Schneider Shorts of 23 June 2023 – Italian killer surgeon gets sentenced to 2.5 years in Sweden, Harvard’s honesty expert exposed as fraudster, German university refuses to investigate papermiller, with ACS being naughty again, anti-aging breakthroughs in MDPI, and finally, an accidental sickness in Wuhan in November 2019.
Table of Discontent
Science Elites
- Jail sentence for Macchiarini – Killer surgeon sentenced in Sweden to 2.5 years for aggravated assault
- The fraud of honesty – Harvard’s honesty expert Francesca Gino is a massive cheater
- For legal reasons, it is not possible – Univ.-Prof. Reza Akhavan-Sigari and the papermills
Scholarly Publishing
- After much investigation – ACS corrects a toxic papermill fabrication by Varma, Rabiee and Hamblin
COVID-19
- Accidental sickness – Wuhan scientist who fell ill with COVID-19 in November 2019 worked on NIH-funded coronavirus research
Science Breakthroughs
- A pro-cognitive treatment for depression – is a laxative!
- Wine as dietary recommendation – anti-aging advertisement in MDPI
- Transcranial Electromagnetic Wave Treatment – more anti-aging advertisement in MDPI
News in Tweets
Science Elites
Jail sentence for Macchiarini
The murderous trachea transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiarini has been sentenced in a Swedish court for aggravated assault to actual prison time. It’s already his second sentencing, in an appeal hearing.
Paolo Macchiarini indicted for aggravated assault in Sweden
Swedish prosecutor opened a criminal indictment against Paolo Macchiarini. The scandal surgeon will have to stand court trial for all 3 deadly plastic trachea transplants he performed at Karolinska.
SVT reported on 21 June 2023 (Google-translated):
“Today, the Court of Appeal ruled against former surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. He is sentenced for three counts of aggravated assault to prison for two years and six months.
The case concerns the three patients, two men and one woman, who had synthetic tracheas operated on at Karolinska University Hospital in 2011 and 2012. All suffered severe complications and died.
The prosecutor demanded that the surgeon be convicted of three counts of aggravated assault, while the defense wanted a total acquittal.
Macciarini [typo SVT’s -LS] was charged with aggravated assault in Solna district court a year ago. He was then given a suspended sentence for causing bodily harm in one case but was acquitted of the other two charges. The sentence was appealed by both the defense and the prosecutor to the Court of Appeal, which has now changed the sentence to imprisonment for two years and six months for aggravated assault in three cases. […]
The Court of Appeal considers that the interventions do not concern emergency situations, something that Macciarini [typo SVT’s -LS] has claimed, and that two of the patients would have “been able to live for a not inconsiderable time” without the interventions. Furthermore, the Court of Appeal believes that Macchiarini was aware of, but indifferent to, the risks.”
Macchiarini victim to Swedish prosecutor: “Claudia is alive and must be called to testify”
Macchiarini’s victim Paloma Cabeza speaks out again, fearing she doesn’t have much time left. She appeals to the Swedish prosecutor for justice in the deadly trachea transplant scandal.
The entire court verdict is below, in Swedish. For some reason the court decided that the Swedish state must pay Macchiarini’s lawyer. Here the summary, DeepL-translated:
“The Court of Appeal has concluded that in all three cases Paolo Macchiarini has removed patients’ tracheas and replaced them with synthetic tracheas in the manner stated in the indictment. The Court of Appeal has also concluded that it is proven that the patients have been caused bodily injury and suffering. Like the District Court, the Court of Appeal has found that interventions have not been in accordance with science and proven experience and that the interventions have not been free from punishment with regard to the principle of social adequacy or on the due to consent.
Unlike the District Court, the Court of Appeal has concluded that it was not a matter of emergency situations when the interventions on Andemarian Beyene and Chris Lyles were made. Instead, the investigation indicates that both Andemarian Beyene and Chris Lyles could have been able to live for a significant amount of time without the procedures. With regard to the intervention on Yesim Cetir, the Court of Appeal has concluded that an emergency situation existed but that the intervention was nevertheless unjustifiable. The Court of Appeal has considered that the scope for under the general provision on emergency perform interventions on people in violation of the the regulations that exist for medical care and research must be very limited.
Court of Appeal’s assessment is that even the interventions on Andemarian Beyene and Chris Lyles would have been indefensible if emergency situations had existed.The Court of Appeal has concluded that Paolo Macchiarini realized the risk that the procedures would cause bodily harm and suffering to the patients and that, even if he had a a hope that the method would work, he was indifferent to the risks. The Court of Appeal has thus held that Mr Macchiarini acted with an intent of indifference.
The offenses have been assessed as three cases of aggravated assault and the sentence has been set at to imprisonment for two years and six months.”
I don’t think Macchiarini will go to jail in Sweden though. He is probably already abroad. Maybe he will go to Turkey where he has friends, maybe even back to russia.
Macchiarini’s trachea transplant patients: the full list
This article lists all known (including those not officially declared) patients of the scandal surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who received from him a cadaveric or plastic trachea. It will be updated whenever I receive any new evidence.
As reminder, a lot of important people in science, medicine and publishing think Macchiarini is generally trustworthy and a great scientist. That’s why only his deadly plastic trachea transplants are criticised, but his equally deadly experiments with decellurised cadaveric tracheas are not allowed to be even mentioned. They never happened, Macchiarini’s trachea transplants started not in 2008 but in 2011, all journalists agreed. At the same time, the relevant fraudulent papers in The Lancet are safe from retraction. That’s because some, especially Macchiarini’s past employer UCL in UK, have killed their own patients with that same cadaveric trachea transplant technology, and they still intend to make money with it.
Time to retract Lancet paper on tissue engineered trachea transplants
Paolo Macchiarini affair: I reproduce the letter Patricia Murray, Raphael Levy, Peter Wilmshurst and myself published in The BMJ on 2 March 2022. I also publish Wilmshurst’s appeal to the UCL leadership.
In this regard, this newly published essay in BMJ is very much worth reading.
John E J Rasko & Carl Power, The deadly legacy of a stem cell charlatan BMJ (2023) doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.p1367
“With Macchiarini’s career as a stem cell superstar ended, it’s tempting to draw a line under the whole affair. But a big awkward question remains: why was the scandal mostly confined to Stockholm? After all, Macchiarini implanted laboratory built windpipes into only three people there; he apparently did the same to another 17 elsewhere, including hospitals in Spain, Italy, Russia, the UK, and the US.4 Almost all these people are now dead and, so far as we know, none of the survivors got what they’d surely hoped for: a regenerated windpipe. Yet, to our knowledge, only the Karolinska has publicly admitted that, while there, Macchiarini engaged in scientific fraud and unethical human experimentation.”
The essay contains chilling replies from Macchiarini’s UCL partner Martin Birchall, The Lancet and the university hospitals in London, Florence and Barcelona, all basically admitting that they don’t really give a flying toss about the patients whom Macchiarini and they themselves killed and maimed.
As another reminder, in Germany, where Macchiarini started his trachea transplant experiments, he remains adjunct professor at Hannover Medical School, his acolyte and assistant on almost all deadly trachea transplants, Philipp Jungebluth, is a practising doctor, and Leonid Schneider was sentenced in Berlin courts of slandering them both. If these Berlin judges find out that their beloved Professor Macchiarini was sentenced to prison term, they might want to sentence me as well, just to compensate.
The fraud of honesty
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
“Almost two years ago, a famous study about a clever way to prompt honest behavior was retracted due to an ironic revelation: It relied on fraudulent data. But The Chronicle has learned of yet another twist in the story.
According to one of the authors, Harvard University found that the study contained even more fraudulent data than previously revealed and it’s now asking the journal to note this new information. The finding is part of an investigation into a series of papers that Harvard has been conducting for more than a year, the author said.
Details about the reported fabrications are unclear. Francesca Gino, a world-renowned Harvard Business School professor who studies dishonesty, and is a co-author on the disputed study, is now on administrative leave, according to her faculty page. Gino did not return a request for comment.”
A detailed analysis of Gino’s fraud was assembled on the blog Data Colada by Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson and Joe Simmons, in FOUR of her research papers. The retracted paper was this one, it claim that people who signed an honesty pledge do not cheat:
Lisa L. Shu , Nina Mazar , Francesca Gino , Dan Ariely, Max H. Bazerman Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2012) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1209746109
Obviously the authors did not sign such a honesty pledge?
The retraction notice from September 2021 stated:
“The editors are retracting this article and note that Simonsohn, Simmons, and Nelson ( http://datacolada.org/98 ) have provided evidence to question the validity of the data in the article.”
What do you do when you are about to lose a PNAS paper for fraud? Correct: you publish another one! Debunking yourself, even:
Ariella S. Kristal , Ashley V. Whillans , Max H. Bazerman , Francesca Gino , Lisa L. Shu , Nina Mazar , Dan Ariely Signing at the beginning versus at the end does not decrease dishonesty Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1911695117
Now the new developments, as reported by Chronicle:
“The alleged new problems involve experiment No. 1 — one of the two conducted in a lab with students. Bazerman told The Chronicle that on Tuesday, Harvard informed him that it believed fabricated data for this experiment made it invalid. According to Bazerman, Harvard provided a 14-page document with what he described as “compelling evidence” of data alterations. Their analysis found that somebody had accessed a database and added and altered data in the file, he said. “I did not have anything to do with the fabrication,” he told The Chronicle. […]
Bazerman declined to discuss his co-authors. But in his book Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop, published in November, the Harvard professor reflected on the debacle of the 2012 study. How was it, he mused, that experiments Nos. 1 and 2 had both ended up being irreproducible?”
Bazerman, like everyone else, blames Gino alone. But just because one gang member was caught red-handed, doesn’t mean the rest is innocent.
I mean, Dan Ariely is literally a lying wanker, despite being Israel’s greatest honesty expert. I wrote about him in earlier Friday Shorts, in fact back then he was one of the main accused in this same affair.
For legal reasons, it is not possible
Alexander Magazinov sent a message to the University of Tübingen in Germany. It is an elite university, surely they will be appalled to find out that one of their researchers may have bought authorships form an Iranian papermill? The key author, Reza Akhavan-Sigari, studied medicine in Göttingen, Germany and then worked as senior physician in Tübingen for a year (2019-2020). He now works at the privately-owned Paracelsus Clinic Bremen as neurosurgeon, operating spines and offering treatement to injured Ukrainians even. But after office hours, this great spine surgeon Akhavan-Sigari turns into an oncologist, an immunologist, and even into an organic chemist who specialises on nanotechnology!
These were the 6 papers Magazinov reported:
Mustafa M. Kadhim , Nazanin Sheibanian , Danial Ashoori , Maryam Sadri , Bahareh Tavakoli-Far , Ramona Khadivi , Reza Akhavan-Sigari The drug delivery of hydrea anticancer by a nanocone-oxide: Computational assessments Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.comptc.2022.113843
“Summary: citations to irrelevant and / or unreliable literature with the only purpose to boost the citation statistics of certain researchers; most notably, Changhe Li.”
K. Harismah , S.A. Shahrtash , A.R. Arabi , R. Khadivi , M. Mirzaei , R. Akhavan-Sigari Favipiravir attachment to a conical nanocarbon: DFT assessments of the drug delivery approach Computational and Theoretical Chemistry (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.comptc.2022.113866
“Summary: citations to irrelevant and / or unreliable literature with the only purpose to boost the citation statistics of certain researchers; most notably, Changhe Li.”
Saade Abdalkareem Jasim , Indrajit Patra , Maria Jade Catalan Opulencia , Kadda Hachem , Rosario Mireya Romero Parra , Mohammad Javed Ansari , Abduladheem Turki Jalil , Moaed E. Al-Gazally , Mahin Naderifar , Mehrdad Khatami , Reza Akhavan-Sigari Green synthesis of spinel copper ferrite (CuFe2O4) nanoparticles and their toxicity Nanotechnology Reviews (2022) doi: 10.1515/ntrev-2022-0143
“Summary: citations to irrelevant and / or unreliable literature with the only purpose to boost the citation statistics of certain researchers; most notably, Yu-Ming Chu and Changhe Li (and, collaterally, frequent collaborators of the above-mentioned persons).”
Shunshun Bao , Mohammad Darvishi , Ali H Amin , Maysoon T. Al-Haideri , Indrajit Patra , Khadisha Kashikova , Irfan Ahmad , Fahad Alsaikhan , Zahraa Haleem Al-qaim , Moaed E. Al-Gazally , Bahman Abedi Kiasari , Bahareh Tavakoli-Far , Akmal A. Sidikov , Yasser Fakri Mustafa , Reza Akhavan-Sigari CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) blockade in cancer treatment Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology (2023) doi: 10.1007/s00432-022-04444-w
“Summary: authorship for this article was offered for sale on a third-party site before publication.”
Maysoon T. Al-Haideri , Reza Mannani , Roghayyeh Kaboli , Farshad Gharebakhshi , Shahram Darvishzadehdeldari , Safa Tahmasebi , Fatemeh Faramarzi , Juan Carlos Cotrina-Aliaga , Sahar Khorasani , Mina Alimohammadi , Mohammad Darvishi , Reza Akhavan-Sigari The effects of methotrexate on the immune responses to the COVID-19 vaccines in the patients with immune-mediated inflammatory disease: A systematic review of clinical evidence Transplant Immunology (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.trim.2023.101858
“Summary: authorship for this article was offered for sale on a third-party site before publication.”
Maysoon Al‐Haideri , Talar Ahmad Merza Mohammad , Shahram Darvishzadehdeldari , Zahra Karbasi , Mina Alimohammadi , Fatemeh Faramarzi , Sahar Khorasani , Ashkan Rasouli , Safa Tahmasebi, Mohammad Darvishi , Reza Akhavan‐Sigari Immunogenicity of COVID‐19 vaccines in adult patients with autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases: A systematic review and meta‐analysis International Journal of Rheumatic Diseases (2023) doi: 10.1111/1756-185x.14713
“Summary: authorship for this article was offered for sale on a third-party site before publication.”
Now you probably want to know how the University of Tübingen, whose affiliation Akhavan‐Sigari used in all those papers, reacted? How they cracked down on all this papermill shenanigans to clear their reputation?
Jürgen Rottenecker, former deputy of the university chancellor and head of the division Development, Structure and Legal Affairs, informed Magazinov:
“For reasons of responsibility, I have been approached in the Central Administration about your concern. I would therefore like to inform you as follows: The person you informed us about is no longer a member of the University of Tübingen. Therefore, for legal reasons, it is not possible for us to carry out any misconduct examinations, should this be your concern. Otherwise, we are aware that scientific publications are discussed in PubPeer in the sense of a peer review process. However, the scientific institution at which the person is currently working is responsible for a misconduct check.“
That is of course completely false. The university whose primarily affiliation was used on the offending papers is primarily responsible for the investigation. Simply because they have access to relevant files and raw data. In any case, Akhavan‐Sigari now works at a private hospital which is owned by a family-owned Swiss investment fund named Porterhouse. To expect this business to investigate Sigari’s papers is ridiculous. I asked Rottenecker if he meant to say that NOBODY is responsible for investigating this case, he announced to look into my arguments.
The Paracelsus Clinic lists Akhavan-Sigari as “Univ.-Prof. Dr. med.” Let me explain what this University-Professor title usually means. After every interested doctor, engineer, architect and lawyer in Germany bought himself an adjunct professorship somewhere (usually abroad) in order to call himself “Prof Dr” for reasons of vanity and self-promotion, “real” professors holding actual faculty chairs at universities became upset and started to call themselves “Univ-Prof” as not to be devalued by the imposters.
So where is Akhavan-Sigari holding a faculty chair then? In April 2022, the Paracelsus Clinic proudly announced (translated):
“Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Reza Akhavan-Sigari, Medical Director of Neurosurgery at the Paracelsus Clinic Bremen, received the Chair for “Healthcare Management and Clinical Research” from the Warsaw Management University last week. From the summer semester of 2022, Sigari will teach at the University of Warsaw.
“I have been teaching for many years and I really enjoy looking after my students. I see the reputation of the Warsaw Management University as an opportunity to contribute my part to a good education for the younger generation in Europe,” says Univ.-Prof. dr Sigari.”
Thing is, while Sigari is indeed listed as one of the teachers for Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses at the Warsaw Management University, they never explicitly say he is a professor there. In fact, the Polish college seems to assume Sigari is a professor in Tübingen:
“He is now chief physician in Neurosurgery at Paracelsus Clinic in Bremen/ Germany and gives lectures in Neurosurgery at Tuebingen Medical Center in Germany.”
A external teaching appointment for an MBA course at a Polish teaching-only college is definitely not a faculty chair. At best it is comparable with a degree of guest lecturer or adjunct professor. Not what “Univ-Prof” title was meant to signify.
Anyway, here is Sigari’s answer to the question “Who would you like to spend an evening with?”:
“Jens Spahn, Gerhard Schröder, Donald Trump, Silvester Stallone.“
Ouch. Maybe he can add them all to his next research paper. Sigari never replied to my emails.
Scholarly Publishing
After much investigation
We remain on the topic of Iranian papermills. ACS has discovered an utterly fraudulent trash by known papermillers which invites to poison patients with the heavy metal cobalt. The authors are Navid Rabiee and Rajender Varma, names which should ring alarm bells to every editor who is not an utter moron or a crook.
I, Rajender Varma, Highly Cited Researcher
“I could not comprehend the situation where a university picks up on individuals with an extraordinary and sterling performance and basically destroy one of the top European institutions. ” – Raj Varma
Here is the paper:
Navid Rabiee , Mojtaba Bagherzadeh , Amir Mohammad Ghadiri , Yousef Fatahi , Abdullah Aldhaher , Pooyan Makvandi , Rassoul Dinarvand , Maryam Jouyandeh , Mohammad Reza Saeb , Masoud Mozafari , Mohammadreza Shokouhimehr , Michael R. Hamblin , Rajender S. Varma Turning Toxic Nanomaterials into a Safe and Bioactive Nanocarrier for Co-delivery of DOX/pCRISPR ACS Applied Bio Materials (2021) doi: 10.1021/acsabm.1c00447
A Correction was issued in February 2023:
“After much investigation, we realized that there is a flaw in Figure 2. One of the spectra was wrongly placed in the image (by one of the students) and should be removed. The revised (corrected) Figure 2 is below. In the Figure 2 caption, the term of “spectra” for XRD changes to “pattern”. Also, Figure 7f and Figure 10f,g are replaced with the new images as listed below.”
A Rorschach test was attached as Figure 10:
This fake papermill word salad proposed to use cobalt nanoparticles on human patients for CRISPR-based gene therapy. Because cobalt is highly toxic, the “authors”, or rather their papermill suggested to magically turn cobalt non-toxic via “a stabilizing agent derived from leaf extracts” (sic). Idiots masquerading as professors and ACS editors thought this all sounds great. Oh right, the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Applied Bio Materials is University of Texas San Antonio professor Kirk Schanze, of course it’s him. Whenever fraud rules at ACS, Schanze is there.
Zombie fingers inside corroded nano-piecrusts
Smut Clyde is back with more fraudulent nanotechnology. This time, he presents the works of Dhanaraj Gopi, who designs fabricated surfaces for surgical implants. In Photoshop, or with a pencil.
Aside of the “highly cited researcher” Varma, the only non-Iranian “author” is a certain dermatologist Michael R. Hamblin, former Harvard professor and now visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. His recent publication record seems to consist largely of Iranian papermill trash. Basically, all those papers which are not on dermatology. Some of them are on PubPeer already:
- Hamblin curing cancer with miRNAs (Ashrafizadeh et al 2021)
- Hamblin curing cancer with lnRNAs (Shafabakhsh et al 2021)
- Hamblin curing cancer with all non-coding RNAs (Mousavi et al 2022)
- Hamblin using nanomaterials for bone tissue engineering (Eivazzadeh-Keihan et al 2020)
- Hamblin and sacked US fraudster Thomas Webster solve gene therapy with carbon nanotubes (Zare et al 2021)
Thomas Webster to save the world with COVID-19 nanoparticles
The world is in the grip of COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands dead, infection rates explode, nations in lockdown. Perfect timing for troll scientists to offer their bullshit cures. Like Thomas Webster of Northeastern University.
COVID-19
Accidental sickness
Nobody is really interested anymore where COVID-19 came from. Because there is no actual proof the SARS-CoV2 virus jumped from an infected wild animal to a human in Wuhan, and the lab leak theory is racist and anti-science, it was decided by powerful men to close the case and to keep investing money into gain-of function virus research to see if another deadly pandemic can be produced. Or something like that.
The Lab Leak Theory
A lab leak theory of the COVID-19 origins has enough circumstantial evidence and historical basis to support the urgent need for an independent and unbiased investigation. But until recently, scientists dismissed lab leak as a conspiracy theory. In public at least.
The Intercept reported on 17 June 2023:
“One of the first Wuhan researchers reportedly sickened with Covid in fall 2019, Ben Hu, was getting U.S. financial support for risky gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the transparency advocacy organization White Coat Waste Project.
The funding came in three grants totaling $41 million, doled out by USAID and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, the agency then headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hu is listed as an investigator on the grants. […]
The NIAID and USAID grants list Hu as an investigator in the projects being funded. Hu is a top deputy to Shi Zhengli, known in the virology world as “batwoman” for her work extracting samples of viruses from bats in Chinese caves.”
There is also this:
“The Times of London, meanwhile, also recently reported new details about activity in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the run-up to the pandemic, similarly sourced to three investigators with the U.S. State Department. That report includes allegations about the Wuhan labs’ collaboration with Chinese military scientists, buttressing what had once been dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory: that the virus was connected to bioweapons research. “In the lead-up to the pandemic, the Wuhan institute frequently experimented on coronaviruses alongside the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, a research arm of the People’s Liberation Army,” the Times reported. “In published papers, military scientists are listed as working for the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, which is the military academy’s base.””
But as virologists Angela Rasmussen, Kristan Andersen and Peter Daszak will eagerly explain to you while calling you a racist flat-earthing antivaxxer scum, that facts are not peer reviewed. But their authoritative papers in Lancet, Nature and Science on why COVID-19 originated from a fantasy animal at Wuhan meat market, are peer reviewed and have a big impact factor.
Science has spoken.
Viral by Alina Chan & Matt Ridley – Book review
Alina Chan’s book with Matt Ridley on the Origins of COVID-19 is finally out. It is a very informative read!
Science Breakthroughs
A pro-cognitive treatment for depression
There was a time when mental disorders were treated by enema. Science has moved on from the quackery and is now proposing to use laxative instead. A press release by Elsevier:
“Cognitive impairments often coexist with mood disorders and other psychiatric conditions, often causing significant difficulties. Currently, there are only a limited number of treatments available, but research conducted on animals and humans suggests that drugs like prucalopride, a laxative that activates serotonin receptors, may offer potential therapeutic benefits for these symptoms. However, the way this medication impacts brain activity when at rest remains unknown. New research in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier, is now investigating the effects of this drug on healthy adult humans. […]
The researchers enlisted 50 healthy volunteers, half of whom received a six-day course of prucalopride, a highly selective agonist of the 5-HT4 type serotonin receptor, whereas the other half of the participants received a placebo. Participants underwent scanning with functional magnetic resonance imaging, including a “resting scan,” in which they relaxed in the scanner.
Lead author Angharad de Cates, Ph.D., MRCPsych, at the University of Oxford, said of the work, “Our previous studies on prucalopride demonstrated that even at low clinical doses it can improve cognition and memory in healthy volunteers. This latest research provides a neurological mechanism by which this might occur.””
This is the paper:
Angharad N. de Cates, Marieke A.G. Martens, Lucy C. Wright, Daisy Gibson, Gershon Spitz, Cassandra D. Gould van Praag, Sana Suri, Philip J. Cowen, Susannah E. Murphy and Catherine J. Harmer, “5-HT4 Receptor Agonist Effects on Functional Connectivity in the Human Brain: Implications for Procognitive Action” Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. (2023) DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2023.03.014
Other coauthors and the handling editor are quoted celebrating the laxative treatment for mental disorders:
- “Susannah Murphy, Ph.D., Associate Professor and joint senior author of the study, said, “[…] participants taking prucalopride had better scores on cognitive tests on the day of the scan compared to the placebo participants. That suggests that the changes in rsFC that we saw with prucalopride may serve as a ‘signature’ of a drug that improves cognition.”“
- “Catherine Harmer, Ph.D., Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and joint senior author of the study, said, “This study adds to the evidence base that the common laxative treatment prucalopride can have important effects in the brain, particularly affecting circuits which are important for learning and memory. Together with previous data, this suggests that this drug might be useful as a pro-cognitive treatment in disorders such as depression.”“
- “Cameron Carter, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, said of the work, […] putative cognitive enhancer prucalopride, add to previous evidence that the agent modulates brain systems that are engaged during focused, higher cognitive activity and might have therapeutic potential.”
I am not sure having a diarrhoea helps against depression, but I do advice students to take a laxative before the exams. To enhance memory and cognition.
Wine as dietary recommendation
In MDPI, we learn that drinking wine extends life.
Here some paid (likely by authors) news coverage:
“This systematic review and meta-analysis included studies with subjects older than 18. The exposure and outcome of included studies were wine consumption and cardiovascular events, respectively. […]
The current study results confirmed the existing data that moderate wine consumption is good for cardiac health. However, researchers should interpret these findings with caution. Increasing wine consumption could harm patients susceptible to alcohol due to age, preexisting pathologies, or medications.
Based on the findings of this review, wine could be a part of other dietary recommendations. For instance, the Mediterranean diet includes wine and recommends its use for health benefits. However, studies must assess and delineate the effect of wine drinking by the type of wine.”
Basically, a bunch of drunk wine industry shills analysed papers by fellow drunk wine industry shills, and concluded the predictable. Here is the paper from Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha in the major wine producing country, Spain:
Maribel Lucerón-Lucas-Torres , Alicia Saz-Lara , Ana Díez-Fernández , Irene Martínez-García , Vicente Martínez-Vizcaíno , Iván Cavero-Redondo , Celia Álvarez-Bueno “Association between Wine Consumption with Cardiovascular Disease and Cardiovascular Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis“, Nutrients (2023) doi: 10.3390/nu15122785.
The only interesting bit is that it was published as part of Special Issue edited by… the authors themselves. It is the only paper in the issue so far, and I am sure they also did their own peer review, and paid the media coverage above.
MDPI: because nobody else will publish your garbage.
MDPI and racism
In 2019, MDPI published a Special Issue “Beyond Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability”, one year later its owner Shu-Kun Lin expressed admiration for Trump and said “Black Lives Matter. White Lives Matter. All Lives Matter.”
Transcranial Electromagnetic Wave Treatment
With MDPI and its special issues scam, the race for the bottom is bottomless.
Look at this:
Gary Arendash , Chuanhai Cao Transcranial Electromagnetic Wave Treatment: A Fountain of Healthy Longevity? International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2023) doi: 10.3390/ijms24119652
From the abstract:
“In this perspectives paper, we discuss potential longevity interventions that are being evaluated and compare them to a novel gerotherapeutic currently being evaluated in humans—Transcranial Electromagnetic Wave Treatment (TEMT). TEMT is provided non-invasively and safety through a novel bioengineered medical device—the MemorEM—that allows for near complete mobility during in-home treatments. Daily TEMT to mild/moderate Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) patients over a 2-month period rebalanced 11 of 12 cytokines in blood back to that of normal aged adults. […] We propose that TEMT has the potential to reduce the risk/severity of age-related diseases by rejuvenating the immune system to a younger age, resulting in reduced brain/body inflammation and a substantial increase in healthy longevity.”
The graphical abstract:
The first author Gary Arendash is affiliated with NeuroEM Therapeutics, of which he is CEO and co-founder. The second author Chuanhai Cao lists Taneja College of Pharmacy, University of South Florida in Tampa, and MegaNano Biotech, also in Tampa, as his affiliation. That company sells treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.
The paper refers to 3 clinical trials:
“The study’s three component protocols were also registered at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov as NCT0295830, NCT03927040, and NCT04271163, respectively (all accessed on 31 March 2023).”
First one isn’t registered, the other two (NCT03927040 and NCT04271163) were supposed to cure people (6 and 7, respectively) of mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, without a placebo group. Now the cunning businessmen push their brain magnetism devices for anti-aging. We are also informed:
“The University of South Florida has a financial interest in NeuroEM Therapeutics, a company that provided all of the financial support for these clinical studies. The interest has been reviewed and managed by the University of South Florida in accordance with its Institutional Conflict of Interest policy. Arendash has a financial interest in NeuroEM Therapeutics as a common shareholder and has received a salary at times as CEO or CSO of the company. Cao declares no conflict of interest.”
You laugh, but this company NeuroEM and their TEMT crap is sponsored by the NIH and supported by FDA. Read it on NIH website:
- “2016: NIH awards NeuroEM $255,000 in funding through a Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR) Phase I grant for basic research.” […]
- NIH awards NeuroEM $2.2 million in funding through an SBIR Phase II grant.”
And:
- “2020: FDA awards NeuroEM Breakthrough Designation in treatment of AD for the company’s MemorEMTM head device, which is the first device or drug given that designation by FDA. […]
- 2022: Two additional major scientific papers are submitted and published, demonstrating TEMT’s ability to stop Alzheimer’s cognitive decline over a two-and-a-half-year period and also its ability to rebalance the body and brain’s immune system in AD.
- 2022: NeuroEM will complete the design and begin production of its GEN2 (second-generation) MemorEMTM devices. 2022: A pivotal (Phase IIb/III) clinical trial using the GEN2 MemorEMTM devices is expected to begin.“
News in Tweets
- Göteborgs Posten has an Open Letter in defence of an Uppsala virologist facing jail sentence: “Åke Lundkvist is accused of secretly conducting research without the approval of the Ethical Review Authority (EPM). In April 2020, as covid-19 spread like wildfire across the world, the world’s scientists mobilized to make their knowledge available to solve societal problems. Åke Lundkvist was one of them. He was part of a research group that evaluated an antibody test that proved to work well. They had test kits left over and offered colleagues, friends and relatives to test themselves to see if they carried antibodies. Since it was not a research project, nor did they plan to publish the results, they did not need to ask EPM for permission. They thought.“
- A retraction from 21 June 2023 for VSEL fraudster Deepa Bhatriya, Patel et al 2013: “After 10 years of publication, a concern was raised regarding highly similar cell pattern in different area of Fig. 2A. The corresponding author has stated that Fig. 2A is a composite image, and unintentional duplication occurred while compiling the data. The corresponding author has also stated that bright field smear images in Figs. 1–3 are composite, due to a low number of cells spread apart across the sample, which should have been indicated in the figure legends. The authors are preparing a revised version of this manuscript for peer review.“
Stop trying to make VSEL happen!
“…the best evidence for the existence of VSELs is the dismal failure of all the other much-vaunted stem-cell therapies to deliver on their promises. Since it is axiomatic that some stem-cell therapy must work, the successful cell-types must be the ones that haven’t been tried yet, which leaves VSELs.”- Smut Clyde
- Elisabeth Bik: “Update: These papers indeed appear to be fake. The authors might be fake too. This might be an organization trying to sell a non-existing product. That should be reason enough for @Facebook to shut this down, one would hope. I reported a few, but have little hope it will help.“
- Mark Griffiths of Nuttingham Trash University extorted another authorship on a bad paper from China, in Frontiers (Li et al 2020). Cheshire comments: “a consent form signed by a study participant […] dated 9 months after the study was completed.” First author: “We built all students’ mental health records when they entered universities.”
Nuttingham Trash University
“I will not by myself, or be instructing or encouraging any other person or howsoever othewise, publish or cause to be published words or otherwise howsoever make statements to others which wrongfully refer to Nottingham Trent University and/or their employees and for any person or any body associated with Nottingham Trent University”
- Smut Clyde: “For unknown reasons, Hindawi / Wiley published this paper with the SAGE logo.” And “The paper is one of ~70 that cite an imaginary paper with an imaginary author: “Connectivity analysis and application of fracture cave carbonate reservoir in Tazhong” The work of Hindawi / Wiley & a cottage industry of creating citations for Hanlie Cheng. […] Hanlie Cheng really likes imaginary co-authors with burner email identities from Burundi. Especially ones called “David”.
Eligible for a full waiver
“I reviewed papers published in special issues of Hindawi journals that had corresponding authors from low- and middle-income countries. It seems, the APC waiver policy may be being abused by papermills” – Parashorea tomentella
- May 2023 Corrigendum for Zheng et al 2012: “In the original version of this article, the authors mistakenly triplicated panels across Figure 7c (U0126), Figure 4a (Anti-OPN+, OPN+), and Figure 3a (OPN, 200) during the selection of the images. The correct images from that experiments are shown below. This correction does not change the results and conclusions.” The Wiley journal is infested by papermills.
“We are extremely guilty and distressed”
“Now no-one wants ForBetterScience to become an all-Papermill channel. And we cannot really expect to shame or inspire scriveners in the academic-ghostwriter industry to seek out more constructive applications for their talents, so the point of exposing them is not immediately obvious.” -Smut Clyde
- That’s the entire text of the 2014 Corrigendum for the Italian plagiarists Chimenti et al 2010, issued by Elsevier: “The authors regret that the following article was not cited: 1. (a) Amieva, M. R.; El-Omar, E. M. Gastroenterology 2008, 134, 306; (b) Hunt, R. H. Scand. J. Gastroenterol. 1996, 220, 3.”
- Social media was already a far-right swamp even before Elon Musk took over.
I thank all my donors for supporting my journalism. You can be one of them!
Make a one-time donation:
I thank all my donors for supporting my journalism. You can be one of them!
Make a monthly donation:
Choose an amount
Or enter a custom amount
Your contribution is appreciated.
Your contribution is appreciated.
DonateDonate monthly
For Better Science 
What a coincidence, highly prolific authors who appears always in this blog, never disappoint us. What a circle of friends together. Here, Michael Hamblin together with star author Senentxu Lanceros-Méndez and Ahmed Esmail Shalan developed Silk Fabroin scaffold for wound Dressing.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.1c07285
If you ever get hurt Leonid, remember this wound dressing and you know whom to contact. As always, ACS-AMI will keep mum, as these three gentlemen are there except Irani authors. BTW, Hamblin sign as Harvard address (prestige).
LikeLike