Schneider Shorts 21.04.2023 – So much work of high quality
Schneider Shorts 21.04.2023 - due diligence in Germany, cancer biotech bonanza in USA, python expert in Iran, highly cited researchers in Spain, English professor in russia, Italian fraudster in an unexpected company, with eugenics, racism and war-mongering, and finally, why a papermill fabrication can't be retracted.
Schneider Shorts of 21 April 2023 – due diligence in Germany, cancer biotech bonanza in USA, python expert in Iran, highly cited researchers in Spain, English professor in russia, Italian fraudster in an unexpected company, with eugenics, racism and war-mongering, and finally, why a papermill fabrication can’t be retracted.
In earlier Friday Shorts, I presented you with some problematic papers by the researchers Luca Scorrano, professor of the University of Padua and the former Scientific Director of the Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM) in Italy, and Bart De Strooper, professor at KU Leuven in Belgium and director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL.
Two of these papers featured Christian Frezza, Scorrano’s mentee and now DFG-funded Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the University of Cologne in Germany. Both Frezza and Scorrano announced to search for raw data and to cooperate with the investigation in Padua.
But I decided to ask the University of Cologne to help with the investigation of Frezza’s papers, in particular this one:
Aneurus inconstans: “one mitochondria has been copy/pasted onto the ima(s), please note the different neighboring cells (blue arrows.”
On 23 March 2023, the ombudsman Martin Avenarius, a law professor at the University of Cologne, announced to forward my evidence to the university’s commission for good scientistic practice (GWP). On 18 April 2023, he provided me with the decision, which I translate:
“Meanwhile, I submitted the suspicions which you formulated in context with the work of Prof. Frezza to an expert for the subject, who came to the conclusion that the similar-looking images you marked are not identical. Also, the prevailing view here is that Prof. Frezza has produced so much work of high quality that he did not obtain any undue advantage with this work, even if there should be something wrong with it. Afterwards I presented the matter to the local GWP commission. It has come to the conclusion that the indications of possible scientific misconduct are at most very low and, because the event took place a long time ago, a clarification is hardly to be expected. Now, as I gather from your correspondence, the competent authorities of the University of Padua are apparently already investigating the case. The commission is of the opinion that the matter should be correctly pursued there in the first place. Should Padua arrive at a fundamentally different impression, this might be a reason to consult again in Cologne.”
Maybe Avenarius asked the same mysterious expert whom De Strooper quoted to me previously:
“Frezza et al 2006: I see the similarities that have been highlighted at PubPeer too, but when I blow up the pictures I do not immediately see sharp edges or other clear signs of copy-paste of cells into those pictures. I am not an expert on the contents of this paper, but when I look at these pictures the things that are highlighted with arrows in the original picture, then these are not the structures that are now highlighted in pubpeer as possibly duplicated. I have difficulties to see what one would gain in these pictures by adding in some duplications.“
Yet the duplications were sufficiently proven on PubPeer. By the way, it is strange that Avenarius, a law professor, claims it was I who marked the alleged duplications. It was actually my expert colleagues. And one of them now made an analysis which should make Avenarius’s “expert for the subject”, De Strooper’s research integrity manager, and the Cologne GWP Commission look very incompetent, if not worse.
Orchestes quercus: “Telltale signs of a copy-paste action are indicated by arrows. Red arrow: a feature is abruptly horizontally sliced. Blue arrow: an apparent membrane with an attached circular feature ‘becomes’ a membrane that includes a half-circular feature. See here for a version without markings. Note that this pair of mitochondria grew mirrored in different cell cultures.”
Now for Figure S4:
The sleuth also wrote on PubPeer:
“When I wrote my comment #9 this thread still contained an earlier comment from one of the authors pointing out the absence of rectangular ‘cut and paste box’ discontinuities. As shown for Fig. 5a above, there are clear discontinuities showing imperfect polishing-up after duplicating image features. Also, for the red duplication in Figure S4 the bounding box does seem to have been rectangular, slicing off some parts of the duplicated mitochondrion. Another sign pointing to author-generated artwork is the absence of any rotation between the duplications. Some 7 mitochondria decided to ‘grow’ in exactly the same shape in often different cell cultures. This in itself is already magical. And they then managed to get imaged in TEM in the exact same orientation. Which is beyond magical. One can add to this that mitochondria duplicated in the same panel also have the exact same size, so apparently their closer proximity made them not only keep their orientation and shape, but also ‘synchronized’ their exact size.“
I forwarded this all to Avernarius and asked to urgently inform me if his “expert for the subject” and the GWP Commission would like to retract their earlier decision that there are no duplications, no indications of possible research misconduct, and no clarity can be ever achieved. Avenarius told me that a reply will take time:
“…the Commission can only deliberate if they agree on an appointment beforehand. So please understand that this step will also take some time. The duration is simply due to the diligence with which the GWP institutions devote themselves to their tasks.”
It took them a lot of diligence NOT to see the duplications though.
Avenarius refused to tell what subject his expert was an expert for. He also refused to divulge the names of the members of the GWP Commission, who are supposed to be publicly named on the university website, except that the relevant link leads nowhere.
30 years of experience
In USA, cancer is about to be cured thanks to Professor Dennis Slamon, and it’s only fair that he gets rich in the process.
A press release by his biotech startup, issued on 13 April 2023:
“TORL BioTherapeutics LLC (TORL), a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing new biologics for cancer treatment, announced today its public launch and the closing of a $158 million Series B financing. TORL’s pipeline of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were discovered in the laboratory of scientific co-founder Dennis Slamon, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Medicine, and Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM). He is an accomplished physician and scientist whose research was pivotal in identifying HER2 as a target in breast cancer and the development and initial approval of trastuzumab (Herceptin). Dr. Slamon’s lab went on to discover CDK4/6 as an important target in hormone receptor (HR+) positive breast cancer. Subsequently, his group led the clinical development of CDK4/6 inhibitors, resulting in breakthrough status therapies palbociclib (Ibrance) and ribociclib (Kisqali), in HR+ breast cancer.
TORL is built on a strategic partnership with the Slamon Research Lab at UCLA, whereby the Company has exclusive development and commercial rights to biologics-based drug candidates focused on promising cancer targets. TORL’s lead drug programs target Claudin 6 (CLDN 6) and Claudin 18.2 (CLDN 18.2), both of which are currently in clinical trials. The Company also expects to put 2-3 additional compounds into clinical trials over the next 12 months, with plans to advance 1-2 new compounds each year.
“It has been very rewarding to use 30 years of experience, lessons learned, and preclinical models developed in our lab for this new company for,” said Dennis Slamon, M.D., Ph.D., Co-Founder of TORL”
Most of the money comes from Goldman Sachs, plus some other investors, including Bristol Myers Squibb and Slamon’s own University of California.
Cheshire was so impressed by the press release and the multi-million investment, that he decided to look into Slamon’s papers. The results are now on PubPeer, currently 14 publications are flagged for problematic data. All connected to the 30 years of research research on which TORL business is built.
For example, this classic, where same control rRNA gels were used for different cell clones:
“The northern blot shown in Figure 3 seems to have a number of differential splices (maroon arrows) and two lanes appear to be repeated in the control band (maroon boxes).“
Differential splicing is a common problem with Slamon’s gels (eg, Garon et al 2013), sometimes the loading controls get duplicated to stand for different experiments, like in Konecny et al 2006 or Kalous et al 2012. Apparently Slamon doesn’t believe in them, these annoying loading controls. Also here:
There is a saying: “You are what your friends are”, and Slamon’s friend is Jaydutt Vadgama, vice president for research and health affairs at Charles R. Drew University in Los Angeles. Like Slamon, he is also full professor the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. Vadgama’s PubPeer record steadily grows each time Cheshire has another look, and now stands at 18 papers. Here a nice example with Slamon:
“A portion of a band seems to appear in both Figure 3C and Figure 6B (with a vertical stretch), but these are described differently.”
Yanyuan Wu is now associate professor at the Charles R. Drew University and adjunct professor at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. She is certainly qualified:
160 million dollars for that? Sounds like a poor value for money. Maybe Goldman Sachs’ investment into TORL BioTherapeutics wasn’t such a smart move after all. Slamon didn’t reply to my email.
Not hidden from anyone
Who would have thought that totalitarian terror regimes produce only utter crooks and idiots as their scientific elites? We knew that about russia, and now Iran has its own scandal.
#mahsaAmini#مهسا_امینی The statements of one of the university professors in a meeting attended by Ebrahim Raisi, the President of Iran, and the baseless and wrong descriptions of the Python programming language, followed a wave of criticism among academic, political (1/3) pic.twitter.com/LjqDKZGafC
— Vahid Online English (Beta) (@VahidOnlineEng) April 13, 2023
Iran International (obviously from abroad) reports:
“A one-minute video emerged Wednesday of a March 28 meetingbetween President Ebrahim Raisi and academics allegedly in the “top one percent of world scientists” during which one of the participants makes hugely uninformed remarks while the president listens with interest and takes notes.
The meeting was apparently organized by the ministry of science, research and technology and over 100 of the “top one percent [Iranian] scientists” attended.
University professor, Davood Domiri-Ganji, suggests to the president that the “Python universal software” and “Python global network” could be used to predict the future in the fields of medicine, military, and economic developments such as the growth of inflation “in the next four years”.
The mistake does not appear to be a slip of the tongue as Domiri mentions it several times and even claims that there is artificial intelligence “inside” the human body.”
Now, Davood Domiri Ganji is known to get his authorships from a papermill. Alexander Magazinov wrote about him before.
Alexander Magazinov: “The first bulk citation, being within a very broad context, unexpectedly emphasizes the scholarly output of a certain MI Khan (M Ijaz Khan). So do a few first items in the second bulk citation. [..] As a collateral benefit, some citations were delivered to a certain YM Chu, too.“
Cheshire shared the above Iran International reporting about the magic of Python in the PubPeer thread, and then, quite unexpectedly, Ganji himself replied, using his own name and email address:
“Professor Domiri Ganji’s talks about Python software and its importance were unfortunately broadcast incompletely and intermittently by some media and caused misunderstandings. This is despite the fact that his scientific reputation is not hidden from anyone.“
In previous Shorts, I introduced you to Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli, a neuroscientist in Florence, Italy, who published some ridiculously bad fraud. We decided to call him Lollo for brevity. Now, Lollo belongs to a whole gang of Italian data forgers, but back then we missed some really spectacular co-authors of his.
“Authors 1, 2, 3 and 13 are in custody or have served prison sentences for producing and distributing GcMAF, the polypeptide claimed here to treat Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Authors 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11 seem to have been students of authors Ruggiero and Stefania Pacini. It is not clear what they contributed to the text.
“Dr. Rodney Smith and Emma Ward, the scientists, both worked at the laboratory and manufactured the medicine. Smith and Ward knew the product was being sold to customers, despite it not being licensed.
“…Rodney Smith was sentenced to eight months in prison.
“[David Noakes], 66, from Plymouth, is wanted by French authorities for nine alleged offences, including marketing unauthorised medicines. … Noakes’s former business partner Lynda Thyer has already been extradited to France on charges relating to the sale of cancer drug GcMAF.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-guernsey-50254152
I have to say, all these convictions for fraud and malpractice undermine my faith in the reliability of the authors’ clinical claims.
The publisher of the “American Journal of Immunology”, “Science Publications” or Thescipub, in fact operates out of the UAE, and is generally classified as predatory.”
How crazy is this, to catch Lollo in bed with Marco Ruggiero, probably the worst and most toxic medical quack Italy had in the last decades? Incidentally, Ruggiero used to be professor at University of Florence until he was sacked.
Read about Ruggiero, Noakes, Pacini, Thyer and others in this very long read by Smut Clyde:
“Ruggiero is an old hand at this plausibly-deniable Tergiversation Tango, having perfected it with his just-asking-questions Antivax AIDS denial-cake, both eating and f**king it.” – Smut Clyde
Another Florence-based co-author of the paper above, Jacopo J. V. Branca, was also mentioned in Smut Clyde’s article. He was Ruggiero’s PhD student and graduated in 2010 with the thesis titled “New Insights into the Role of HIV in the Aetiology and Pathogenesis of AIDS” . It is an exercise in quackery and AIDS denialism. And in massive plagiarism. Not that the university minds.
Branca is still at Florence, apparently at the Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, specifically in the lab of Alessandra Pacini. She is also co-author on the above paper by Ruggiero’s gang and is quite possibly the sister of Ruggiero’s wife and former University of Florence researcher, Stefania Pacini.
Branca became a close associate of Lollo, together with Alessandra Pacini and Lollo’s mentor Carla Ghelardini these Florentine gang produced many joint fake papers (see PubPeer). Like this:
“The first two lanes and the last one are the same lanes (red and blue boxes) published by this group in Figure 3 of Micheli et al. 2019 (a paper with its own serious issues).”
“two images CANNOT represent treatments of DEX + R(+)LA and DEX + R(+)LA + HMB, respectively.”
It was obviously Branca who introduced Lollo to the Ruggiero gang. Branca is namely co-author on two more papers with them:
“Authors 1, 2, 4 and 6 are in custody or have served prison sentences for producing and distributing GcMAF, the polypeptide claimed here to cure cancer (when mixed with olive oil).”
Branca is in fact a GcMAF shill, see this YouTube video posted by Noakes:
This might explain why Branca hasn’t yet made it to full professor at the University of Florence. This Ruggiero-association and GcMAF stuff is too noxious even for Italian academic standards which is normally permissive to quackery. But! With the help from Lollo’s gang, Branca will soon have enough fake papers to qualify for a professorship!
You might think: horrible, this University of Florence. Well, in 2010-2011 they let Paolo Macchiarini kill at least five patients with trachea transplants and then pretended these people never existed.
This is an Open Letter I sent today by email to the Italian Senate and its Health Committee, appealing for an investigation into the trachea transplants of the scandal surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. It is published below bilingually, in Italian and in English. After the earlier Open Letter by Prof Rafael Cantera was signed by over…
You might recognise the authors: Dmitry Bokov, Abduladheem Turki Jalil, Walid Kamal Abdelbasset, Wanich Suksatan, etc. See PubPeer. All known papermill fraudsters. Now this is the Expression of Concern, issued on 8 April 2023:
It has been alleged that several of the authors of this publication are under investigation for buying co-authorship. They appear as co-authors in numerous articles on completely unrelated topics in various journals. Many of these articles have already been retracted by the journals in which they were published. These authors have careers in areas completely unrelated to the topic of this publication. In addition, most of the authors were added to this article during the revision process, without requesting or receiving permission to do so from the Editor-in-Chief, and the original first author was replaced by another. This is highly irregular and unethical behaviour by the corresponding author.
Because this is a review article and contains no original data, the journal has not been presented with enough evidence to proceed with retraction of the paper.
Why wasn’t it retracted if the editors knew the study is from a papermill and the authorships were purchased? Fake authorships alone are reason enough for retraction. And how can a scientific review have any value if it was written (or stolen) by incompetents?
I contacted the Editor-in-Chief Amy Hahn of the Albany Medical College in New York, USA. She told me she wanted to retract that paper, but was prevented by Elsevier’s legal department. Who instructed her:
“While it is unfortunate that the authors of this MS were previously linked to suspicious conduct, I’m afraid I still have yet to see any evidence that the content in this article is itself dubious. The fact that there are articles about some of the authors having possibly participated in unethical practices on other articles is not very strong grounds for retraction. Ultimately this is an editorial decision, however as before I have to say that without evidence of wrongdoing on this specific article I do not think that my colleagues in the retraction panel would approve the retraction.
As before, I would advise looking for additional evidence of misconduct on this article. From my first email to you on this case:
“I would strongly recommend consulting COPE’s guide on papermillsfor examples of other indicators that the work may be fraudulent, such as changes in authorship during submission, substantial changes to the MS revision, suspicious ethical/funding statements, suspicious looking data that may have been manipulated, high degrees of textual overlap or mosaic plagiarism, and author-suggested reviewers providing unsuitable/overly quick/extremely favorable recommendations (to name a few).
As the guide states, no one of these factors proves that the paper is of concern, however the number and severity of each of these indicators may or may not amount to a sufficiently substantial degree of doubt around the legitimacy of the work where corrections to the record warrant consideration (see pages 7-9). “
I empathize with the feeling of suspicion, particularly given the fact that some of the authors are in common with the differently-troubling submission above, but retractions are used to correct the scientific record, not to punish authors. Retraction notices must also only state facts, and not unproven suspicions. Without evidence of wrongdoing on this article, I’m not sure how one could word a retraction notice for this article that would not pose a risk of defamation to the authors. If the Editor insists as a matter of editorial independence the retraction panel may permit it, however there could be potential legal risks to going ahead with such a decision without evidence, so my recommendation remains to further scrutinize the paper itself.“
Further scrutiny of the paper led the editor to drop the plans for retraction. Plagiarism check found nothing, as Hahn mentioned in her email to me. She also told me:
“the review article that you are questioning was, for the most part, within our scope and fairly well written. If it was written by a random text generator, that was missed by the reviewers, the handling editor and myself, and all of us have knowledge in that area. The problem with this paper was the addition of multiple authors during the revision process, which was unfortunately missed by the handling editor and myself. We were both busy looking at the content and the revisions that had been made. Many of those newly added authors are in fields completely unrelated to the subject of the paper. You might want to read this article about selling authorships. It mentions several of the added authors by name.“
Yep, I read that article, it is indeed really good. Here it is:
Nick Wise and Alexander Magazinov on the authorships-for-sale market on social media. Merely $700 for the 7th position on some paper way outside your expertise!
It seems, this Widjaja et al 2021 papermill trash was handled by an (unnamed) guest editor, who then approved authorship additions. Hahn insisted however that there were no peer review irregularities and the guest editor was known to her. And she also said this:
“Is it not possible in your mind that the corresponding author, who I have verified does work in immunology, wrote a paper and, when it seemed likely that the paper would be accepted, felt the need to add to his bank account and sold authorships?“
The latter supposition is indeed possible. The former, that Majid Ahmadi is capable of writing anything scientifically coherent, is not. This Assistant Professor of Medical Immunology at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in Iran “authored” papers on all possible topics of medicine and biology.
For those still unsure, here is proof that Ahmadi doesn’t write papers, but buys his authorships from a papermill, which caters primarily to Iranians and russians:
Nick Wise:”On the 5th of January 2021 an advert was placed on Facebook selling authorship of a paper with a title matching this one.. The abstract is almost identical to the advert.“
All this was not enough to retract that fake trash in Human Immunology. At least Ahmadi, Bokov, Widjaja, Turki Jalil, and Abdelbasset are blacklisted by this journal now, along with many Chinese fraudsters. Hahn announced to retire as Editor-in-Chief by the end of this year, being tired of fighting against Chinese fraud already. She told me that a certain Zhe Wang “has submitted 332 papers since 2020, often several per day“.
Rafael Luque Special
Saudi money
The Spanish newspaper El Pais and the journalist Manuel Ansede previously brought a great story about the King of Papermillers Rafael Luque. Now there is another revelation from Spanish academia, published on 18 April 2023:
“Mira Petrovic is a Spanish chemist and one of the most oft-cited scientists in the world. She is still stunned by a Saudi university’s offer just before the pandemic: €70,000 ($77,000) a year just to list King Saud University in Riyadh as her primary academic affiliation in a database used by the influential Academic Ranking of World Universities, also known as the Shanghai Ranking. […]
In 2019, Spanish chemist Rafael Luque accepted a Saudi offer and changed his primary affiliation to King Saud University without informing his real employer, the University of Córdoba (Spain). EL PAÍS reported that the Spanish university penalized Luque with a de facto dismissal of 13 years without pay. The University of Córdoba plummeted 150 positions in the Shanghai Ranking because of Luque’s subterfuge, according to a detailed report by the SIRIS consulting firm obtained by EL PAÍS. If Luque had not falsely changed his affiliation to the Saudi institution, the University of Cordoba would be 684th on the Shanghai Ranking instead of the 837th.”
Saudi Arabia pays Spanish scientists to pump up global university rankings. More than a dozen academics in Spain falsely claim primary affiliations with Arab institutions to boost their academic prestigehttps://t.co/m2Rn5R1yll
Petrovic publicly rejected the Saudi offer, but Luque of course went for it in full. It wasn’t just him:
“Chemist Damià Barceló was one of the first Spanish researchers to accept a Saudi offer and has listed King Saud University as his primary affiliation since 2016, despite his principal job as director of the Catalan Institute for Water Research. Barceló says he made the change because he was interested in analyzing contaminants in crops irrigated with wastewater in Saudi Arabia. “To conduct this study, I had to list King Saud University as my primary affiliation. It was an essential condition — without affiliation, I could not collect samples in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Barceló is one of Spain’s most prolific scientists and has signed over 1,600 studies in his professional career. Some years, he published a paper every three days. Publication quality is important for making the Highly Cited Researchers list, but quantity also plays a major role. In 2013, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz personally presented Barceló with a 500,000-riyal ($133,300) award for his research on water pollutants.
Despite being formally affiliated with King Saud University, Barceló acknowledges that he only goes to Saudi Arabia once a year to collect samples and give lectures. Barceló denies getting paid €70,000 per year as reported by other scientists, but would not reveal the terms of his contract other than saying the university covers the cost of his “very expensive” experiments, luxury hotel accommodations, first class travel and a lecture fee €2,000 ($2,200).”
My readers might recall Damia Barcelo, who is not only a fan of Saudi money, but also of antivaxxery and research fraud, in his capacity as editor of Elsevier journals. Read here:
Aristidis Tsatsakis, Konstantinos Poulas, Ronald Kostoff, Michael Aschner, Demetrios Spandidos, Konstantinos Farsalinos: you will need a disinfecting shower once you read their papers.
A Chinese paper gets rejected at Elsevier after reviewer spotted fraud. Same paper re-appears unchanged in another Elsevier journal, the editors refuse any action.
The El Pais article mentions another Spanish researcher:
“The SIRIS report shows that Saudi Arabia boasts 112 of the Highly Cited Researchers, which is five times more than Germany. Luis Martínez, a professor of computer languages and systems at the University of Jaén (Spain), says he made the Highly Cited Researchers list in 2017 and immediately started receiving offers from Arab universities. He turned them down for five years, but when he failed to get Spanish public funding for his projects, he accepted €60,000 ($66,000) per year from King Saud University to list it as his primary institutional affiliation.”
Pity it’s not mentioned how Luis Martinez became Highly Cited Researcher. His PubPeer record provides some clues, specifically to trash mathematics with Chinese co-authors, some of them known customers of papermills.
Another one. If this is a "distance," then I am the Pope. For the context: a distance between two different objects cannot be zero, this is one of the points of calling something a distance.https://t.co/Ry1J8UEwLdpic.twitter.com/1xcJKvUeQX
According to El Pais, there are 19 Spanish professors with Saudi affiliations. Here another one:
“Saudi universities sometimes use Spanish intermediaries to convey their offers. Juan Luis García Guirao, who was once Spain’s youngest professor, has contacted several people on the Highly Cited Researchers list, urging them to switch their primary affiliations in exchange for Arab funding. García, who is employed by the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (Spain), was named a King Abdulaziz “Distinguished Scientist” in 2020. “I have never been paid — my relationship with them is strictly scientific. In fact, I have never traveled to Saudi Arabia or set foot in King Abdulaziz University,” said García.”
Un catedrático capta con su empresa tapadera a científicos españoles para que mientan y digan que trabajan en una universidad saudíhttps://t.co/lnRu1CKgcu
On 20 April 2023, El Pais published a follow-up report by Ansede, dedicated entirely to Garcia-Guirao. Turned out, he set up a private company to bribe Spanish researchers. Here an offer Garcia-Guirao pushed on behalf of the King Abdulaziz University:
“… a collaboration project of $12,000 per year […] The agreement included an unusual clause: the urgent requirement that the Spanish researcher lie in the Highly Cited Researchers database and declare that his main place of work is the Saudi institution.”
Garcia-Guirao’s business is called:
“… UP4 Institute of Sciences , a company founded in 2015 with García Guirao himself as proxy . The sole administrator is Yolanda Guerrero Sánchez , associate professor of human anatomy at the University of Murcia, who, according to sources at the institution, is a partner of the mathematician. The company’s headquarters are in Cartagena, in an area of semi-detached houses 500 meters from El Corral beach. Its turnover in 2021 reached 724,000 euros, according to the accounts deposited in the Mercantile Registry.
García Guirao was urging the researchers to declare King Abdulaziz University as their main place of work, before the deadline to modify Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers database expired. “This must be done before October 16, after which it cannot be updated,” warned the professor. “Only in Clarivate, in the other bases they don’t care.”
Greedy rotten lying bugger. But in Spain he is considered to be a maths genius, so I looked into Garcia-Guirao’s publishing record. Interesting coauthorships, all over Asia. A few seconds and I found a possibly papermilled one, in MDPI and featuring coauthors from Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey and the known papermill customer, Dumitru Baleanu from Romania (PubPeer record here).
I invite the expert Alexander Magazinov to crush this phony mathematician.
This thread will expose some notable connections of the embattled Spanish "chemist" Rafael Luque.
It is a call to action to start rooting out the fraud network. It would be a mistake to treat Luque as a single funny case. Read about Luque here: https://t.co/HcnATvWmhs
Meanwhile Rafael Luque was kicked out as Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal Molecular Catalysis. Where Luque used to be named as EiC, there is now a blank space. Must have been a very rushed decision, prompted by the El Pais reporting above.
Peoples Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 6 Miklukho Maklaya str., 117198 Moscow, Russian Federation
Luque got to RUDN 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.
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.
Now meet Andrei Malkov, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Loughborough University in UK. Malkov left russia for England in 1992, but at some point he became head of the unit “Molecular design and synthesis of innovative compounds for medicine” at RUDN, until the position was assigned in 2021 to Luque.
In the early afternoon of 18 April 2023, a sudden change was made to the English website of RUDN to replace Malkov with Luque as the unit head (see before and after).
Yet even more worrisome is that Malkov didn’t end his association with RUDN after russia began its full-scale genocidal invasion of Ukraine. Both Malkov and Luque are listed as confirmed speakers on a September 2022 conference at RUDN, also in its abstract book.
Other invited foreign speakers were the papermilling fraudster and Luque-associate Esmail Doustkhah (his PubPeer record here), Hiroyuki Nakamura from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, Armando Pombeiro from Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and some others. All apparently came to support this russian university in its genocidal propaganda against Ukrainian people. Long after russian war crime atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere became known.
Already in March 2022, the rector of RUDN Oleg Yastrebov joined several fellow rectors in this open letter (without any pressure, because a number of russian universities did not sign it). Google-translated:
“Before our eyes, events are taking place that excite every citizen of Russia. This decision of Russia is to finally end the eight-year confrontation between Ukraine and Donbass, to achieve the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine and thereby protect itself from growing military threats.
We, the Rector’s Corps of the Russian Federation, have been developing and strengthening Russian-Ukrainian scientific and educational ties for many decades, treating each other with care. Our joint research has made a huge contribution to world science, so the long-term tragedy in the Donbass resonates with particular pain and bitterness in our hearts.
It is very important these days to support our country, our army, which defends our security, to support our President, who, perhaps, made the most difficult, hard-won but necessary decision in his life.
It is important not to forget about our main duty – to conduct a continuous educational process, to instill patriotism in young people, the desire to help the Motherland.
Universities have always been the backbone of the state. Our priority goal is to serve Russia and develop its intellectual potential. Now more than ever, we must demonstrate confidence and resilience in the face of economic and information attacks, effectively rally around our President, by our example strengthening the optimistic spirit and faith in the power of reason among young people, instilling hope for an early peace.”
Luque sure is on board with ruscism, but is the British professor Malkov also an active part of it? I wrote to Malkov and received no reply. But I saw him visiting my LinkedIn profile soon after my email. So I wrote to him again, only to find out I am now blocked by his university email server. Presumably the russian patriot Malkov got upset over the Ukrainian greeting which I add to all my emails since the full-scale war started?
I wrote then to Malkov’s Loughborough University to inquire what they make of russian war on Ukraine, and if they support Malkov’s pro-russian attitude. After all, Malkov is Director of Doctoral Programmes at the School of Sciences, it would be really bad if he failed Loughborough Univeristy students for things like wearing blue and yellow colours.
Maarten van Kampen was astounded when “his” papermiller Ahmed Shalan ended up plagiarising the King of Papermillers exposed by Alexander Magazinov – none other but the legendary Rafael Luque!
“Fig. 1b: S2 and S3 are identical. So are S4 and S5.” Also: these spectra are hand-drawn. “Fig. 1a: XRD spectra S4 and S5 are identical down to the noise level. So are S2 and S3.“
“Fig. S1 supporting information: curves S1, S2, and S3 are exactly identical. So are S4 and S5.““Fig. 6c. The figure shows fluorescence spectra as a function of excitation wavelength. However, the materials seem to be able to fluoresce at a lower wavelength than the excitation wavelength. This is very unusual.”
If you think the venerable ACS and their journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Penn State professor Phillip E. Savage, retracted this trashy fraud: go back to Retraction Watch, you are on the wrong website. It was of course corrected, in January 2023:
“Here, we report editing errors in Figure 1a,b and Figure S1 and provide corrected results. These corrections do not affect any conclusions of the work. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused because of these editing errors.”
Also corrected were figures 6 and 7, and the text of results and discussion was changed. Shalan has around 30 papers on PubPeer, everything he publishes is fake and papermilled.
Now Maarten commented on this Wiley-published book chapter:
“Ahmed Shalan, the last author of this book chapter, has a an extensive PubPeer record. His then-employer BCMaterials and in particular its research director Senentxu Lanceros-Mendez were informed 2022-01. The subsequent investigation has thus far resulted in two corrections [1, 2]. The paper that was first corrected incidentally features the research director as author. And yes, after correction both papers still, well, uhm, contain serious errors.
Ahmed Shalan is a prolific writer of not only papers, but also book chapters. This 2022-03 book chapter, authored together with Lanceros-Mendez, contains copious amounts of (suspected) plagiarism and weird paraphrasing. Another Shalan-authored chapter in the same book contains similar problems. Fun fact: the book was published after the concerns were raised and Lanceros-Mendez is not only author but also one of its editors.
Below a comparison of the abstract from the Luque paper with that of the Shalan chapter:
[…]
Running the documents through the Text Compare app of CopyLeaks results in a 20%/2000 words similarity between the documents:
Whole paragraphs are paraphrased in the exact same order. The Ashan/Luque paper is referenced once in the whole chapter [116]. And not because of its content, but to reproduce a figure (with permission…) that was apparently deemed informative in explaining nature-inspired hierarchical materials.
I do not think this chapter is sufficiently original.
Finally some fun facts. Shalan and Ariful Ashan (from the paper) have published together. The result can be admired in this PubPeer post. Rafeal Luque is, well, also colorful. Or, phrased differently, Luque is one of the world’s most cited scientists. And has been suspended without pay for 13 years from his his Cordoba university position.”
The new book, “Sustainable Energy Storage in the Scope of Circular Economy: Advanced Materials and Device Design“, by editors Carlos Miguel Costa, Renato Gonçalves and Senentxu Lanceros-Méndez can be bought on Amazon for €160.
My own experience with Senentxu Lanceros-Méndez consisted of an hour wasted with a Zoom meeting where Shalan’s boss pretended to really care about research integrity, announcing to immediately investigate and sanction Shalan. In reality, Lanceros-Méndez was trying to manipulate me and to find out how much I knew.
I wonder if Lanceros-Mendez will now skip the middleman Shalan and ask his fellow countryman Luque for collaboration.
News in Tweets
On 20 March 2023, 287 French academics published an Open Letter in Le Monde demanding immediate cessation of military support to Ukraine, presumably so that russia’s genocide In Ukraine can continue and the Ukrainian people cease poisoning the French-russian friendship by their refusal to die. Now comes a rebuttal, also in Le Monde. English full text is here: “First, what peace agreement? With how many millions of Ukrainian citizens in Russian occupied territories? How many civilians would be deported? How many children – 16,000 at the last count? How many executions, how many deaths by torture in occupied zones, signs of a genocidal intention already recognized by a few Western countries? With what economic and health consequences ? For what rate of poverty, infectious diseases, homicides, suicides, alcoholism, fertility (non-births due to a drop in the standard of living), what average life expectancy? Compared to these same areas if they were part of a European Ukraine? Multiplied by how many decades? How many deaths in future conflicts would be encouraged by a partial Russian victory (e.g. China-Taiwan)? […] Arming diplomacy is therefore only possible, paradoxically, by arming the Ukrainians more in order to make the balance of power symmetrical. Thus, we assert that only massive military aid to Kiyv would allow a rapid diplomatic solution: to allow diplomacy to operate, the situation on the military ground must evolve strongly in favor of Ukraine.”
Our opinion piece has just been published in @lemondefr. In this paper, we debunk the (pseudo) realistic narrative that aims to discourage powerful military aid to our AU allies. https://t.co/OvcgoLGj8X
Paolo Macchiarini‘s appeal trial started in Sweden. Swedish newspaper LMV wrote on 17 April 2023, translated: “The trial concerns three patients who received transplants of plastic airways covered with stem cells at Karolinska University Hospital, KS, by surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. All three died. In a previous trial in Solna district court in 2022, Paolo Macchiarini was convicted of causing bodily harm, a serious crime, in one case. As for the other two patients, the scandal surgeon was acquitted. The prosecutor had asked for prison, but the penalty was a suspended sentence. In practice, it is a probationary period of two years without supervision. The hearing that starts today takes place in Svea Court of Appeal and the last trial days are expected to be at the end of May. Both the scandal surgeon himself and the prosecutor have appealed the district court’s verdict.“
Shocking that the families of Macchiarini's victims have not recevied any compensation. "As far as I know, they have not received a personal apology, money or other support. Despite the fact that this is no ordinary "maltreatment", says Bosse Lindquist."https://t.co/icrTBZn3FQ
VICEreports: “For several years, parents of autistic children have paid between $10,000 and $15,000 to have their children undergo unproven stem cell and cord blood treatments at Duke University, through what’s called an expanded access program, or EAP. […] In recent months, Duke has sent letters informing parents that this program is no longer available to autistic children“. Stem cell researcher and critic of this therapy, Paul Knoepfler, is quoted, and he also blogs on this topic here: “In brief, the Duke team knew the cells didn’t help but kept injecting kids with them anyway for years within the scope of the EAP and were charging for it. […] Unfortunately, it appears the Duke pediatric cell therapy team is continuing their EAP for cerebral palsy (CP). Duke’s own clinical trial data on cord cells for CP are generally discouraging.” Money doesn’t stink.
A mysterious clinical trial in Israel is recruiting autistic children for blood draws. As the company’s founder admitted, the actual therapy on offer is extraction of bone marrow “stem cells” and their injection into patient’s spine. Smut Clyde investigates.
Eugenics and racism are back in fashion, now poorly disguised as “pronatalism”. An immediatedly deleted Report Door article from 17 April 2023 (archived copy here) describes it: “pronatalism, literally meaning pro-birth. Its core tenet is deceptively simple: our future depends on having enough children […] At the centre of it all are Simone and Malcolm Collins, two 30-something American entrepreneurs turned philosophers – and parents – who say they are only the most outspoken proponents of a belief that many prefer to keep private. In 2021 they founded a ‘non-denominational’ campaign group called Pronatalist.org, under the umbrella of their non-profit Pragmatist Foundation. Buoyed by a $482,000 (£385,000) donation from Jaan Tallinn, an Estonian tech billionaire who funds many rationalist and EA organisations, it is now lobbying governments, meeting business leaders, and seeking partnerships with reprotech companies and fertility clinics.” Other fans: “Easily the most famous person to espouse pronatalist ideas is Elon Musk“, also “Diana Fleischman, a pronatalist psychology professor at the University of New Mexico and consultant for an embryo-selection start-up“. Ben Lamm, business partner of MIT’s eugenicist and Colossal Wanker George Church, is quoted: “I’ve been in various text threads with technology entrepreneurs who share that view… there are really smart people that have real concern around this.” Basically, these mega-rich creeps are very concerned about the imaginary “Great Replacement” and “White Holocaust”.
I fautori del pronatalismo, Musk compreso: l'élite deve fare più figli. Uno ammette che lo dicono anche
neo-Nazis and other ethno-nationalists […]. Another issue is what you might call the Handmaid’s Tale problem…
Yet another retraction for the Francesco Squadrito‘s Fraud Squad in Sicily. The fake paper Bitto et al 2012 got retracted by Springer Nature journal Critical Care on 18 April 2023: “The Editor in Chief retracted this article because of significant concerns regarding the Western blots in Figs. 2A–F and 3A–D which question the integrity of the data. The authors stated that some of these figures were created by cutting and splicing blots to show representative samples. However, the authors were unable to supply raw images or explain the similarity in appearance of the figures. The Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the integrity of the data in this article. Alessandra Bitto and Francesco Squadrito do not agree to this retraction. […] Allessandra Bitto has stated that Domenica Altavilla is now deceased.“
Sabine Hazan‘s covidiotic antivax rant at Frontiers (“Microbiome-Based Hypothesis on Ivermectin’s Mechanism in COVID-19: Ivermectin Feeds Bifidobacteria to Boost Immunity”, 2022) about to be retracted.
Kudos to @FrontiersIn for moving ahead with this retraction. @SabinehazanMD (blocked me) posted the correspondence in her Twitter feed today:
"[T]he retraction will proceed in the absence of your approval."
Antivaxxery by Amrit Srecko Šorli, first published in OMICS, then as MDPI preprint, gets criticised on PubPeer: “While the manuscript uses publicly available data on the vaccination status of dead people, this twitter post by the first author is claiming that “medical authorities all over the world are hiding the vaccination status of dead persons”
— Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex (@SmutClyde) April 17, 2023
Besancon et al 2023: “we could extract the reviewing time for 8,455 (66.7%) articles, as the difference between the date of submission and the date of acceptance. Of these 8,455 publications, 699 (8.3%) from 341 different peer-reviewed journals were reviewed and accepted for publication either on the day of submission (n=311) or the day after (n=388). […] Among the 699 articles accepted within a day, an editorial conflict of interest was observed in 297 (42.5%) articles.“
In our #OpenScience Saves Lives paper (https://t.co/oQRRUmGOHB), we have found ~700 #COVID19 papers reviewed & published in < 24 hours with editorial conflicts of interests.
Retraction for Song et al 2017 from 24 March 2023, the Chinese authors even admit to papermilling in the retraction notice: “The authors provided raw data for the western blot images which does not appear to be genuine. The raw data shows signs of cloning as duplicating features can be observed, which indicates that the images have been manipulated. The authors state that they outsourced the western blot experiments in this paper and have offered to re-perform this work.”
It is not clear which of the authors of Sharma et al 2019 applied to Brookes’ lab and got caught with fraud, but one thing is certain: the journal will do absolutely nothing. The EiC of Human Molecular Genetics is Oxford professor Dame Kay Davies, and she rabidly hates whistleblowers and enjoys forstering research fraud. Also in her own papers!
This is the second part of the Bologna whistleblower account. As the university was burying their own misconduct findings, Oxford University Press and their ignoble editor were busy punishing and gaslighting the whistleblower.
American fascism reaches universities: “Louisiana Republican Party officials want state lawmakers to forbid the study of racism at colleges and universities, arguing in a resolution approved Saturday that classes examining “inglorious aspects” of United States history are too divisive. The resolution, passed by voice vote with no discernible dissent at the state party’s quarterly meeting in Baton Rouge, asks the Legislature to pass laws removing diversity, equity and inclusion departments and agencies “within any institution of higher learning within the state.”” (Nola.com)
Beyond parody.
Republican state officials in Louisiana ask lawmakers to ban the study of racism at universities, citing divisive 'inglorious aspects' of US history https://t.co/Je4NBCXwoe
“De Strooper’s research integrity manager, and the Cologne GWP Commission look very incompetent, if not worse.”
You are unusually kind here. No doubt because these European countries still yearn for the days of yore where they could settle matters of honor by who could stab the other the fastest… with style. Now, they use lawyers instead of rapiers, which objectively, is worse.
“A few hundred miles away in South San Francisco scientists at Genentech, including Art Levinson and Axel Ullrich, had been successful in cloning a number of cell growth-regulating genes as the company worked to develop medicines for a variety of different diseases.4,5 Slamon was aware of their work and, along with oncologist Dr. Bill McGuire at the University of Texas at San Antonio, they teamed up to understand whether any of these genes might play a role in cancer”
“After hearing the German cancer researcher Axel Ullrich, PhD, then a senior scientist at the biotechnology company Genentech, give a talk about the HER2 genetic alteration, Dr. Slamon asked him if he wanted to collaborate. Dr. Ullrich sent samples of DNA from his gene collection to Dr. Slamon’s laboratory so that Dr. Slamon could try to match them with DNA from his tumor collection.”
Axel Ullrich discovers HER2, Dennis Slamon hears Axel Ullrich’s talk and asks Ullrich for a collaboration. Fair enough.
Problem is Dennis Slamon’s problematic data. Those problematic data drive a coach and horses through the NIH’s, which funded Slamon, adulatory article.
“In 1986 Axel Ullrich, a German scientist working at Genentech, first discovered the Her-2 protein and gave a conference about it in which Slamon was present and afterwards Slamon proposed to work together, since he suspected that a mutation in Her-2 might cause cancer…”
“Multiple observational studies.In 1986 Axel Ullrich, a German scientist working at Genentech, first discovered the Her-2 protein and gave a conference about it in which Slamon was present and afterwards Slamon proposed to work together, since he suspected that a mutation in Her-2 might cause cancer…”
Multiple observational studies, which aren’t kosher.
“For 12 years, Dr. Slamon and his colleagues conducted the laboratory and clinical research that led to the development of the new breast cancer drug Herceptin, which targets a specific genetic alteration found in about 25 percent of breast cancer patients. To acknowledge Slamon’s accomplishments, President Bill Clinton appointed Slamon to the three-member President’s Cancer Panel in June 2000. ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Slamon
Funny how Slamon got credited for someone else’s work.
“Living Proof is a 2008 Lifetime Television film, directed by Dan Ireland. The film stars Harry Connick Jr. as Dr. Dennis Slamon, a doctor who is trying to find a cure for breast cancer. ” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Proof_(2008_film)
“Plot
The film follows the true story of Dr. Dennis Slamon (played by Harry Connick Jr.), who helped develop the breast cancer drug Herceptin, over the course of 8 years from 1988 to 1996. Dr. Slamon is a physician scientist at UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles), where he has developed the experimental drug Herceptin, which he believes will become a treatment for breast cancer. However, when the drug company stops funding the research, philanthropists, including Lilly Tartikoff (Angie Harmon) and Ronald Perelman help him continue drug research. Funding was done with an initial donation from Perelman’s Revlon charity, and continued over the years with the “Fire and Ice Ball” organized by Tartikoff.
Eventually the drug company funds the research and the drug goes through three trials before gaining approval from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Prior to the trials, the drug undergoes a preclinical animal trial. Nicole (Tammy Blanchard), a young mother with stage 4 cancer, receives the drug first. Although her mother Elizabeth (Swoosie Kurtz) pleads with Dr. Slamon, Nicole is not included in the subsequent trials as she does not meet the trial requirements. The women in the trials, particularly the first trial, band together. They handle their disease and drug trial, with humor—Tish (Jennifer Coolidge), or with alternative therapy—Tina (Trudie Styler). The stories of Barbara (Bernadette Peters) and Ellie (Regina King) are followed throughout, as they go through the trials and eventual recovery. Some patients involved in the tests die, but ultimately Slamon’s work with the drug changes the course of breast cancer treatment. “
Often cited as the source that 30% of breast cancers are Her-2 positive. That does seem to be a the high end of the range. North America seems to have the highest percentage Her-2 positive breast cancer, even compared to Western Europe, France being quite low. These differences could be due to population differences, but also due to where Dennis Slamon is.
The committee that decided on the 2019 prise to Dennis Slamon obviously didn’t look at the data. Foundations with loads of money should lose their charitable status when they do not perform due diligence.
Funny (or maby not) that despite billions and billions of dollars invested in cancer research, new drugs and lots of promises, the current cure is always the same: surgery + chemiotherapy.
Secondly, maybe Goldman Sucks wishes to make a donation to Cheshire and FBS for the invaluable information provided by this article… naah!
Even better is prevention…
Cure is rather surgery + radiotherapy than chemotherapy, used to treat cancer, but exceptionally to cure (mostly leukemia, lymphoma and testicular cancers).
However, how can we evaluate the price of one year survival in good conditions? The British health system did not accept (this has changed) to pay more than £40,000 for one year… I have no answer…
“160 million dollars for that? Sounds like a poor value for money. Maybe Goldman Sachs’ investment into TORL BioTherapeutics wasn’t such a smart move after all. Slamon didn’t reply to my email”.
Goldman Sachs will hold a portfolio of investments in biotech. If one Investment should go “tits up” they may recover some of the loses from rises in their other biotech Investments. Goldman Sachs must have a mature view of the world, they know that the majority of business ventures fail. I imagine Goldman Sachs will be able to cope. They have until now.
Like Rostamnia / Doustkhah, Pombeiro received his cut of the citation pie from the coordination papermill. Most likely, as a collateral benefit from co-authorship with a certain AM Kirillov. See, for example https://pubpeer.com/publications/7B5C549827701F937A20C2746055F4.
Banned twice
Waste of time and unhealthy
My content belongs to me and not for some antisocial media to erase forever.
People know how to reach me. You just did.
hi Leonid, I recently became aware that Jan Bergstra, a professor emeritus of the University of Amsterdam https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/j.a.bergstra/ and a member of Royal KNAW, is author of 14 of the 28 articles in the journal Transmathematica. The backgrounds of the Editor-in-Chief (and founder) of this journal, James A.D.W. Anderson https://transmathematica.org/index.php/journal/about/editorialTeam , indicate that there might be issues with the scientific quality of the items which are published in this journal.
“Formal Gender Theory: A Logical Perspective on Dembroff versus Byrne, 2023, under review”.
“Analytical Gender Theory: An Integrating Perspective on Archer versus Bem, 2023, under review”.
“Gender Triangularity versus Gender Neo-Imperialism plus Neutral versus (An Offending) Nonbinary, 2023, under review”.
“Biological sex as used in Dembroff versus Byrne, 2023, under review”.
Lanceros-Mendez is a name known for decades. Till his mid-career he was trying to do something in science, then as an alternative option he did MBA, and learn the art of speaking A to B, and B to C, and putting people against people. He became successful by learning to sign over 700 scientific articles on almost every topics. Let’s see what he want to achieve as his final destination. Paper business is a joke and some countries are good at it.
For Better Science 
“De Strooper’s research integrity manager, and the Cologne GWP Commission look very incompetent, if not worse.”
You are unusually kind here. No doubt because these European countries still yearn for the days of yore where they could settle matters of honor by who could stab the other the fastest… with style. Now, they use lawyers instead of rapiers, which objectively, is worse.
LikeLike
Well, in USA they often just don’t react at all.
You can try reporting that utter **** Justin Zhan to University of Cincinnati, because I failed to get any reaction.
https://forbetterscience.com/2023/03/31/schneider-shorts-2-04-2023-upon-re-evaluation-of-the-case/#zhan
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“Stem cell researcher and critic of thsi therapy, Paul Knoepfler, is quoted”
The Duke stem-cell scam comes up in passing here: https://forbetterscience.com/2021/11/15/gesundheit-israeli-scientists-treat-autism-with-stem-cells/
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Duh. I forgot. Will add.
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https://www.gene.com/stories/her2/
“A few hundred miles away in South San Francisco scientists at Genentech, including Art Levinson and Axel Ullrich, had been successful in cloning a number of cell growth-regulating genes as the company worked to develop medicines for a variety of different diseases.4,5 Slamon was aware of their work and, along with oncologist Dr. Bill McGuire at the University of Texas at San Antonio, they teamed up to understand whether any of these genes might play a role in cancer”
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From another publication.
https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.32745
“After hearing the German cancer researcher Axel Ullrich, PhD, then a senior scientist at the biotechnology company Genentech, give a talk about the HER2 genetic alteration, Dr. Slamon asked him if he wanted to collaborate. Dr. Ullrich sent samples of DNA from his gene collection to Dr. Slamon’s laboratory so that Dr. Slamon could try to match them with DNA from his tumor collection.”
Axel Ullrich discovers HER2, Dennis Slamon hears Axel Ullrich’s talk and asks Ullrich for a collaboration. Fair enough.
Problem is Dennis Slamon’s problematic data. Those problematic data drive a coach and horses through the NIH’s, which funded Slamon, adulatory article.
LikeLike
“Dennis Slammon’s cancer biotech startup raises 160 million”
Isn’t is Slamon, not Slammon?
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Fixed, thanks.
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Dennis Slamon is very original.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Slamon
“In 1986 Axel Ullrich, a German scientist working at Genentech, first discovered the Her-2 protein and gave a conference about it in which Slamon was present and afterwards Slamon proposed to work together, since he suspected that a mutation in Her-2 might cause cancer…”
“Multiple observational studies.In 1986 Axel Ullrich, a German scientist working at Genentech, first discovered the Her-2 protein and gave a conference about it in which Slamon was present and afterwards Slamon proposed to work together, since he suspected that a mutation in Her-2 might cause cancer…”
Multiple observational studies, which aren’t kosher.
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Slamon
LikeLike
“For 12 years, Dr. Slamon and his colleagues conducted the laboratory and clinical research that led to the development of the new breast cancer drug Herceptin, which targets a specific genetic alteration found in about 25 percent of breast cancer patients. To acknowledge Slamon’s accomplishments, President Bill Clinton appointed Slamon to the three-member President’s Cancer Panel in June 2000. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Slamon
Funny how Slamon got credited for someone else’s work.
LikeLike
“Living Proof is a 2008 Lifetime Television film, directed by Dan Ireland. The film stars Harry Connick Jr. as Dr. Dennis Slamon, a doctor who is trying to find a cure for breast cancer. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Proof_(2008_film)
“Plot
The film follows the true story of Dr. Dennis Slamon (played by Harry Connick Jr.), who helped develop the breast cancer drug Herceptin, over the course of 8 years from 1988 to 1996. Dr. Slamon is a physician scientist at UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles), where he has developed the experimental drug Herceptin, which he believes will become a treatment for breast cancer. However, when the drug company stops funding the research, philanthropists, including Lilly Tartikoff (Angie Harmon) and Ronald Perelman help him continue drug research. Funding was done with an initial donation from Perelman’s Revlon charity, and continued over the years with the “Fire and Ice Ball” organized by Tartikoff.
Eventually the drug company funds the research and the drug goes through three trials before gaining approval from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Prior to the trials, the drug undergoes a preclinical animal trial. Nicole (Tammy Blanchard), a young mother with stage 4 cancer, receives the drug first. Although her mother Elizabeth (Swoosie Kurtz) pleads with Dr. Slamon, Nicole is not included in the subsequent trials as she does not meet the trial requirements. The women in the trials, particularly the first trial, band together. They handle their disease and drug trial, with humor—Tish (Jennifer Coolidge), or with alternative therapy—Tina (Trudie Styler). The stories of Barbara (Bernadette Peters) and Ellie (Regina King) are followed throughout, as they go through the trials and eventual recovery. Some patients involved in the tests die, but ultimately Slamon’s work with the drug changes the course of breast cancer treatment. “
LikeLike
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3798106/
Often cited as the source that 30% of breast cancers are Her-2 positive. That does seem to be a the high end of the range. North America seems to have the highest percentage Her-2 positive breast cancer, even compared to Western Europe, France being quite low. These differences could be due to population differences, but also due to where Dennis Slamon is.
LikeLike
Lasker Foundation cements Dennis Slamon’s problematic data.
https://laskerfoundation.org/announcing-the-2019-lasker-award-winners/
The committee that decided on the 2019 prise to Dennis Slamon obviously didn’t look at the data. Foundations with loads of money should lose their charitable status when they do not perform due diligence.
LikeLike
More fakey-wakey data from Slamon and Vadgama! Both need to be struck off the scientific record.
Science first!
https://pubpeer.com/publications/5EC8C0570F76D766CA95FEF209E171#3
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Funny (or maby not) that despite billions and billions of dollars invested in cancer research, new drugs and lots of promises, the current cure is always the same: surgery + chemiotherapy.
Secondly, maybe Goldman Sucks wishes to make a donation to Cheshire and FBS for the invaluable information provided by this article… naah!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Even better is prevention…
Cure is rather surgery + radiotherapy than chemotherapy, used to treat cancer, but exceptionally to cure (mostly leukemia, lymphoma and testicular cancers).
However, how can we evaluate the price of one year survival in good conditions? The British health system did not accept (this has changed) to pay more than £40,000 for one year… I have no answer…
LikeLike
“160 million dollars for that? Sounds like a poor value for money. Maybe Goldman Sachs’ investment into TORL BioTherapeutics wasn’t such a smart move after all. Slamon didn’t reply to my email”.
Goldman Sachs will hold a portfolio of investments in biotech. If one Investment should go “tits up” they may recover some of the loses from rises in their other biotech Investments. Goldman Sachs must have a mature view of the world, they know that the majority of business ventures fail. I imagine Goldman Sachs will be able to cope. They have until now.
LikeLike
“Armando Pombeiro”
Like Rostamnia / Doustkhah, Pombeiro received his cut of the citation pie from the coordination papermill. Most likely, as a collateral benefit from co-authorship with a certain AM Kirillov. See, for example https://pubpeer.com/publications/7B5C549827701F937A20C2746055F4.
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Why aren’t you on Twitter anymore?
LikeLike
Banned twice
Waste of time and unhealthy
My content belongs to me and not for some antisocial media to erase forever.
People know how to reach me. You just did.
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It’s good to know when you have important information. Fraud has became so widespread that it’s hard to track every case.
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With respect to ACS’ correction of that fraudulent Shalan paper: you forgot to mention that after correction it still is ‘inconsistent’ due to amongst others many image overlaps. https://pubpeer.com/publications/4993C5C24B59CF96EF11FA306F3FBE#7
LikeLiked by 1 person
hi Leonid, I recently became aware that Jan Bergstra, a professor emeritus of the University of Amsterdam https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/j.a.bergstra/ and a member of Royal KNAW, is author of 14 of the 28 articles in the journal Transmathematica. The backgrounds of the Editor-in-Chief (and founder) of this journal, James A.D.W. Anderson https://transmathematica.org/index.php/journal/about/editorialTeam , indicate that there might be issues with the scientific quality of the items which are published in this journal.
Jan Bergstra is also the single co-author of four recent ‘papers’ by Laurens Buijs, a lecturer of the University of Amsterdam who is hiding on his personal homepage that he failed to finish his PhD thesis. The four ‘papers’ are posted at https://laurensbuijs.org/2023/04/18/maak-kennis-met-mijn-wetenschappelijke-werk-over-gender/ (articles 4-7).
“Formal Gender Theory: A Logical Perspective on Dembroff versus Byrne, 2023, under review”.
“Analytical Gender Theory: An Integrating Perspective on Archer versus Bem, 2023, under review”.
“Gender Triangularity versus Gender Neo-Imperialism plus Neutral versus (An Offending) Nonbinary, 2023, under review”.
“Biological sex as used in Dembroff versus Byrne, 2023, under review”.
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See https://www.uva.nl/profiel/b/e/j.a.bergstra/j.a.bergstra.html for an updated version of the university homepage of Jan Bergstra.
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Lanceros-Mendez is a name known for decades. Till his mid-career he was trying to do something in science, then as an alternative option he did MBA, and learn the art of speaking A to B, and B to C, and putting people against people. He became successful by learning to sign over 700 scientific articles on almost every topics. Let’s see what he want to achieve as his final destination. Paper business is a joke and some countries are good at it.
LikeLike