Schneider Shorts

Schneider Shorts 14.04.2023 – Work more than 80 hours a week

Schneider Shorts 14.04.2023 - whitewashed Chinese cheater in Wales continues with fraud, an Italian cheater puzzled about attention, a Spanish cheater corrects a paper, with an olfactory memory hack, a cat's papermill thread, some scrotums, and finally, a German role model for WomenInSTEM.

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by Leonid Schneider
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Schneider Shorts 14 April 2023 – whitewashed Chinese cheater in Wales continues with fraud, an Italian cheater puzzled about attention, a Spanish cheater corrects a paper, with an olfactory memory hack, a cat’s papermill thread, some scrotums, and finally, a German role model for WomenInSTEM.

Table of Discontent

Science Elites

Scholarly Publishing

Science Breakthroughs

News in Tweets

Science Elites

Cardiff Fungus

My long-term readers might remember the China-born cancer research professor Wen Guo Jiang, who was installed at the Cardiff University in UK by the Chinese Traditional Medicine (TCM) company Yiling Pharma. Jiang publishes on both TCM and the conventional cancer research. It is of course all fake.

Fried Divine Comedy, featuring anti-cancer cockroach and phallic fungus

This is a follow-up to the previous article, about a misconduct investigation at the Cardiff University in UK into the published works of cancer researcher Wen Jiang, professor of Surgery and Tumour Biology, Fellow of Royal Society of Medicine and chair of Cardiff China Medical Research Collaborative. The following guest post by my regular contributor Smut…

Leonid Schneider's avatar by Leonid Schneider

Most of Jiang’s fake science was uncovered by Clare Francis, Smut Clyde, and more recently, by Cheshire. In April 2018, Cardiff University proudly announced, in a press release no less, that Yiling Pharma was great, TCM great also, their money lovely, and Jiang totally innocent of all suspicions of research misconduct. 19 papers were investigated at that time, the investigative report (if it exists) was declared secret.

So far, so conventional (except the bizarre press release!). Such corruption is what happens in most universities, only difference is that Cardiff elites are that dumb to be actually proud of it in public. Normally the affair is hushed up, the whitewashed fraudster is warned to be more careful next time, and diligently pays attention to not be caught on same kind of fraud again.

But Jiang’s real masters are of course not the pompous Welsh wankers at Cardiff University. In fact those grovel at the feet of Jiang’s billionaire masters of TCM industry and the Chinese Communist party, begging for a few thousands of pounds.

So Jiang, unafraid and reassured, just spat at his Cardiff hosts and continued to publish fake science AFTER his whitewashing. Like this, perfectly obvious forgery to show these Cardiff losers what Jiang thinks of them:

Chengcheng Hao , Yuxin Cui , Siyuan Chang , Jing Huang , Emily Birkin , Mu Hu , Xiuyi Zhi , Wenbin Li , Lijian Zhang , Shan Cheng, Wen G. Jiang OPN promotes the aggressiveness of non-small-cell lung cancer cells through the activation of the RON tyrosine kinase Scientific Reports (2019) – doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-54843-2 

Or this:

Qun Lin , Xiaolin Fang , Gehao Liang , Qing Luo , Yinghuan Cen , Yu Shi , Shijie Jia , Juanmei Li , Wenqian Yang , Andrew J. Sanders , Chang Gong , Wenguo Jiang Silencing CTNND1 Mediates Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Bone Metastasis via Upregulating CXCR4/CXCL12 Axis and Neutrophils Infiltration in Bone Cancers (2021) doi: 10.3390/cancers13225703 

And so on. Here, a fake gel:

Jing Huang , Siyuan Chang , Yabin Lu , Jing Wang , Yang Si , Lijian Zhang , Shan Cheng , Wen G. Jiang Enhanced osteopontin splicing regulated by RUNX2 is HDAC-dependent and induces invasive phenotypes in NSCLC cells Cancer Cell International (2019) doi: 10.1186/s12935-019-1033-5 

One more, quite recent:

Yichu Nie , Fenglan Feng , Wei Luo , Andrew J. Sanders , Yidi Zhang , Jiaming Liang , Cheng Chen , Weineng Feng , Weiquan Gu , Weiping Liao , Wei Wang , Jinfeng Chen , Lijian Zhang , Wen G. Jiang, Jin Li Overexpressed transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) in lung adenocarcinoma harbours a new opportunity for therapeutic targeting Cancer Gene Therapy (2022) doi: 10.1038/s41417-022-00459-0 

Jiang’s PubPeer record now stands at almost 50 fake papers, which I now again reported to the Cardiff University. They didn’t reply, and of course they will keep whitewashing Jiang, being afraid to upset some TCM billionaire.

Even now, at the times when others are at least trying to hide their ties to China, Cardiff openly boasts them. Especially about “The Cardiff University – Yiling Group Joint Medical Research Centre”, and the visit of “Madam Mei Ying Zhang, Vice-Chairman of CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee)”.

Painful Lollo

Aneurus Inconstans continues shaming Italian science into adhering to at least some modicum of research integrity.

Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli, pain researcher and pharmacology professor at the University of Florence, already featured in Aneurus’s earlier article, as a collaborator of the mega-cheater Francesco Amenta:

The microscopic talent of Prof Amenta

“Professor Amenta is truly a renaissance man and a knowledge powerhouse according to his colleagues and students. Amenta’s sole focus in life is the creation and dissemination of knowledge”

Aneurus's avatar by Aneurus

Well, Lorenzo, or Lollo, has an impressive PubPeer record of his own now. The gang also includes Lollo’s Florentine mentor Carla Ghelardini, plus other professors: Alessandra Pacini, Matteo Zanardelli, Laura Micheli, Lorenzo Cinci, and other recurrent names. Some selected gems follow.

Matteo Zanardelli , Laura Micheli , Lorenzo Cinci , Paola Failli , Carla Ghelardini, Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli Oxaliplatin neurotoxicity involves peroxisome alterations. PPARγ agonism as preventive pharmacological approach PLoS ONE (2014) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0102758 

The microscopy image is not just copied. Look closely:

Aneurus: “Figure 1A: this micrograph supposedly shows control astrocytes (so, no treatment) immunolabeled for catalase. Figure 1E of Cinci et al. 2014 shows a very similar image, supposedly showing astrocytes with the specific non-reversible PPAR-gamma antagonist G3335 and peroxisomes are immunolabeled for catalase. […] the dark dots representing the peroxisomes have been digitally added. All the other details are identical.“

PLOS announced to me to investigate.

Here a paper Lollo’s gang co-authored with an US colleague, J. Michael McIntosh of the University of Utah.

Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli, Lorenzo Cinci , Laura Micheli , Matteo Zanardelli , Alessandra Pacini , Michael J. McIntosh , Carla Ghelardini α-Conotoxin RgIA protects against the development of nerve injury-induced chronic pain and prevents both neuronal and glial derangement Pain (2014) doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2014.06.023 

“Figure 2: transverse sections of mouse sciatic nerve, each image is supposed to illustrate a different treatment, but images B, D, E, F and G largely overlap (boxes of same color).”
“Images B, D, and F have been rescaled, so the identical portions have different vertical/horizontal dimensions. Even more astonishingly, the identical parts are surrounded by areas that differ. Alternatively the identical portions include subportions that differ.“

Another one, McIntosh could really get in trouble with this fraud because he is a federal employee of Veterans’ Affairs:

Alessandra Pacini, Laura Micheli, Mario Maresca , Jacopo Juno Valerio Branca, J. Michael McIntosh, Carla Ghelardini, Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli The α9α10 nicotinic receptor antagonist α-conotoxin RgIA prevents neuropathic pain induced by oxaliplatin treatment Experimental Neurology (2016) doi: 10.1016/j.expneurol.2016.04.022 

“Figure 7d again: the image of vehicle + vehicle (cg1) is the same image (yellow boxes) used a year later by the same group in Figure 4A of Di Cesare Mannelli et al. 2017 Sci Rep, where it was described as vehicle + 50%HA.”
“Figure 7a: all the images of M1 (primary motor cortex) are identical to those of M2 (secondary motor cortex)“
“Figure 4a again: the image of vehicle + RgIA is the same image (green boxes) used a year later by the same group in Figure 3B of Di Cesare Mannelli et al. 2017 Sci Rep, where it was described as oxaliplatin + 50%HA.“

Here is Lollo using fake science to push Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM):

Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli , Alessandra Pacini, Laura Micheli, Angelo Pietro Femia , Mario Maresca , Matteo Zanardelli, Alfredo Vannacci , Eugenia Gallo, Anna Rita Bilia , Giovanna Caderni , Fabio Firenzuoli , Alessandro Mugelli, Carla Ghelardini Astragali radix: could it be an adjuvant for oxaliplatin-induced neuropathy? Scientific Reports (2017) doi: 10.1038/srep42021

“Figure 3C excerpt: the micrograph of vehicle + 50%HA (HA = hydroalcoholic extract from Astragali radix) was used four years earlier (blue boxes) by the same lead authors in Figure 4 of Di Cesare Mannelli et al. 2013 (a paper with its own serious issues), where the HA treatment was absent. The two images have a different brighness/contrast balance. Even more astonishingly, some elements in the two images differ (red asterisks), which means the images have been heavily manipulated.“
“Figure 4A: the image of vehicle + 50%HA is the same image (yellow boxes) used a year earlier by the same group in Figure 7d of Pacini et al. 2016 Exp Neurol, where it was described as vehicle + vehicle.“
“Figure 3B: the vehicle + 50%HA image has been used three years earlier by the same group in Figure 8 of Di Cesare Mannelli et al. 2014 Exp Neurol (green boxes), where it was described as oxaliplatin + fluorocitrate. Even more astonishingly, some elements between the two images are different: […] the nucleolus has been added digitally in one or both the images. Also different is the multinucleolated nucleo indicated by the arrowheads, as the tiny dots are missing in the 2017 image. Another different element is the cell outside the green box, indicated by the blue asterisk. These images have been made up.”
“Figure 3B again: the image of oxaliplatin + 50%HA is the same image (green boxes) used a year earlier by the same group in Figure 4a of Pacini et al. 2016 Exp Neurol, where it was described as vehicle + RgIA.“

There are almost 30 fraudulent papers flagged on PubPeer, and the guilty parties know and say nothing. Only in one case, there was a reaction from authors on PubPeer:

Tommaso Bonfiglio , Guendalina Olivero , Elisa Merega , Silvia Di Prisco , Cristina Padolecchia , Massimo Grilli , Marco Milanese , Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli , Carla Ghelardini , Giambattista Bonanno, Mario Marchi , Anna Pittaluga Prophylactic versus Therapeutic Fingolimod: Restoration of Presynaptic Defects in Mice Suffering from Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis PLoS ONE (2017) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0170825

Obviously because the denial of intentional fraud is still possible here, Carla Ghelardini commented:

“we apologize, we checked the files and we uploaded a wrong image during the revision phase. The correct panel is attached to this message, please let us know how to proceed to correct the paper online thank you“

In 2016, Italy’s shooting star received the “Young Against Pain” award for his bizarre discovery that pain can be treated with… “adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells” (vulgo: fat cells), if those are administered intravenously. Lollo claimed it works greats in rats and plans to inject those cells into humans next. Here is the award clip, with Lollo blathering insane rubbish (~3 minutes into the video):

In February 2023, Lollo and his Florence gang entered “the pantheon of “Departments of excellence” selected by the Ministry of University and Research for the five-year period 2023-2027“, as the university proudly announced:

“”First of all – explains Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli, research delegate of the department – we will aim to identify new therapies starting from the study of physiopathology and human based systems, freeing ourselves from the use of animal tests. A choice that, in addition to the ethical value, allows you to approach results more pertinent to human nature. Concretely, then, NEUROFARBA will develop in vitro systems made up of stem cells and two/three-dimensional cultures, so as to reproduce small organs, organ or tissue components – defined as organ on a chip…”

Obviously this gang have long replaced animal tests with Photoshop fraud. Which makes Lollo a genius and a hero in Italian academia, apparently.

To me, Lollo wrote in an email:

“I am quite surprised for receiving several negative comments about papers. The majority of comments were concentrated in the last week, whereas the relative papers were published many years ago and, at least a good number of them, highly cited. Anyway, we are carefully checking the contested points; we will discuss the necessary actions directly with the respective journals.”

Right-ho, highly cited.

Quasi-feudal relationship

Another case of bullying in German academia, again national media has an exclusive story, and again, the perpetrator is not named. Nobody wants to face a defamation lawsuit which the academic abuser might even win. In Germany legal understanding, only politicians and TV celebrities are allowed to be named.

Now, the magazine Spiegel reports (DeepL-translated):

“The University of Cologne is taking action against one of its most respected female professors over allegations of abuse of power. This is evidenced, among other things, by internal e-mails from the university, which were obtained by SPIEGEL. […]

As internal letters show, the professor received an extraordinary official order from the rector Axel Freimuth in mid-March. Among other things, she was deprived of the authority to issue instructions to 17 doctoral students. In an e-mail from the university to the doctoral students, it says: “This measure is for your protection.”

Accordingly, the doctoral students no longer have to communicate with the professor, respond to her messages or attend her meetings. The university has appointed a professor as the doctoral students’ new supervisor and as their contact person “until a sustainable pacification of the situation is
achieved,” according to the e-mail. […]

The professor is defending herself against what she sees as
unjustified measures. She is taking legal action against the
official order”

These are the accusations:

“Nine doctoral students, post-doctoral students and former employees had jointly written a report of almost 50 pages with numerous accusations. They sent it to the ombudspersons of the faculty and the university in September 2021. Later, the
university management was also informed about the allegations.
The report states that the professor insults her doctoral students, calling them “stupid”, “useless” or “disabled” [insult used in German as “mentally retarded” -LS] for example. She is said to sometimes require her employees to work more than 80 hours a week. The report speaks of a “quasi-feudal relationship of dependence” and a “climate of fear” at the institute in question. The professor is said to have demanded from an employee demanded the latter come by the boss’s office every morning to personally say “Good morning” to her, the head of the institute.

The professor is said to make scientifically correct work difficult by putting pressure on her employees; there is a “pre-determination with regard to experimental results” with her, it is further said. She allegedly told a pregnant employee, “You’re ruining your career, you can’t be a mother and be
professionally successful at the same time.”

Yes, I am aware that many of you think – this also describes my professor! Sadly, academic ecosystem is full of bullies and abusers. Also this happened:

“The report also mentions “unpleasant touching” by the professor. She is said to have “repeatedly touched and stroked” a female scientist employee on the back and “patted her thigh.” The scientist writes about the situations with her supervisor: “For me, the combination of psychological pressure on the one hand and the physical affection on the other was very uncomfortable.”
The report summarizes the situation at the professor’s workplace as, “Once a week, someone cries.””

A source told me that the events may have taken place at the medical faculty of the University of Cologne and are connected to its genetics department. After some googling, I decided to contact the director of the Institute of Human Genetics, Brunhilde Wirth, for more information. So far, I received no reply.

Scholarly Publishing

Wrong figure

A Nature Publishing Group journal has corrected a paper by the Spanish liver researcher Jordi Muntane, despite (or because) of a hefty PubPeer record of falsified data and animal abuse in his papers.

I wrote about him before, and how an academic Editor-in-Chief took Muntane’s side and did nothing:

Now, the badly inappropriate correction.

Á J De La Rosa , Á Rodríguez-Hernández , R González , S Romero-Brufau , E Navarro-Villarán , L Barrera-Pulido , S Pereira , L M Marín , F López-Bernal , J M Álamo , M A Gómez-Bravo , F J Padillo , J Muntané Antitumoral gene-based strategy involving nitric oxide synthase type III overexpression in hepatocellular carcinoma Gene Therapy (2016) doi: 10.1038/gt.2015.79 

The gels are outrageously fraudulent and completely fake. Yet this was the entire Correction, issued on 28 March 2023:

“In this article the wrong figure appeared as Fig. 5C; the figure should have appeared as shown below.”

First of all, only Figure 5 was corrected, the rest was omitted as incorrigible. In any case, it is perfectly obvious that the new actin gel in Figure 5 has nothing to do with its CD95 gel, the bands don’t match. It is some random set of bands the fraudulent authors pulled out of their arses. Which is exactly why the journal’s made it their f***-off message for the scientific community.

I wrote to the journal and its chief editor, Janine Scholefield, Senior Researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, and received no reply.

Science Breakthroughs

Smell the flowers

Germany’s main public news programme, Tagesschau, now reports an amazing scientific discovery. Translated:

“In the study published in the journal ” Nature “, the study participants had to learn Japanese vocabulary. Those who learned in presence of the scent of roses and inhaled the scent at night did better in the later vocabulary test. All 165 test persons received scented envelopes and learned a total of 40 words over three days. Only half of the study participants actually got the scent of roses. The other half only had scraps of paper in the envelope. The comparison between the two groups shows that those who learned with the scent of roses were able to remember an average of 8.5 percent more vocabulary in the vocabulary test.”

It wasn’t really published in Nature, rather in Scientific Reports. It is not clear what journalistic competence drove Tagesschau to make their Nature claim, even the university press release says “Open Access Journal Scientific Reports of the Nature Group“.

Here is this study:

Jessica Knötzele , Dieter Riemann , Lukas Frase , Bernd Feige , Ludger Tebartz Van Elst , Jürgen Kornmeier Presenting rose odor during learning, sleep and retrieval helps to improve memory consolidation: a real-life study Scientific Reports (2023) doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-28676-z

The principal investigator, Jürgen Kornmeier, spent his entire academic career at the University of Freiburg, where he is currently described as institute director, but without a professor title.

Tagesschau quotes him:

“So far, previous studies have only observed the scent effect in the sleep laboratory. The fragrance was only presented during the deep sleep phase – out of concern that the fragrance could disturb the dream phases. “But we can present the scent all night and it still works,” says neurobiologist Kornmeier. This is the first time the scent effect has been observed in this form, not only in the laboratory but at home.”

Yes, all scientists want to be original and first in something, but thing is, Kornmeier himself previously published about rose scent for vocabulary learning in a real-life setting outside of a lab. Here is the English-language press release by his university from 2020:

“For the study, pupils in two school classes learned English vocabulary – with and without scent sticks during the learning period and also at night. The students remembered the vocabulary much better with a scent. The study was published in the Nature Group’s Open Access journal Scientific Reports on 27 January 2020.

“We showed that the supportive effect of fragrances works very reliably in everyday life and can be used in a targeted way,” said study leader PD Dr. Jürgen Kornmeier […]

For the study, first author and student teacher Franziska Neumann conducted several experiments with 54 students from two 6th grade classes of a school in southern Germany. The young participants from the test group were asked to place rose-scented incense sticks on their desks at home while learning English vocabulary and on the bedside table next to the bed at night. In another experiment, they also placed the incense sticks on the table next to them during a vocabulary test at school during an English test. The results were compared with test results in which no incense sticks were used during one or more phases.”

Here is the paper:

Franziska Neumann , Vitus Oberhauser , Jürgen Kornmeier How odor cues help to optimize learning during sleep in a real life-setting Scientific Reports (2020) doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-57613-7 

There was, as authors inform, “a significant increase in learning success by about 30 percent”, which for some reason is much less then in the follow-up study with learning Japanese. Well, roses are indeed an English thing, so maybe Kornmeier should have used cherry blossoms for his Japanese vocabulary studies?

By the way, did Kornmeier try Forget-Me-Nots?

News in Tweets

  • A great thread by a random cat about the international papermilling fraudsters Awais Ahmad, Dmitry Bokov, Afshin Davarpanah, Mika Sillanpää, Anh Tuan Hoang, Ariful Ahsan, Ahmed Esmail Shalan, Seeram Ramakrishna, Mohammad Arjmand, Navid Rabiee, Thomas Webster, Ali Chamkha, Rajender Varma, Sadegh Rostamnia, Yu-Ming Chu and Changhe Li, all connected to the King of Paermillers, Rafael Luque. Many For Better Science references cited!
  • The Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s journal Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy is Danyelle Townsend, allegedly professor at the South Carolina College of Pharmacy in USA. She never replied to me either. Is she maybe a fictional sockpuppet created by papermill fraudsters? Don’t laugh, Elsevier appoints all kinds as its EiCs.
  • It passed peer review after all.
  • How to publish papers.
  • Meanwhile, The Lancet lets fraudulent Macchiarini papers stand despite unreported minor complications like total transplant failure which led to some maimed and many dead patients.
  • Science with revelations about Nature fraudster Ranga Dias: “Undark, The New York Times, and Physics Magazine previously reported that his thesis contains many passages identical to those from a 2007 thesis written by James Hamlin at Washington University in St. Louis. But Hamlin, now a high-pressure experimentalist at the University of Florida, and Simon Kimber, a physicist most recently at the University Burgundy Franche-Comté, have gone through the thesis by hand and say they have discovered more widespread examples of copying. In an analysis shared with Science, they find Dias’s thesis contains at least 6300 words—some 21% of the thesis—that are identical to passages from 17 other sources. Dias’s website at U of R also contains text that appears to have been copied without attribution from other sources, Hamlin and Kimber say.“

Superconductive Fraud: The Sequel

“After the huge box-office success of “Nature 2020: Room-temperature superconductivity in CSH” this March our Nature studios released a sequel with the same star-studded cast: “Nature 2023: Near-ambient superconductivity in N-doped LuHx”. – Maarten van Kampen

M. van Kampen's avatar by M. van Kampen
  • Big surprise: research fraudster Christian Gaiddon, research director 1st class in Strasbourg, turned out to be a sexual harasser on top! INSERM punishment: suspension for one year. I wrote about Gaiddon’s fake science before.
https://twitter.com/fxcoudert/status/1646597063709171712?s=20

The Strasbourg Swamp

You know Voinnet, but now meet other great life scientists of Strasbourg: Drouard, Loeffler, Boutillier, Mr and Mrs Egly, and many others.

Leonid Schneider's avatar by Leonid Schneider
  • HHS-ORI orders 3 retractions and a 4 year funding ban for Carlo Spirli: “Based on the report of an investigation conducted by Yale University (YU) and additional analysis conducted by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in its oversight review, ORI found that Carlo Spirli, Ph.D. (Respondent), who was an Assistant Professor of Medicine, Department of Digestive Diseases, YU, engaged in research misconduct […] ORI found that Respondent engaged in research misconduct by knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data included in the following four (4) published papers, two (2) presentations, and three (3) grant applications submitted for PHS funds” . Only one of Spirli’s papers has been flagged on PubPeer (Spirli et al Hepatology 2015), it has already been retracted in 2022, the note saying “Several figures included in the article were found to have been falsified.”
  • Deutsche Welle reports (in Farsi): “A video of Ebrahim Raisi’s meeting with “a group of world’s top 1% scientists” has been published, in which Davood Domiri Ganji, a university professor, claims that they can predict the future with “Python“. Among other things, Ganji (who gets his authorships from a papermill as Alexander Magazinov reported) said: “Python does various things, it revolutionizes the field of medicine, it predicts what kind of cancer it actually has in the next four years.”
  • Chloroquine quack Didier Raoult wrote an “Autobiographie” (or likely had it ghost-written), all of France is excited because they love fraudulent males there, the more bigotted, far-right, xenophobic and misogynous, the better. And look, Raoult even wrote about Elisabeth Bik: “… she made a specialty of analyzing the photographs published in the articles and accused us of having used the same photograph twice in one of our publications. The tools she uses to do this “work” are not revolutionary, since they are consumer software such as Photoshop.”
  • Speaking about scrotums. Breakthrough science from Germany – Albrecht et al 2023: “The scrotum: A comparison of men’s and women’s aesthetic assessments“

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23 comments on “Schneider Shorts 14.04.2023 – Work more than 80 hours a week”

  1. Zebedee's avatar
    Zebedee
    April 14, 2023

    “So Jiang, unafraid and reassured, just spat at his Cardiff hosts and continued to publish fake science AFTER his whitewashing…”

    Expect more of the same, the way things normally go, another invitation for the head of Cardiff University to receive honours in the Great Hall of the People, then to spout again that the future if Cardiff University lies in China. It really does!

    Spit is only bad if you think if it like that. The higher-ups at Cardiff say it pays for many very flavour-full nights out.

    Like

    Reply
  2. JL Mergny's avatar
    JL Mergny
    April 14, 2023

    Love the “Speaking about scrotums” transition. 🙂
    I am now a big fan of Fridays, thanks to the weekly release of Schneider Shorts!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  3. Aneurus's avatar
    Aneurus
    April 14, 2023

    I learned from Leonid that Lollo claimed to work more than 80 hours a week. Right. I suggest to Lollo that he shifts those 80 hours a week spent tinkering with Photoshop to a healthy job of plowing the fields somewhere in the Florentine countryside. Agriculture needs working hands.

    Like

    Reply
    • Leonid Schneider's avatar
      Leonid Schneider
      April 14, 2023

      Well, 80h a week is what PhD student in that elite lab in Cologne are expected to deliver.
      Lollo was concerned that you conspired against his highly cited papers.

      Like

      Reply
  4. Smut Clyde's avatar
    Smut Clyde
    April 14, 2023

    “Oddly enough, if you travel the world and meet exotic people and ask them to rate schematic drawings of increasingly pendulous scrotums according to attractiveness and age, they look at you like you’re a perverted freak, is this justice? IS IT BOG-ROLL.”

    http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.com/2017/02/read-scene-where-gravity-is-pulling-me.html

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  5. Hunter's avatar
    Hunter
    April 14, 2023

    I heard many claims of 90+ hours.. Yon know, 60 became 70, then 80, then 90 and so on. The same as the trend for number of papers. 100 used to be ok, now 500 is on the low side for the so called successful scientists. I remember an anecdote about a young physicist bragging to Schrödinger about working 20hrs a day. Erwin’s supposed answer was something like: “Young man, I appreciate this, but when do you have time to think ?”
    Looks like no one is talking about thinking anymore (Photoshopping, cherry-picking, media presence, committees, invited lectures is the new “thinking”.

    Like

    Reply
    • NMH, the failed scientist and incel's avatar
      NMH, the failed scientist and incel
      April 14, 2023

      The new thinking is thinking like Ashi Weeraratna: being a part as many organizations and committees with peers that review your grants and papers as possible so you can charm them to giving them very high scores and great reviews, despite how fraudulent the work is. “Success” in science is all about politics now, not the science itself.

      Like

      Reply
  6. Scotus's avatar
    Scotus
    April 14, 2023

    For the McIntosh papers, someone needs to inform the Associate Chief of Staff for Research at the SLC VA. VA will investigate, it may take a while but they will do a thorough job. Funny story, VA asked me to look at a paper from someone who is also a VA investigator who has featured here a few times and I found evidence of some additional data fabrication beyond what I was originally asked to evaluate. Can’t make this stuff up..

    Paul J White, MD
    Role: ACOS
    Title: ACOS, R&D
    Salt Lake City, UT (660)
    VA Salt Lake City Health Care System, Salt Lake City, UT
    500 Foothill Drive
    Salt Lake City, UT 84148
    Congressional District: UT-002
    Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): YYULHSE8AL99
    Commercial and Government Entity Code (CAGE): 4YK98

    Like

    Reply
  7. Aneurus's avatar
    Aneurus
    April 14, 2023

    Regarding EiC Danyelle Townsend, I have contacted her on four occasions (Nov ’21, twice in Jan ’22, Mar ’22) to report fraud in Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy, and she has always replied within 24hs to me saying that she had forwarded the case(s) to the Ethics department at Elsevier. Nothing happened as of today. Problem is: nothing happens at ANY Elsevier journal. Most of the time you do not get a reply at all (execept for a few more committed staff editors). Could please the many researcher reading For Better Science boycott Elsevier forever, please?

    Like

    Reply
  8. dan's avatar
    dan
    April 14, 2023

    Man we really have some stars in Strasbourg 🙄 !

    Cross linking this here for the next recruitment affair at CNRS

    Schneider Shorts 10.03.2023 – An internet troll trying to waste other peoples time

    Like

    Reply
  9. Citrus's avatar
    Citrus
    April 14, 2023

    I find the rose paper much fun.

    Like

    Reply
  10. Aneurus's avatar
    Aneurus
    April 15, 2023

    The bottomless Italian fraud swamp never stops to astonish all of us.
    I’ve now found out that Lorenzo “Lollo” Di Cesare Mannelli and his Florence associate Jacopo Junio Valerio Branca have been previously exposed on PupPeer for being co-authors on three articles signed with convicted felons like Rodney Smith, Lynda Thyer, Emma Ward and Stefania Pacini.
    These four “scientists” were in custody or have served prison sentences for producing and distributing GcMAF, a polypeptide claimed to treat Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In the author lists is included also Marco Ruggero:https://pubpeer.com/publications/910C8A2C460CC0E826059E50304DC6
    https://pubpeer.com/publications/17A663BF405D7F9CC72C161DA2D789
    https://pubpeer.com/publications/8AFF9BA2EBEF52D17DA270F4935B45
    You might wish to re-descover Smut Clyde’s supreme masterpiece “The Marco Ruggiero Quackopedia” featuring Branca, Ruggero and a thousand more fraudsters from all over the globe:https://forbetterscience.com/2022/12/05/the-marco-ruggiero-quackopedia/
    https://forbetterscience.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/ruggiero-e1669884412966.jpg

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    • Leonid Schneider's avatar
      Leonid Schneider
      June 25, 2023

      After publication of this Article it was brought to the Editors’ attention that some of the data appear to overlap with data in other articles from the same author group, where the data is partially attributed to different samples. Specifically:

      In Figure 3B the “vehicle + 50% HA” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 8 published in 1;
      In Figure 3B the “oxaliplatin + 50% HA” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 4a published in 2;
      In Figure 3C the “vehicle + 50% HA” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 4 published in 3;
      In Figure 4A the “vehicle + 50% HA” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 7d “vehicle + vehicle cg1” group published in 2;
      In Figure 4A the “vehicle + vehicle” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 7d “vehicle + vehicle M1” group published in 2.
      The Editors reached out to the Authors to request raw data. The Authors were unable to provide the data and the concerns remain unresolved. The Editors therefore no longer have confidence in the results presented in this Article.

      All Authors agree with the retraction of the Article.

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