore. As he himself wrote to me:
“I am no longer an employee of UCO since January 2023 (despite the efforts from my new Rector to try to keep me). Exciting times!“
So where is he employed then? News Nr 2: in Sweden!
An announcement by the Mid Sweden University from December 2021:
“Mid Sweden University is granted just over SEK 5.6 million by the Knowledge Foundation for four new recruitments at the FSCN research centre.
The funding goes to the recruitment of a new professor of mechanical engineering, an international visiting professor of chemical engineering, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and an international visiting professor of green chemistry.
Armando Cordova, professor of chemical engineering, is behind one of the applications.
– We are pleased to be able to recruit Rafael Luque, professor at the University of Cordoba, as a visiting professor at Mid Sweden University. He is a world-leading researcher in green chemistry research and biomass processing. The recruitment will contribute new skills and new insights to Mid Sweden University’s existing expertise and innovation projects in catalysis, organic chemistry and nanocellulose. In this way, a strong synergistic effect is created in our research on the cellulose-based materials and sustainable chemicals of the future, says Armando Cordova.”
The announcement links to the press release by the Knowledge Foundation, which however has been deleted (here archived copy). It mentions that Luque’s visiting professor position was funded with SEK 432k, which is less than € 40k. One can’t live long on that in Sweden. But €40k goes a longer way where Luque’s new main affiliation is, which brings us to News Nr. 3.
Luque went to bed with ruscists (or rascists), his new main affiliation now is:
Peoples Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 6 Miklukho Maklaya str., 117198 Moscow, Russian Federation
It should be mentioned that “Peoples Friendship” is a cynical Soviet word creation, a Stalinist euphemism which in practice meant subjugation of entire nations as well as deportations, terror and mass-murder targetted at ethnic groups. Coincidence or not, Luque seems to have started to flaunt this affiliation when russia attacked Ukraine with a full-scale genocidal war.
Alexander Magazinov presents you two russian professors whom Elsevier and MDPI consider respectable: a Lt Colonel of putin’s mass-murdering army, and a machine-gun totting rascist. Both buy from papermills.
Luque got to “Peoples Friendship” University in Moscow via his buddy there, the faculty dean Leonid Voskressensky (awarded by putin in 2020 with the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 2nd Class), they authored a number of joint papermill products together. Yet to his fellow Europeans, Luque pretends to #StandWithUkraine:
At our group @383Fqm from @Univcordoba we warmly welcome Ukrainian scientists @Sci_for_Ukraine at any level (MSc, PhD, postdoc, Profs) and experience in organic chemistry, (nano)materials, catalysis, biomass/waste conversion accomodation & contract offered!#StandWithUkriane
Here are two very recent papers with his new russian affiliation, in the Elsevier journal Fuel: a Pakistani papermill fabrication with Luque’s mentee Awais Ahmad as first author, and a papermill fabrication of unclear origin, featuring authors from China, Korea, Iran and… Czechia.
The “Czech” author is Rajender Varma, freshly kicked out by the University of Olomouc, but now sporting an affiliation at the University of Liberec. This university remained silent despite my email reminders.
“I could not comprehend the situation where a university picks up on individuals with an extraordinary and sterling performance and basically destroy one of the top European institutions. ” – Raj Varma
Luque told me he is an avid reader of For Better Science, and added:
“…nothing to hide, nothing to worry and of course I am not going to threaten to sue you or your buddies like all fraudsters do (obviously they have stuff to hide).“
The Rector of the Mid Sweden University, Anders Fällström, announced to investigate. He remained silent when asked whether Luque still works there.
Do not permit to write again
Iranian papermill fraud sometimes affects the biggest bigwigs.
Meet our hapless and innocent victim, the graphene researcher Francesco Bonaccorso, Deputy Head of Innovation at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Genua. He is also Fellow of the Royal Society and faculty member at the University of Cambridge, which informs us:
“He was responsible for defining the ten years scientific and technological roadmap for the European Graphene Flagship. He is now Deputy of the work-package Innovation of the Flagship.”
Basically, the man in charge a Billion of Euro invested in the EU’s ten year-long Graphene Flagship project, running till 2024.
How can EU Flagships help with coronavirus pandemic? Human Brain Project offers IT power and cigarettes, while Graphene Flagship established a COVID-19 Task Force. With Francesco “Stripy” Stellacci as virology expert!
Bonaccorso, together with his IIT colleague Vittorio Pellegrini, founded in 2018 the spin-off company BeDimensional, which markets graphene technology.
The IIT professor Bonaccorso has an Iranian PhD student, Ahmad Bagheri. Who introduced Bonaccorso and Pellegrini to some Iranian friends with a special approach to science.
“Some particles were either added or removed. The height profiles are not in very good agreement with visually observed shape of particles along the line s. The maximal thickness of particles according to height profile is not in good agreement with colour scale .”
“Images in Fig.3 and Fig.3 of these two papers are also from the same sample:“
I wrote to Bonaccorso and Pellegrini. They remained silent. After a reminder, Bonaccorso sent me this reply, its style and its quality of English very unbefitting a Cambridge don:
“Do not permit to write again.
Your accusation of falsified data is unacceptable.
If you write another email, we will act legally against you.
Francesco Bonaccorso“
Wow, tough guy, imagine how he talks to his subordinates and lab members.
By the way, there is a tragic figure in this: Zdeněk Sofer, co-author of the two papers above, and professor of chemistry in Prague. Number one, Sofer is a coauthor of Radek Zboril‘s on the paper Tucek et al Nature Comms 2016, which was retracted due to fraud by Zboril’s and his Olomouc colleagues.
“I should remind you that the editorial offices that investigated your allegations did not found any evidence of scientific misconduct or data fabrication. In my opinion, your allegation may bear the elements of defamation and false accusation” – Prof Radek Zboril
But Sofer was also the author of this masterpiece of satire and sarcasm, where the authors proved that graphene can just as well be successfully doped with actual chicken shit:
But forget chicken shit. As Bonaccorso and his lawyers will soon prove that graphene can even be doped with legal threats and Iranian papermills!
Another thing. A co-author of the problematic papers above, including those by Amoozadeh, is Hossein Beydaghi. He is another IIT emplyoee working for Bonaccorso. Here is Beydaghi’s and Bagheri’s earlier paper and its fake spectra:
Beydaghi seems to be an even bigger problem than Bagheri. But they bring Bonaccorso papers!
Oh, and by the way: in all of the above papers the BedImentional businessmen Bonaccorso and Pellegrini insist to have no competing financial interests whatsoever.
DON’T MESS WITH FRANCESCO. “BeDimensional SpA’s co-founders. From left to right: Vittorio Pellegrini, Francesco Bonaccorso and Andrea Gamucci.” Source: Graphene Flagship.
Scientist Medal Lecture
A reader recently forwarded me an email from Ashutosh Tiwari‘s International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM), inviting him to “IAAM Fellow Summit 2023”:
“The award and recognition committee of the International Association of Advanced Materials has selected you this year for the ‘IAAM Scientist Medal’ (www.iaamonline.org/iaam-scientist-medal) for your distinctive contribution to the interfacing the materials with multi-inter-trans disciplinary fields of science, engineering, and technology. As per our obligation, we are delighted to invite you to deliver your Scientist Medal Lecture at theIAAM Fellow Summit (www.advancedmaterialscongress.org/fellow-summit).
Please submit your abstract to any of above scheduled ‘Fellow Summits 2023’ portal by 31 March 2023. The citation for the ‘IAAM Scientist Medal’ will be handed out after delivering your medal lecture at the fellow summit. All arrangements for registration fee, travel, including visas, accommodation, and transportation, are the responsibility of the participants.”
Four years after Ashutosh Tiwari’s scamferences and research fraud were exposed, his impressive-sounding yet fictional “International Association of Advanced Materials”, or IAAM, still opens doors, hearts and wallets.
But then, I found piping hot news from Italy about a proud professor who must have received a similar email, and then agreed to give this same “Scientist Medal Lecture”.
Meet Lorenzo Malavasi, vice-director of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pavia. His university issued on 21 March 2023 a press release (translated):
Prof. Lorenzo Malavasi , full professor of Physical Chemistry at the Chemistry Department of the University of Pavia , was awarded the “IAAM Science Medal” by the International Association of Advanced Materials in consideration of the important contributions provided in the development of materials in the multidisciplinary fields of science, engineering and technology.
On the occasion of the next Fellow Summit , prof. Malavasi will deliver the Scientist Medal Lecture .
This award confirms the relevance of prof. Malavasi who coordinates the research group “Energy and Materials Chemistry” at the Department of Chemistry which focuses on the development and engineering of new materials for the energy transition with applications such as the generation of green hydrogen and optoelectronics.”
I wrote to Malavasi and his university, silence. Yet whoop-dee-doo, the press release was swiftly deleted. You can find an archived copy here. When I sent it to Pavia, Malavasi replied:
“We were absolutely not aware of the subject you raised about IAAM and we thank you about this issue. I was contacted for the award for which I never approached anyone and paid anything therefore we were in full good faith. No other activity will be done with IAAM. No further advertisement will be done to the award and I will take all the actions required.“
Here is another proud Italian professor, Luca Scotti. As a local newspaper reported in January 2023 (translated):
“Sweden crowns the researcher of the university “G. d’Annunzio” Luca Scotti, author of the discovery of the cluster Argiriumsun-c.
Professor and researcher in the Department of Medical, Oral and Biotechnological Sciences, Scotti obtained the prestigious Award Scientific from the Iaam (International Association of Advanced Materials) medical research association for having discovered and synthesized this new atomic aggregate with unique characteristics.
Argiriumsun-c is the acronym with which the new and promising cluster was registered which will soon find concrete applications both in the medical field, but also in the veterinary and botanical fields….”
Basically, some Italian looney pretending to be professor at a rather minor Italian university ran to the local village newspaper to inform them that he got a kind of Nobel Prize for his magic cure for everything. Scotti is such a sad loon that he boldly announces already at the beginning of his CV to be editorial board member with the predatory publisher Baishideng.
Trouble afoot in the lab of Scott Geyer, associate teaching professor at the chemistry department of the Wake Forest University in USA. The data falsifications were exposed by Orchestes quercus, I will let you guess who this sleuth is.
Let’s start with this paper, retracted a few months ago.
There were some rather technical concerns and suspicions of duplications undermining this study’s reliability, which the first author tried to dissuade on PubPeer. Then Christophe Didier arrived, proclaiming:
“I stumbled upon juicier stuff that confirms the article is made-up rubbish.”
“In Figure 1a, duplicated particles in TEM data“
“In Figure S16, duplicated images in TEM data.“
“In Figure S36, badly duplicated noise. Note that those are different samples.”
There was more:
Orchestes quercus: “The CoP2 EXAFS data in https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201900813 (Fig. S11a) shares a surprising number of points with the AgP2 EXAFS data in https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13388-8 (Fig. 7a). The data were taken at different edges (Co K-edge versus Ag K-edge) and have an ‘arbitrary unit’ vertical scale.“
“The authors are retracting the Article due to several issues with figure assembly and data integrity. Nanoparticles appear to be duplicated within the same image in Figure 1a. In addition, there are unexplained anomalies in Supplementary Figures 1, 2, 24, and 36. These issues undermine confidence in the integrity of the study and its conclusions. All authors agree with this retraction.”
Gosh, such a pity it got retracted, because Geyer previously announced this breakthrough in clean fuel technology from CO2 on TV!
“Fig. 6e. The XRD spectra of the electrode after 1 and 12 hrs of use show a surprising similarity in noise whilst peaks change hugely. .”
“Fig. 7F.The current traces show a surprising noise pattern, with stretches fully repeating.”“In Figure S13 Cyclic voltammograms are plotted that have been measured at different (unspecified) scan rates. The curves taken at different rates look very similar. They show features of the same shape and width at the same voltage, only their amplitude differs. In fact, when scaling the topmost curve by 5/6, 4/6, 3/6, … all the other curves can be derived.”
“The retraction has been agreed on following concerns raised by a third party and a subsequent investigation at Wake Forest University. Data integrity issues were found in figures 6e and 7d. As a result, the editors consider the conclusions of this article invalid.”
Not much information there.
In June 2022, the paper Lu et al Nanoscale 2020 was corrected for a duplicated image, Maarten van Kampen was told by the Wake Forest University that they exempted that one from the investigation. On 3 January 2023, Maarten was told this:
“Thank you again for your report on possible misconduct associated with papers published by Hui Li in the period from 2017-2019. We have completed our review and appropriate actions are being taken according to university guidelines that pertain to such cases.”
Ah. So the Wake Forest University is treating it as a Hui Li case. Not as a Scott Geyer case. Problem is, there are more common papers on PubPeer. These might also get retracted soon. Like this green energy study, which data was recycled in the retracted paper above:
“Pre- and post acid treatment XPS measurements manage to exactly reproduce noise and some peaks (Fig S14).”“Time-resolved photo-luminescence decay curves share noise between the curves (Fig. S37)“
“Fig. S13(a) and (b) show TEM images of a very similar cluster (?) of CoP2 nanoparticles. The particles in panel (b) have been treated with acetic acid. The paper is very scant on details wrt Fig. S13. It is, however, exceedingly unlikely that the treatment took place whilst the CoP2 particles were sitting on a TEM grid. And that the particles remained in the same location, and were imaged in the exact same location, rotation, etc. And that some little black dots appeared and others disappeared due to this treatment.”“Before- and after acetic acid treatment FTIR curves show surprisingly identical regions (Fig. S15)“
That paper recycled data from yet another green energy study from Geyer’s lab:
“The HRTEM image in Fig. 2c of 10.1002/adma.201900813 is identical to that of Fig. S2 (b) in DOI: 10.1002/adma.201705796 after horizontally stretching the image by 5.5%. The scalebar differs by more than a factor 2, however, and the measured angles differ (horizontal stretching?).“
“Fig. 1a of 10.1002/adma.201705796. The XRD patterns of two different materials are near identical, especially in the regions showing noise. Red CoP curve has been shifted upwards to overlap with the blue CoP2 curve.““Fig. S17. The two Raman spectra on pristine and OER-treated Co2P share large stretches of presumably noise. On top of this, the ‘noise’ shows repeating stretches.”
The Deputy Editor of the Wiley journal Advanced Materials, Babak Mostaghaci, informed Maarten in January 2022 that they will investigate. Other journals and publishers remained silent. A year later, in January 2023, Wiley’s research integrity manager Elizabeth Moylan informed Maarten:
“The journal team have recently heard back from Wake Forest University who have also been conducting their own investigation. The Editors will be determining the most suitable publication outcomes for the published articles based on this report and will keep you posted.”
They are still determining. Here another fake green energy paper, in ACS:
“Figure S6: the time trace consists of 3 exact repeats of the same pattern, down to the noise.”“Fig. 4: the time seems to be running temporarily backwards for the biexponential decay model”
“Fig. S10: is the absorbance of PEDOT:PSS/CdSe and PEDOT:PSS/CdSe/Pt(200) really expected to be that similar at longer wavelengths?““Fig. 3B: the open potential measurements of the PEDOT / PEDOT:Pt curves share the exact same noise. Also, the ffigure consists of two identical blocks of data.“
Imagine what invaluable service this green energy fraud does to the fossil fuels industry. Almost as bad as fake vaccine studies or fake cigarette research. Li is still listed as a graduate student at Geyer’s lab, not for long probably. I am sure Shell or BP will thank him with a cushy job for his talent and his services.
I obviously understand why Wake Forest University treats it as an exclusively Hui Li case. A Chinese student in a white US American’s lab commits fraud behind his naive PI’s back, gets caught, duly punished and sent back home. A beautiful Retraction Watch-worthy moral tale. Meanwhile, the Biden administration announced to invest billions into green energies, and who is a better fit than Dr Geyer?
“Researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) have developed a small-molecule drug that prevents weight gain and adverse liver changes in mice fed a high-sugar, high-fat Western diet throughout life.
“When we give this drug to the mice for a short time, they start losing weight. They all become slim,” said Madesh Muniswamy, Ph.D., professor of medicine in the health science center’s Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine.
Findings by the collaborators, also from the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University, were published Feb. 27 in Cell Reports. Muniswamy, director of the Center for Mitochondrial Medicine at UT Health San Antonio, is the senior author.”
This is the paper, reporting a new magic pill which allows you to get slim while doing no sports and eating everything you want:
Travis R. Madaris , Manigandan Venkatesan , Soumya Maity , Miriam C. Stein , Neelanjan Vishnu , Mridula K. Venkateswaran , James G. Davis , Karthik Ramachandran , Sukanthathulse Uthayabalan , Cristel Allen , Ayodeji Osidele , Kristen Stanley , Nicholas P. Bigham , Terry M. Bakewell , Melanie Narkunan , Amy Le , Varsha Karanam , Kang Li , Aum Mhapankar , Luke Norton , Jean Ross, M. Imran Aslam, W. Brian Reeves, Brij B. Singh, Jeffrey Caplan, Justin J. Wilson, Peter B. Stathopulos, Joseph A. Baur, Muniswamy Madesh, Limiting Mrs2-dependent mitochondrial Mg2+ uptake induces metabolic programming in prolonged dietary stress,Cell Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112155
The drug is called CPACC, already patented by Muniswarmy and is reported to restricts the amount of magnesium transfer into the mitochondria which in turn results “in more efficient metabolism of sugar and fat“. Basically, it’s just as fanatastic as irisin by Bostöm and Spiegelman!
Sweden is a tolerant country, which is a very good thing. Unfortunately, sometimes this Swedish tolerance seems ill-advised. Dishonest scientists caught faking data are happily given another chance and fat funding, like the case of the diabetes researcher Pontus Boström shows. This scientist was found to have fabricated data during his PhD studies with late…
It is can be marketed not just for weight loss! The press release informs:
“”These findings are the result of several years of work,” Muniswamy said. “A drug that can reduce the risk of cardiometabolic diseases such as heart attack and stroke, and also reduce the incidence of liver cancer, which can follow fatty liver disease, will make a huge impact. We will continue its development.””
According to PubPeer records, Muniswamy Madesh used to be a collaborator of Steven Houser, the dean of Temple University medical school, who published fake science.
“We all hype our work. We want to tell people our work is important. These patients, many of them coming to enroll in these trials, they have no other hope.” -Steven Houser, Hero of Research Ethics, Temple University
Science, once again, has spoken. COVID-19 came from pangolinscivet catsfrozen fish raccoon dogs sold in Wuhan wet market! Science magazine again makes sure that the scientific community accepts the natural origin theory of COVID-19 as the only allowed theory, or else:
“A scientific sleuth in France has identified previously undisclosed genetic data from a food market in Wuhan, China, that she and colleagues say support the theory that coronavirus-infected animals there triggered the COVID-19 pandemic.[…]
Florence Débarre, a theoretician who specializes in evolutionary biology and works at CNRS, the French national research agency, unearthed the data, which consist of genetic sequences posted in GISAID, a virology database, by Chinese researchers. The Chinese team had collected environmental samples from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which was connected to a cluster of early COVID-19 cases and despite its name also sold a variety of mammals for food. Since Débarre spotted the sequences, GISAID has removed them, noting that this was at the request of the submitter.”
Good, accurate summary of the new findings re. animal origin of COVID-19 from @sciencecohen. Well done @flodebarre, who's COVID origins sleuthing has been exceptional, scientific & based on evidence & data throughout. https://t.co/oQJ2W8MHNO
In fact, even the Chinese CDC whose data the experts obtained under unclear circumstances (which resulted in their ban from further access) claims that it doesn’t prove a zoonotic origin of SARS-CoV2. So yes, there is a huge conspiracy out there by the Chinese authorities to hide the evidence for the natural origin of COVID-19 from all investigators for several years of the pandemic in order to fool the world into believing an insane, racist and unscientific lab leak theory, so at some point Xi Jinping can jump out and shout: Gotcha!
This is the relevant preprint, it appeared only after its authors “leaked” their “scoop” to media. The study will likely soon pass a rapid peer review in Science, if only to scoop Nature where the Chinese CDC preprint by the team of George Gao is stuck for over a year. It turned out, the Debarre et al preprint actually used Gao’s unpublished datawithout permission:
Alex Crits-Christoph , Karthik Gangavarapu , Jonathan E. Pekar , Niema Moshiri , Reema Singh , Joshua I. Levy , Stephen A. Goldstein , Marc A. Suchard , Saskia Popescu , David L. Robertson , Philippe Lemey , Joel O. Wertheim , Robert F. Garry , Angela L. Rasmussen , Kristian G. Andersen , Edward C. Holmes , Andrew Rambaut , Michael Worobey , Florence Débarre Genetic evidence of susceptible wildlife in SARS-CoV-2 positive samples at the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, Wuhan: Analysis and interpretation of data released by the Chinese Center for Disease ControlZenodo (2023) doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7754299
The excellent Jesse Bloom sums up the main problem with the raccoon dogs paper (and their are many) – the samples are from six weeks after the first human cases. https://t.co/OW9Foruxbb
There is a good take by Michael Balter on this “scoop” by Debarre et al:
“The Gao team had recently deposited so-called “metagenomic” data in the GISAID database, a repository for coronavirus sequences, as a condition of its paper being published. The international team, either tipped off or through sharp-eyed diligence, had spotted the data and run with it.
Why would they do this, rather than wait for Gao et al. to publish?
Gao’s team had concluded that the pandemic did not begin in the Huanan market, but that the market was the site of a human to human “super-spreader” event, similar to what might happen at a rock concert. Other researchers have suggested the virus might have been transmitted in toilets and mahjong rooms at the market.”
This brings me back to main caveat I noted about Chinese CDC pre-print when it posted last year: we are unlikely to get conclusive answers about origin of an outbreak that started in Nov 2019 (or earlier) by looking at samples collected in Jan 2020: https://t.co/edzi6dupOc
Basically, Debarre et al found SARS-CoV2 traces in the database of December 2019-January 2020 samples from the Wuhan market and attributed it to raccoon dogs whose DNA was also found in the same samples. That the first COVID-19 cases were registered in Wuhan the latest in November 2019, which lets Debarre’s data proving nothing else but that some already COVID-19-infected market vendors may have been also selling raccoon dogs, well, I am sure Science peer reveiwers raising this inconventient point will get excluded and blacklisted.
Science article continues:
“Débarre quickly reached out to Andersen and other co-authors of two preprints posted in February 2022 that supported the marketplace origin theory, papers she says helped shift her away from the lab-leak origin to thinking the virus likely came from animals at the Huanan seafood market. Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who was a lead author of one of the papers, says he and his collaborators are still analyzing the new genetic information, but it has so far solidified his own view that SARS-CoV-2 had a zoonotic origin. (The two preprints on which he is a co-author were later published by Science.)”
A lab leak theory of the COVID-19 origins has enough circumstantial evidence and historical basis to support the urgent need for an independent and unbiased investigation. But until recently, scientists dismissed lab leak as a conspiracy theory. In public at least.
From the pandemic’s early days on, the virologist Kristian Andersen and his colleague Angela Rasmussen spend their every waking moment attacking peers who discuss lab leak as racists, conspiracy theorists and research fraudsters. Both are authors on the Debarre prperint. And so is Michael Worobey, who used to advocate together with Alina Chan for investigations into a lab leak possibility, but then swiftly figured out which way his bread is buttered and joined the Andersen team. Result: Worobey’s and Andersen’s unconvincing paper about Wuhan market stalls passed peer review in Science and is now a SCIENCE TRUTH. Chan’s 2020 preprint debunking nonsense claims about pangolins as SARS-CoV2 origin remains unpublishable.
Some who painted a lab #OriginOfCovid as a racist conspiracy have now come full circle where they are alleging a Chinese conspiracy to cover up sick animals at the Wuhan market.
Even though Chinese CDC announced to the 🌎 in Jan 2020 the virus came from wildlife at the market.
It is not just Science who look bad celebrating that just-so preprint by Debarre et al. Also The Atlantic, with an exclusive scoop even before the preprint appeared:
“It’s some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans…”
“One of the pre-print’s authors, Prof David Robertson of the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Virus Research, said the new data provided “strong evidence” that SARS-CoV-2 jumped to humans at the market.
Before publication, the story was leaked to The Atlantic, who claimed it was “the strongest evidence yet that an animal started the pandemic”.
Yet after the study was published last night, several experts said the claims were misleading, arguing that the sale of raccoon dogs at the market was already widely known, and that discovering their DNA proved little about the origins of the outbreak. […]
A letter from Biosafety Now, a group of experts calling for tighter control on lab experiments which could create deadly pathogens, said: “The data provide no substantive new information about the origins of Covid-19, even if taken at face value.
“There is no evidence that this raccoon dog was even infected with SARS-CoV-2, as there was also human DNA in the sample, and the viral material could just as easily have come from an infected human.”
A statement from the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, the World Health Organisation group looking into how the pandemic started, also stated that the paper “does not provide conclusive evidence as to the intermediate host or origins of the virus”.”
What the gang ofDaszak, Andersen, Rasmussen, Worobey et al often succeeds to make science journalisst ignore: the people investigating lab leak theory are also expert scientists. Much better scientists than this gang in fact. It is not science vs anti-science, as we are taught. It’s a small but very vocal and organised bunch of academic crooks concerned about losing their money and power who took science hostage vs the evidence and the scientific principles. And they know they can’t back down without losing everything.
Meanwhile, President Biden is in serious danger to get blacklisted by Science:
Meanwhile, AAAS-published Science with an update on a fraud case outside of US, because according to Science abroad is where all the research fraud happens: “Steven Newmaster, a prominent University of Guelph (UG) botanist and entrepreneur who has faced allegations of scientific misconduct, has had another paper retracted without his consent. Last week the Canadian Journal of Forest Research pulled a study in which Newmaster and colleagues said they used a genetic identification system known as DNA barcoding to help determine the diet of woodland caribou. The retraction follows a misconduct complaint by one of the paper’s co-authors and others that cast doubt on the reliability of the data supplied by Newmaster, the lead author.“
Another shoe dropped in the case of Steven Newmaster, a Univ of Guelph botanist who once stirred up the nutritional supplement industry and was accused by 8 other scientists of scientific misconduct. The 2nd of his 3 disputed papers was just retracted. 1/4https://t.co/ajE1nxef2F
After MD Anderson’s mega-cheater Anil Sood got elected to US Academy of Medicine, another MD Anderson cheater, Cullen Taniguchi, got elected to the American Association for the Adavancement of Science (AAAS). Taniguchi’s qualifications for joining AAAS: being trained in the art of research fraud by the toxic cheaters C Ronald Kahn and Amato Giaccia and having a bunch of fake papers on PubPeer, two of them retracted for data forgery. Huge congrats indeed.
“not everyone in the research community accepts that the problem requires such attention; some believe it is overblown.” -Jeffrey Flier, emeritus dean of Harvard Medical School
A 2006 Nature paper from Stanford is retracted. We all know the first author Janine Erler, but why is nobody talking of its last author, Amato Giaccia? I celebrate here another Oxford star scientist.
Look who was invited to give evidence about the state’s handling of pandemic in front of Texas Senate – Robert Malone, bad enough, but next to… Richard Fleming! Who then blamed Ukrainian “bioweapon labs” for COVID-19.
Meandering comments by Dr. who? are very entertaining. Watching Malone trying not to react. pic.twitter.com/jmjzNnpx8r
If you follow Cheshire on Twitter, you surely heard him referencing a certain “Dr who?”. The following guest post exposes a very toxic fraudster and covidiot.
“People who feel deprived of the credit that they think they deserve will gravitate to new friends who do at least pretend to respect them sufficiently.” -Smut Clyde
The German journal Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology faced a dilemma: continue publishign papermill fraud, or cease publishign altogether. A decision was made, evident by the fact that Owrang et al 2023 was accepted on 27 February 2023, long after Mu Yang and myself pleaded with the EiC Roland Seifert to stop the Asian papermill fraud.
“In the various excellent texts on paper mills the question is discussed why Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archives of Pharmacology has become a target for fake papers. I oppose the assumption that we simply want to fill pages with pseudo-scientific content. We actually look for quality and good science.” – Prof Dr Roland Seifert, Editor-in-Chief
Mu Yang, US-based research intgerity sleuth specialising on mouse behavioural data and microscopy image duplications, and a member of our sleuthing team, has set up a consulting company! You read about her work on For Better Science, where she wasn’t named though, to prevent legal retaliations from fraudsters.
Meh, Bonaccorso went silent. Also Graphene Flagship and IIT are silent, probably pitching together for a lawyer to sue me?
Message from the EU Commission:
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have taken note of the information you have provided and have forwarded it to the services in charge of the projects which will analyse the matter. “
More fun with his protege Hossein Beydaghi, his postdoc at IIT and his employee at BedImentional: https://pubpeer.com/search?q=beydaghi Beydaghi et al 2016 Beydaghi et al 2015:
Finally, Beydaghi et al 2014 and Beydaghi et al 2011.
This fake crap was even hand-drawn:
I suspect something is – or has been – afoot re. Scott Geyer at Wake Forest. He was a tenure track assistant professor until June 2022. Since then he has been an associate teaching professor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-geyer-5482162a
“Teaching professors are faculty members of the Wake Forest academic community and are essential to fulfilling the core teaching and service missions of the College. This is a permanent but non-tenurable, full-time position with an initial two-year contract. Promotion to ranks with longer-term appointments is possible.” At least in the Biology Dept the position amounts to “80% of their time to teaching and 20% to service”. Apparently 0% research?
For Better Science 
Paolo Gardoni?
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Meh, Bonaccorso went silent. Also Graphene Flagship and IIT are silent, probably pitching together for a lawyer to sue me?
Message from the EU Commission:
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have taken note of the information you have provided and have forwarded it to the services in charge of the projects which will analyse the matter. “
More fun with his protege Hossein Beydaghi, his postdoc at IIT and his employee at BedImentional:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=beydaghi
Beydaghi et al 2016
Beydaghi et al 2015:
Finally, Beydaghi et al 2014 and Beydaghi et al 2011.
This fake crap was even hand-drawn:
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I suspect something is – or has been – afoot re. Scott Geyer at Wake Forest. He was a tenure track assistant professor until June 2022. Since then he has been an associate teaching professor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-geyer-5482162a
A description of the teaching professor position at Wake Forest can be found here: https://careers.insidehighered.com/job/2601499/assistant-teaching-professor-for-ecology-or-evolutionary-biology/
“Teaching professors are faculty members of the Wake Forest academic community and are essential to fulfilling the core teaching and service missions of the College. This is a permanent but non-tenurable, full-time position with an initial two-year contract. Promotion to ranks with longer-term appointments is possible.” At least in the Biology Dept the position amounts to “80% of their time to teaching and 20% to service”. Apparently 0% research?
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