Schneider Shorts 30.06.2023 – I have almost 100 manpower with me at any time

Schneider Shorts of 30 June 2023 – Nobelists in need of defence, superconductive fraud vidicated, new fraudsters at MD Anderson in Texas discovered, Alzheimer fraudster gets his own center, an American in Italian fraud gang, with other fraudsters in Italy and their retractions, an MDPI’s expert, and finally, with India’s greatest scholar and his manpower.

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Science Elites

I have almost 100 manpower with me at any time

Reader, prepare to meet the greatest scientific mind which India, nay, the human race, ever produced.

I present you Dr Abhijit Dey, assistant professor at the Presidency University of Kolata in India who works “on the therapeutic application of plant natural products on the three most deadly diseases viz. neurological and psychological disorders, cancer and diabetes“, plus “cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, substance abuse, obesity etc“. But not only!

Dr Dey is an expert on all forms and aspects of medicine, pharmacology, plant biology, virology, chemistry, and any other topic known to science. And beyond. The dude is merely 42 years old (born December 1980) but he published 300 papers in 2022 alone, basically on whatever topic the papermill had on offer. Here, a small selection from his recent publications:

• Zombie virus revitalized from permafrost: Facts and fiction (2023), New Microbes and New Infections (Didier Raoult’s own journal!)
• Mechanistic inhibition of Monkeypox and Marburg virus infection by O-rhamnosides and Kaempferol-o-rhamnosides derivatives: a new-fangled computational approach (2023), Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology
• Mycoviral gene-incorporating phytopathogenic fungi: a biocontrol agent (2023), Trends in Plant Science
• Nanotheranostics to target antibiotic-resistant bacteria: Strategies and applications (2023), OpenNano
• Emergence of taurine as a therapeutic agent for neurological disorders (2023), Neural Regeneration Research
• Exploring the Complex Relationship between Diabetes and Cardiovascular Complications: Understanding Diabetic Cardiomyopathy and Promising Therapies (2023), Biomedicines
• iNCOVACC COVID-19 vaccine: A Twitter based Social Media Analysis Using Natural Language Processing, Sentiment Analysis, and Topic Modelling (2023), Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences
• Biotechnological methods to remove microplastics: a review (2023), Environmental Chemistry Letters
• SARS-CoV-2 emerging Omicron subvariants with a special focus on BF.7 and XBB.1.5 recently posing fears of rising cases amid ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (2022), Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences

Inquiring minds might wonder what COVID-19 genetics and vaccines have to do with the scope of the Journal of Experimental Biology and Agricultural Sciences, to which I answer: nothing, this is a predatory journal from India. Just like this Alzheimer’s nonsense was published in a predatory journal by Springer – Environmental Science and Pollution Research, edited by Philippe Garrigues, CNRS Research Director in Bordeaux, France:

Dapinder Kaur , Tapan Behl , Sridevi Chigurupati , Aayush Sehgal , Sukhbir Singh , Neelam Sharma , Vishnu Nayak Badavath , Celia Vargas-De-La-Cruz , Saurabh Bhatia , Ahmed Al-Harrasi , Abhijit Dey , Lotfi Aleya , Simona Bungau Deciphering the focal role of endostatin in Alzheimer’s disease Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2021) doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-16567-7 

Dey’s co-authors above are the notorious papermillers Simona Bungau and Tapan Behl. Cheap papermills operate by stealing content of published papers, and running the text through translations back and forth to hide plagiarism. The result are tortured phrases like here, in MDPI:

Md. Mominur Rahman , Mst. Afroza Alam Tumpa, Mehrukh Zehravi, Md. Taslim Sarker , Md. Yamin, Md. Rezaul Islam , Md. Harun-Or-Rashid , Muniruddin Ahmed, Sarker Ramproshad, Banani Mondal , Abhijit Dey, Fouad Damiri, Mohammed Berrada , Md. Habibur Rahman, Simona Cavalu An Overview of Antimicrobial Stewardship Optimization: The Use of Antibiotics in Humans and Animals to Prevent Resistance Antibiotics (2022) doi: 10.3390/antibiotics11050667

Table 4 of this paper proved to have been stolen as “a near identical copy” from another MDPI paper by totally different set of authors, Yusuf et al 2021. Or maybe the papermill just recycled it.

How about this, also in MDPI and flagged by Elisabeth Bik:

Manoj M. Gadewar , Prashanth G K , Prabhu Chandra Mishra , Ghulam Md Ashraf , Majed N. Almashjary , Steve Harakeh , Vijay Upadhye , Abhijit Dey, Pallavi Singh , Niraj Kumar Jha , Saurabh Kumar Jha Evaluation of Antidiabetic, Antioxidant and Anti-Hyperlipidemic Effects of Fruit Extract in Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats Current Issues in Molecular Biology (2023)   doi: 10.3390/cimb45020058

Bik also found out that some of the “data” was stolen from Keerthana et al 2013 and relabelled in different context. She also noted:

“Another remarkable feature of this paper is that the animal experiments appear to have been performed at the College of Veterinary & Animal Sciences in India, affiliated with the Maharastra Animal & Fishery Sciences University.
None of the authors, however, works there. The 11 authors of this paper work at a remarkable 15 different affiliations, but none of them is the college where the animal work was performed.”

Narrator: the animal work was performed no-where. No animal suffered for this papermill fabrication. But PLOS One suffered from Dey’s papermilling:

Romaan Nazir , Devendra Kumar Pandey , Babita Pandey , Vijay Kumar , Padmanabh Dwivedi , Aditya Khampariya , Abhijit Dey , Tabarak Malik Optimization of diosgenin extraction from Dioscorea deltoidea tubers using response surface methodology and artificial neural network modelling PLoS ONE (2021) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0253617 

In a way, the “authors” were honest: they openly admitted in the contributions section that none of them did any actual experiments. Other figures are just tables and graphs, either completely made-up or stolen.

Of course also Frontiers eagerly took papermilled trash from “authors” from Dey and his fellow fraudsters.

Javad Sharifi-Rad , Abhijit Dey , Niranjan Koirala , Shabnum Shaheen , Nasreddine El Omari , Bahare Salehi , Tamar Goloshvili , Nathália Cristina Cirone Silva , Abdelhakim Bouyahya , Sara Vitalini , Elena M. Varoni , Miquel Martorell , Anna Abdolshahi , Anca Oana Docea , Marcello Iriti , Daniela Calina , Francisco Les , Víctor López , Constantin Caruntu Species: Bridging Phytochemistry Knowledge, Pharmacological Properties and Toxicological Safety for Health Benefits Frontiers in Pharmacology (2021) doi: 10.3389/fphar.2021.600139 

Bik commented:

“This paper was written by authors from an astonishing 21 affiliations, with almost all authors working at different departments or institutions. The affiliations are from Iran, Ecuador, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Morocco, Georgia, Brazil, Italy, Chile, Romania, and Spain. […] One might also wonder how some of the citations made it into the paper. Some general statements are supported by specific papers that did not report on those statements. Rather, those citations are authored by co-authors on this paper.“

Other papers with Dey on them are also full of utterly unsuitable and irrelevant self-citations, featuring authors from all over the planet.

Alexander Magazinov thinks that Javad Sharifi-Rad is the man who provides Dey with papermilled authorships. In fact, Sharifi-Rad may be the papermill owner even. Dey wrote to me many words, but refused to utter even one regarding his associate, despite my specific asking. It seems, they peer-review each others papers:

Md. Shahazul Islam , Cristina Quispe , Rajib Hossain , Muhammad Torequl Islam , Ahmed Al-Harrasi, Ahmed Al-Rawahi , Miquel Martorell , Assem Mamurova , Ainur Seilkhan , Nazgul Altybaeva , Bagila Abdullayeva , Anca Oana Docea , Daniela Calina , Javad Sharifi-Rad Neuropharmacological Effects of Quercetin: A Literature-Based Review Frontiers in Pharmacology (2021) doi: 10.3389/fphar.2021.665031

Bik commented:

“Of even more concern is that one of the peer reviewers of this paper is Abhijit Dey, who has recently published with last authors D Calina and J Sharafi-Rad. This appears to be a clear conflict of interest, since the authors have collaborated on papers together, and should not review each other’s papers.“

Dey’s and Sharifi-Rad’s Romanian associates Anca Oana Docea and Daniela Calina are not only papermill customers but also members of the covidiot antivaxxer gang of the Greek fraudster Aristides Tsatsakis, read here:

Here is Dey’s boastful CV for you to laugh at. Among his achievements:

“Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, 2018 (Formation in the year 1788; ex-fellows: Sir Charles Darwin, William Roxburgh, Arthur William Hill and others.) […]
Ex-In Charge, Boys common room, Presidency College, Kolkata from 2006-2012″

Almost 20 of Dey’s papermill excretions are already on PubPeer. It could be more, but this clown publishes too much to bother. Maybe one should rather search for non-papermilled publications in Dey’s output?

Dey wrote several lengthy and inane emails to me extolling his talents and achievements, I will treat you to some choice quotes.

• “This statistics has become achievable by some planning and execution for the past three years. Presidency University is known for producing good students for long. In many of my review papers and chapters my past and present students, research scholars and masters’ students are dedicatedly involved for long time ( at least 50 of them). They are my students and I assign them 2-3 max 4 review articles/book chapters per year. That comes to 150 automatically.”
• “I get almost 50-60 book chapter invitations per year from world leading scientists to my official email and accordingly in those 50-60 books I published almost 100 chapters per year. And all these chapters are from the world’s best publishing houses like springer, Elsevier, Wiley and crc press or Taylor and Francis.”
• “Out of my 300 papers, around 130+ are book chapters which hold little importance in the publication sector. Since  I am associated with many scientists all over the globe and my team from Presidency alone consists of almost 80 students and scholars and colleagues, I accept those invitations since they are requested by my peers and assign my students/colleagues to write them.”
• “with my long term accomplishments and nurturing my students and scholars, many even after getting positions are associated with me and with their assistance I have almost 100 manpower with me at any time.”
• “In some cases especially for our urban ethnobotany studies we even consult experts from sociology, linguistics, archeology, history and museology, a transdisciplinary  approach in its true essence.”
• “WE DONT PAY FOR PAPERS. YOU MUST KNOW THAT THESE BEST IN THE PLANET JOURNALS GO THROUGH RIGOROUS PEER REVIEW AND THEY ARE SUBSCRIPTION BASED. AND LASTLY WITH AROUND ONE LAC INR SALARY per month WE DONT HAVE THE CAPACITY TO PAY EVEN FOR THE OPEN ACCESS ONES.” [caps Dey’s]

Signed:

“Dr. Abhijit Dey
MSc (Gold Medallist), PhD, FLS (London)Associate Professor 
Department of Life Sciences Presidency University 86/1 College Street, Kolkata: 700073, West Bengal, India    

World’s Top 2% Scientist in 2021 and 2022 (by Stanford University, USA in association with Elsevier BV and Plos Biology)”

Here is Dey taking on his critic on Facebook:

Dey’s university leadership refused communicating with me while he insisted to enjoy their full support and admiration. He’s probably right, and the Presidency University pays the papermills to fake their performance and defraud the government for funding. Sod them all.

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Unexpected repetitive structures

Elisabeth Bik has now blogged about fraud at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. In my view, finding yet another fraudster at MD Anderson is like finding yet another Catholic in the Vatican.

Elisabeth Bik wrote:

“As I was doing a reverse-image search online on a set of papers, I saw an unrelated photo of a skin biopsy that appeared to contain repetitive areas. Even in the small Google Image Search thumbnail, it was obvious that there was something unexpected going on in this image.

This finding led to a set of 12 papers from a research group at the Hematopathology Department of the Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, all with histopathology photos with unexpected repetitive structures. […]

There was not one common author, although some author names occurred on multiple papers, such as Marques-Piubelli ML (8 papers) or Miranda RN (5 papers).

The problems found in these figures ranged from mild (stitching errors or corner cloning to remove a scale bar) to serious – where gaps in the tissues appear to have been filled up with other parts of tissues. Most duplications were confirmed by ImageTwin.”

I would also add Victor G. Prieto, Chair of Department of Pathology, Jonathan L Curry, associate professor at same department, and Francisco Vega, lymphoma section head at the Department of Hematopathology, to the already named MD Anderson researchers Roberto N. Miranda, professor of hematology, and Mario L. Marques-Piubelli, assistant professor at pathology department.

I’m sure Frontiers will issue a “conclusions not affected” correction for this:

At MD Anderson, they seem to believe that it’s unethical to publish results which have NOT been falsified in Photoshop:

“Another PubPeer author-reply [by Francisco Vega, -LS] and a set of original, unaltered photos were received for this Histopathology (2023) paper about Hodgkin lymphoma, with 6 panels containing repetitive areas. The senior author admitted to “slightly modifying images to improve their visual appeal“. Comparing the published vs. the original photos revealed that the cloning was done to fill up holes, remove some black vein-like structures, or add more cells. The photos might now have improved visual appeal, but one can wonder how scientific and truthful the published results are.”

We all know how MD Anderson will investigate this. Promote the fraudsters and sack the eventual whistleblowers.

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A personal fight

In case you wonder how the Temple University decided to punish that massive research cheater Domenico Praticò…

They gave him his own Alzheimer’s research center and even more money to spend of fraud.

A press release by, well Pratico himself, informs:

“The Lewis Katz School of Medicine created the Alzheimer’s Center at Temple from funds donated by Board of Trustees member Phil Richards earlier this month. Richards’s gift created the center and established the Scott Richards North Star Charitable Foundation Chair for Alzheimer’s Research. Dr. Domenico Praticò, a pharmacology professor, will be the new chair and director of the center. The exact amount donated to create the center was not released. […]

Richards said his foundation was planning to donate the funds to a different institution for Alzheimer’s research, but a call from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine Dean and Temple University Health System CEO Larry Kaiser changed his mind, and he decided to donate to Temple. […]

Praticò, who has researched Alzheimer’s disease for more than two decades, said he is honored and humbled to be the founding director of the center. “It’s a very exciting moment for Temple to have the ability to create the center that specializes in the kind of research efforts for this disease,” Praticò said.

He said he considers this research a “personal fight,” remembering his first encounter with Alzheimer’s disease about 12 years old when his grandfather suffered from it. […]

“The hypothesis they are working on now is the pregnancy,” Praticò said. “It is something unique to that period.” A drug therapy for the disease is also being tested on animals right now. Praticò said the center hopes to begin clinical trials with human subjects in less than two years. The drug aims to “re-energize” a cell process that rids the cell of toxins.”

Pratico retracted already 4 papers for fraud, with likely more to come, and this DESPITE his institution standing behind him. The Temple leadership knows that everything Pratico publishes is fake and fraudulent. They are perfectly OK with knowingly abusing Alzheimer’s patients, someone else’s grandfathers and grandmothers, with Pratico’s phony cures of which Kaiser and his ilk know to be based on research fraud. As long as there’s money to be made.

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The blots are different and are correct

There are many Italian scientists making careers in USA, but here is an American making a career from Italy while at home. Sod knows how James A. McCubrey, cancer research professor at the obscure East Carolina University, ended up in an Italian gang which includes Luca Maria Neri and Silvano Capitan, dishonest associates of the dictatorial fraudster Giorgio Zauli (former rector of the University of Ferrara).

McCubrey did not answer my email, and neither did his university’s leadership. Many recent papers of McCubrey’s have all-Italian authors except himself, his PubPeer record stands at 24 (often very fraudulent) papers. For example:

Francesca Buontempo , Ester Orsini , Annalisa Lonetti , Alessandra Cappellini , Francesca Chiarini , Camilla Evangelisti , Cecilia Evangelisti , Fraia Melchionda , Andrea Pession , Alice Bertaina , Franco Locatelli , Jessika Bertacchini , Luca Maria Neri , James A. McCubrey , Alberto Maria Martelli Synergistic cytotoxic effects of bortezomib and CK2 inhibitor CX-4945 in acute lymphoblastic leukemia: turning off the prosurvival ER chaperone BIP/Grp78 and turning on the pro-apoptotic NF-κB Oncotarget (2016) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.6361 

Actually all gels in that paper are fake, have a look on PubPeer. Next to Neri and Capitani, another recurrent name is that of Alberto Martelli, professor at the University of Bologna. Here some nasty fake flow cytometry Martelli published with McCubrey:

Francesca Chiarini , Cecilia Grimaldi , Francesca Ricci , Pier Luigi Tazzari , Camilla Evangelisti , Andrea Ognibene , Michela Battistelli , Elisabetta Falcieri , Fraia Melchionda , Andrea Pession , Pasqualepaolo Pagliaro , James A. McCubrey , Alberto M. Martelli Activity of the novel dual phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/mammalian target of rapamycin inhibitor NVP-BEZ235 against T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia Cancer Research (2010) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-10-1814 

More flawed cytometry by Martelli and McCubrey?

They took one single FACS measurement, and faked different versions of it to stand in for different samples and results.

 

In the same Nature Publishing Group journal Leukemia, this shameless atrocity:

F Buontempo , E Orsini , L R Martins , I Antunes , A Lonetti , F Chiarini , G Tabellini , C Evangelisti , C Evangelisti , F Melchionda , A Pession , A Bertaina , F Locatelli , J A McCubrey , A Cappellini , J T Barata , A M Martelli Cytotoxic activity of the casein kinase 2 inhibitor CX-4945 against T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia: targeting the unfolded protein response signaling Leukemia (2014) doi: 10.1038/leu.2013.349 

Martelli is also on a very fake paper by McCumbrey with the Ferrara gang and even Zauli himself:

Ayman A.M. Alameen , Carolina Simioni , Alberto M. Martelli , Giorgio Zauli , Simona Ultimo , James A. McCubrey , Arianna Gonelli , Giorgia Marisi , Paola Ulivi , Silvano Capitani , Luca M. Neri Healthy CD4+ T lymphocytes are not affected by targeted therapies against the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia Oncotarget (2016) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.10984 

Also this one:

Carolina Simioni , Simona Ultimo , Alberto M. Martelli , Giorgio Zauli , Daniela Milani , James A. McCubrey, Silvano Capitani , Luca M. Neri Synergistic effects of selective inhibitors targeting the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway or NUP214-ABL1 fusion protein in human Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Oncotarget (2016) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.13035 

There are more fake Oncotarget papers by McCubrey, Martelli, Zauli and the Ferrara gang, discussed in this article (click on respective PubPeer links to see more fraud):

As I tell in the above article, Zauli publicly lobbed his Goebbels comparisons at his critic Lucio Picci, professor of economics at the University of Bologna. Little did Picci know that Zauli’s mafia operates at his own university as well, via Martelli:

Francesca Buontempo , Francesca Chiarini , Daniela Bressanin , Giovanna Tabellini , Fraia Melchionda , Andrea Pession , Milena Fini , Luca M. Neri , James A. McCubrey , Alberto M. Martelli Activity of the selective IκB kinase inhibitor BMS-345541 against T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia: involvement of FOXO3a Cell Cycle (2012) doi: 10.4161/cc.20859 

Again, there’s more to that paper on PubPeer.

McCubrey replied on PubPeer only once, where he was last author:

Stephen L. Abrams , Peter P. Ruvolo , Vivian R. Ruvolo , Giovanni Ligresti , Alberto M. Martelli , Lucio Cocco , Stefano Ratti , Agostino Tafuri , Linda S. Steelman , Saverio Candido , Massimo Libra , James A. McCubrey Targeting signaling and apoptotic pathways involved in chemotherapeutic drug-resistance of hematopoietic cells Oncotarget (2017) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.20408 

McCubrey insisted:

“The blots are different and are correct. The western blots were probed multiple times with different antibodies. The blots show no expression of the MCL1 protein in these two cell lines.”

They are identical and wrong.

As you can see on PubPeer, many of McCubrey’s fake Italian papers were published in the journal Oncotarget. Which is an open access fraud factory, founded by the cheater Mikhail Blagosklonny, its editorial board is a who-is-who of bad science.

The East Carolina University eventually replied. Becky Welch, Interim Director for the Office of Research Integrity and Compliance, wrote to me:

“ECU takes all allegations of inappropriate research conduct seriously, and will address those allegations according to our Regulation on Research Conduct.“

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A different era of biology

Times Higher Education weighs in on the affair of the Nobel Prize winner and Johns Hopkins University professor, Gregg Semenza. Who had to retract several papers already, for data forgery.

“Professor Semenza now has a total of at least seven retractions, and a greater number of papers with corrections or expressions of concern, after the withdrawal of his 2011 paper in the journal Oncogene.

While top scientists and even Nobel laureates have had retractions in the past, the rising count and the consistent reason – characteristics of images that suggest possible data manipulation – have been bringing Professor Semenza a rising chorus of critics, along with some defenders.

One of the two other scientists who shared the 2019 Nobel with Professor Semenza – William Kaelin, a professor of medicine at Harvard University – offered a mix of both. Professor Semenza may have made mistakes in his career after his work that earned him the Nobel, but the prizewinning contributions themselves do not appear to be implicated in the retractions, Professor Kaelin said.

“These papers that are being retracted now are from a different era and different area of biology,” Professor Kaelin told Times Higher Education. “It’s an unhappy situation, but at least none of the work that led to the Nobel prize is affected.”

Professor Semenza, Professor Kaelin and a third researcher, Sir Peter Ratcliffe, now director of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute in London, split the 2019 Nobel for separate work that they each did independently on the ways that cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.”

Kaelin elaborated:

“Professor Semenza deserves enduring credit for several groundbreaking accomplishments, Professor Kaelin said, led by his cloning of the gene that encodes the protein now known as HIF-1α, which plays a key role in the body’s response to low oxygen levels. That work also won Professor Semenza the 2016 Lasker Award for basic medical research.

It appears, Professor Kaelin said, that the problems driving the retractions involve subsequent attempts to extend his discoveries into the world of cancers.

“Where he got into trouble – and I don’t want to go too deep into this – but once he started really trying to push the idea that HIF was a great target in cancer and we should be targeting HIF-1 in cancer,” Professor Kaelin told THE. “And he was frankly doing a lot of cancer biology and cancer pharmacology studies, [which] is where things sort of, I think, derailed.””

Of course, the alternative theory is that Semenza received the credit for HIF-1α unjustly, e.g. by being the boss of the actual discoverer. Happened in the history of the Nobel Prize many times, e.g. with Luc Montagnier. And when the heroic alpha male continues with his own research, phony trash comes out.

Anyway. Pity nobody asked Semenza’s and Kaelin’s fellow Nobel Laureate, the Oxford University professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe to comment. He also has a PubPeer record! Some selected papers:

Zoi Michailidou , Nicholas M. Morton , José Maria Moreno Navarrete , Christopher C. West , Kenneth J. Stewart , José Manuel Fernández-Real , Christopher J. Schofield , Jonathan R. Seckl , Peter J. Ratcliffe Adipocyte pseudohypoxia suppresses lipolysis and facilitates benign adipose tissue expansion Diabetes (2015) doi: 10.2337/db14-0233 

To be fair, Ratcliffe always replied on PubPeer and announced action. Also here:

S C Clifford , M E Cockman , A C Smallwood , D R Mole , E R Woodward , P H Maxwell , P J Ratcliffe , E R Maher Contrasting effects on HIF-1alpha regulation by disease-causing pVHL mutations correlate with patterns of tumourigenesis in von Hippel-Lindau disease Human Molecular Genetics (2001) doi: 10.1093/hmg/10.10.1029  

Here, it was decided not to issue a correction though:

Helen J. Knowles , David R. Mole , Peter J. Ratcliffe , Adrian L. Harris Normoxic Stabilization of Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1α by Modulation of the Labile Iron Pool in Differentiating U937 Macrophages: Effect of Natural Resistance–Associated Macrophage Protein 1 Cancer Research (2006) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-05-2351 

No correction here also:

Alexandra Grosfeld , Ineke P. Stolze , Matthew E. Cockman , Christopher W. Pugh , Mariola Edelmann , Benedikt Kessler , Alex N. Bullock , Peter J. Ratcliffe , Norma Masson Interaction of Hydroxylated Collagen IV with the von Hippel-Lindau Tumor Suppressor Journal of Biological Chemistry (2007) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m611648200

In 2021, Ratcliffe and Norma Masson repeated the forged experiment from almost 15 years ago and obtained exactly the same result. The journal accepted it.

And here the Nobel Laureate Sir Peter Ratcliffe admitted he is unable to design an experiment properly.

Matthew E. Cockman , Norma Masson , David R. Mole , Panu Jaakkola , Gin-Wen Chang , Steven C. Clifford , Eamonn R. Maher , Christopher W. Pugh , Peter J. Ratcliffe , Patrick H. Maxwell Hypoxia inducible factor-alpha binding and ubiquitylation by the von Hippel-Lindau tumor suppressor protein Journal of Biological Chemistry (2000) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m002740200

Ratcliffe explained:

“As has been pointed out, the figure legend states ‘For illustration the lane displaying unreacted HIF-1alpha substrate has been reproduced at the left hand side of each panel’.”

Why couldn’t this positive control be loaded on each gel though, instead just once, somewhere else altogether? Other scientists do their controls properly.

Those Nobelists. Too proud to even consider that their papers may be problematic.

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Science Breakthroughs

A more positive reconsideration

You may recall the story of superconductive fraud by Ranga Dias and Ashkan Salamat, where one Nature paper claiming superconductivity was retracted to be replaced by a different Nature paper by same people again claiming superconductivity, which also proved to be, uhm, unreliable. Read here:

Maarten van Kampen, who contributed a lot to uncovering this fraud, was hoping that the second Nature paper will now be retracted as well. But Maarten underestimated the system’s depravity and the widespread attitude of the scientific community to whitewash and cover-up. New York Times proudly informed on 23 June 2023 that Dias and Salamat have been vindicated:

This is the preprint:

Nilesh P. Salke, Alexander C. Mark, Muhtar Ahart, Russell J. Hemley Evidence for Near Ambient Superconductivity in the Lu-N-H System arXiv (2023) doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2306.06301

“It may convince some people,” said James J. Hamlin, a professor of physics at the University of Florida who has been a persistent critic of Dr. Dias’s research. “It makes me think there might be something to it.”https://t.co/tRUapmsPiM

— John Preskill (@preskill) June 23, 2023

However, the NYT journalist decided to leave out Hamlin’s real opinion because it did not fit to the scientific vindication story. To me, Hamlin explained in an email:

“When Hemley’s paper came out, it certainly gave me pause because he is a well established expert in high pressure science with many important contributions.  I was surprised to see data that looked quite similar to Dias’ data because I had personally come to the conclusion that Dias’ data are entirely untrustworthy.  So, ‘there’s something to it’ in the sense that Hemley’s data sets seem to have actually been measured in the lab and it looks similar to Dias’ data.  Hemley made a valuable contribution by giving additional details of the measurement technique and providing data that doesn’t seem to have been “cleaned up”.

At the same time, there are aspects of the data that appear quite different than the expectation for a superconducting transition.  A number of experts have commented that the sharp jumps up and down are reminiscent of what is often seen in samples with intermittent contacts.  If the zero resistance turns out to be some kind of experimental artifact rather than superconductivity, then one must ask how Dias was able to obtain magnetic data that appears to be perfectly consistent with superconductivity.  There, my thinking is highly informed by what I find to be compelling evidence of a history of repeated data misrepresentation in Dias’ work.

Dias has provided what appears to me to be conflicting information on how to synthesize the samples.  If Dias would simply share his own samples as widely as possible with several other research groups and work openly with them answer any questions about experimental subtleties, the community could resolve the controversy quite quickly.“

Noteworthy, Hemley is not entirely unbiased, he and his coauthors on the preprint above has collaborated with Dias on the now-retracted superconductor in Nature, one made of carbon, sulphur and hydrogen (CSH). As Science wrote in March 2023:

“On 22 February, Dias and his colleagues doubled down on their original claim. In a preprint posted on arXiv they reported synthesizing a new version of CSH that superconducts at a slightly lower 260 K, but at only about half the previous pressure. “This should clear up any questions regarding CSH,” says co-author Russell Hemley, a materials chemist at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who helped determine the material’s structure.”

Here is the preprint, still waiting to pass peer review (in Nature I presume):

Hiranya Pasan , Elliot Snider , Sasanka Munasinghe , Sachith E. Dissanayake , Nilesh P. Salke , Muhtar Ahart , Nugzari Khalvashi-Sutter , Nathan Dasenbrock-Gammon , Raymond McBride , G. Alexander Smith , Faraz Mostafaeipour , Dean Smith , Sergio Villa Cortés , Yuming Xiao , Curtis Kenney-Benson , Changyong Park , Vitali Prakapenka , Stella Chariton , Keith V. Lawler , Maddury Somayazulu , Zhenxian Liu, Russell J. Hemley, Ashkan Salamat, Ranga P. Dias Observation of Conventional Near Room Temperature Superconductivity in Carbonaceous Sulfur Hydride arXiv (2023) doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2302.08622 

All this “independently reproduced” farce means the second Nature paper by Dias and Salamat is now forever safe from retraction. And Nature‘s reputation is safeguarded also.

Oh well, Piero Anversa‘s results of non-existent heart stem cells were also reproduced by many labs worldwide, in fact even after many retractions Anversa’s fraudulent claims are still being reproduced (read here).

💔 for patients, and familiar to anyone who's tried to expose #ResearchMisconduct:
“If researchers [who have “unbelievable charm”] are lying about data, it’s almost impossible to catch it” https://t.co/cU5BVYu6MR
H/T @FearLoathingBTX @LeighGTurner
Reminded of this wisdom 🧵
1/

— Dr. Nancy Olivieri (@DrNancyOlivieri) June 22, 2022

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Retraction Watchdogging

Unable to provide the data

Lorenzo Di Cesare Mannelli, who featured in earlier Friday Shorts as Painful Lollo, retracts a paper. Lollo is pain researcher and pharmacology professor at the University of Florence in Italy, and a collaborator of the mega-cheater Francesco Amenta:

Earlier this year, Lollo entered “the pantheon of “Departments of excellence” selected by the Ministry of University and Research for the five-year period 2023-2027“.

This is the excellent yet now demised paper, where Lollo pushed Mongolian milkvetch from Traditional Chinese Medicine as a therapy for nerve damage:

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

Now, the retraction notice from 20 June 2023:

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

• In Figure 3B the “vehicle + 50% HA” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 8 published in¹;
• In Figure 3B the “oxaliplatin + 50% HA” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 4a published in²;
• In Figure 3C the “vehicle + 50% HA” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 4 published in³;
• In Figure 4A the “vehicle + 50% HA” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 7d “vehicle + vehicle cg1” group published in²;
• In Figure 4A the “vehicle + vehicle” group appears to overlap with data in Figure 7d “vehicle + vehicle M1” group published in².

The Editors reached out to the Authors to request raw data. The Authors were unable to provide the data and the concerns remain unresolved. The Editors therefore no longer have confidence in the results presented in this Article.

All Authors agree with the retraction of the Article.”

I asked Lollo for comment, but he is not talking to me anymore.

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Offensive to question my honesty

A retraction for an Italian group from University of Perugia, following a previous Correction 9 years ago:

The last author Juan P. Bolaños, professor at the University of Salamanca, explained on PubPeer (his comment was moderated though):

“Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for posting this comment. All results of this work, including the western blots, were performed at the laboratory of Prof. Alba Minelli (the corresponding author) under her supervision by her team at Perugia (Italy). Therefore, this work was not performed at my laboratory and I have never had access to the original western blot images or primary data. My input to this collaboration was restricted to conceptual discussion and manuscript text editing, hence my last position is in no way a reflection of seniority, supervision, or principal investigator, hence I am not the corresponding author but just the author who contributed the least. Besides the fact that we usually trust collaborators on the accuracy and integrity of results, I only had access to the mounted figures embedded in the text of the draft versions of the manuscript, which were of insufficient resolution to notice the issues raised.”

The retraction notice from 26 June 2023 stated:

“The above article, published online on 16th October 2009 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) and corrected in 2014 with a Corrigendum (JNeurochem 128(6): 975, URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-4159.2011.07368.x) correcting Figure 3 of the original publication, has been retracted by agreement between the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Andrew Lawrence, the International Society for Neurochemistry and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to concerns raised regarding possible image manipulation of Figure 5b. Corresponding author Alba Minelli as well as all other authors have been contacted to clarify their respective contribution to the article, and provide the original scanned films upon request for the editorial team’s review. Corresponding author Alba Minelli confirmed the following author contributions in the corrected version (J Neurochem. 2014 Mar;128(6):975) as the final version of the published manuscript which all authors had read and approved:

A. Minelli (contact): substantial contribution to conception and design, drafting the article, data interpretation, C .Conte: real-time PCR and gene silencing experiments, data acquisition and analysis, S. Grottelli: data acquisition and analysis, I. Bellezza: drafting the article, data acquisition and analysis, C. Emiliani: revising the article critically for important intellectual content, J. Bolaños: revising the article critically for important intellectual content.

Since the original data could not be retrieved to dispel the new concerns regarding Figure 5 of the original publication, the journal no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions drawn.”

Meh, despite utterly fake Figure 3 they trusted the conclusions before, and so did Bolanos.

The Perugia professor Alba Minelli has several other papers on PubPeer. All show same kind of utterly fake western blots. Like this one, also with Bolanos:

Alba Minelli, Carmela Conte , Silvia Grottelli, Ilaria Bellezza, Ivana Cacciatore, Juan P. Bolaños Cyclo(His-Pro) promotes cytoprotection by activating Nrf2-mediated up-regulation of antioxidant defence Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine (2009) doi: 10.1111/j.1582-4934.2008.00326.x 

Bolanos posted the same comment blaming Minelli lab, but there it was not moderated. Another co-author from Perugia, Carmela Conte, kept protesting above and elsewhere to have had nothing to do with any gels. Not even with her first author paper:

Carmela Conte , Silvia Grottelli , Elvira Prudenzi , Ilaria Bellezza , Bertil B. Fredholm , Alba Minelli A₁and A₃adenosine receptors alter glutathione status in an organ-specific manner and influence the changes after inhibition ofγ-glutamylcysteine ligase Free Radical Research (2009) doi: 10.1080/10715760802712616 

Reaction by first author Conte:

“Dear anonymous, is utterly bizarre that after many years you ask clarification about this manuscript. As first author I just received the finalised figures. […] it is offensive to question my honesty in this manuscript! All the manuscripts undergoes a peer review before publication.“

The penultimate author Bertil B. Fredholm, emeritus professor at karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, stated on PubPeer that his “role was to provide the KO mice“. What did he provide here below?

Alba Minelli , Silvia Grottelli , Lanfranco Corazzi , Ilaria Bellezza , Maria Grazia Rambotti , Carla Emiliani, Bertil B. Fredholm Adenosine A(1) receptors contribute to mitochondria vulnerability to pro-oxidant stressors Mitochondrion (2010) doi: 10.1016/j.mito.2010.03.004

And here, Prof Fredholm?

Alba Minelli , Ilaria Bellezza, Giulia Collodel, Bertil B. Fredholm Promiscuous coupling and involvement of protein kinase C and extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 in the adenosine A1 receptor signalling in mammalian spermatozoa Biochemical Pharmacology (2008) doi: 10.1016/j.bcp.2007.10.024

Gift authorship are research misconduct, that what you get for promiscuoiusly coupling and involvement with fraudsters to boost your own publication output.

But wait, Silvia Grottelli and Ilaria Bellezza were responsible for the fake blots, as the retraction notice above stated, right? Whom will Conte and Minelli blame here if questioned?

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Incoherent, meaningless and irrelevant

A retraction at Hindawi is nothing unsual these days, they retract papermill fraud by the hundreds now. This one however had a nice acknowledgement:

Ying Xiao , Tao Wang , Xiao Cheng , Fangwen Liu , You Wu , Limin Ma , Wenguang Li LINC00958 Inhibits Autophagy of Bladder Cancer Cells via Sponge Adsorption of miR-625-5p to Promote Tumor Angiogenesis and Oxidative Stress Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity (2022) doi: 10.1155/2022/2435114

The clinical study from the Nantong University informed the scholarly community to have drawn blood from bladder cancer “patients and healthy controls who visited our hospital between June 2017 and February 2019 were selected as the research group (RG) and the control group (CG), respectively, with a total of 133 study subjects.“

The study also informed that ethics approvals were all obtained (highlights mine):

“All procedures were conducted in accordance with the Institutional Animal Care guidelines of Nantong University and were approved by the Experimental Animal Ethics Committee of Jiangsu Province, China (approval No. 20190303-18).”

In June 2023, the last author announced on PubPeer to fix the missing ethical approval issue. Yet the paper was already retracted, the retraction note from 20 June 2023 went (highligh mine):

“This article has been retracted by Hindawi following an investigation undertaken by the publisher [1]. This investigation has uncovered evidence of one or more of the following indicators of systematic manipulation of the publication process:

• (1)Discrepancies in scope
• (2)Discrepancies in the description of the research reported
• (3)Discrepancies between the availability of data and the research described
• (4)Inappropriate citations
• (5)Incoherent, meaningless and/or irrelevant content included in the article
• (6)Peer-review manipulation

[…] In addition, our investigation has also shown that one or more of the following human-subject reporting requirements has not been met in this article: ethical approval by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) committee or equivalent, patient/participant consent to participate, and/or agreement to publish patient/participant details (where relevant).

Wiley and Hindawi regrets that the usual quality checks did not identify these issues before publication and have since put additional measures in place to safeguard research integrity.

We wish to credit our own Research Integrity and Research Publishing teams and anonymous and named external researchers and research integrity experts for contributing to this investigation. […]”

Could’ve just referenced this, in fact:

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Co-authors were added

Another surprising retraction for the Iranian papermill fraudster Davood Toghraie, in an Egyptian journal even, published by Elsevier. And it wasn’t even flagged on PubPeer:

Yonggui Wang , Jiandong Zheng , Ghassan Fadhil Smaisim , Davood Toghraie Molecular dynamics simulation of phase transition procedure of water-based nanofluid flow containing CuO nanoparticles Alexandria Engineering Journal (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.aej.2022.06.025

“This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.

After a thorough investigation, the Editor has concluded that the given results in this article are inaccurate due to mistakes in the simulation models. In addition, 3 co-authors were added to the paper during the review and revision process, in contravention of the journal policies on authorship changes.”

Torghraie buys his authorships from papermills and stuffs them full of references to himself. For example:

J.S. Xia , Mohamad Khaje Khabaz , Indrajit Patra , Imran Khalid , José Ricardo Nuñez Alvarez , Alireza Rahmanian , S. Ali Eftekhari , Davood Toghraie Using feed-forward perceptron Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model to determine the rolling force, power and slip of the tandem cold rolling ISA Transactions (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.isatra.2022.06.009 

You can read about Toghraie and his friends here:

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Member with expertise

No retraction this time, but MDPI has investigated a paper by the Spanish papermill king, Rafael Luque. There was data recycled from other papers by Luque, but also fabricated XRD spectra:

Fatemeh Rajabi , María Pinilla-de Dios , Rafael Luque Highly ordered Nanomaterial Functionalized Copper Schiff Base Framework: Synthesis, Characterization, and Hydrogen Peroxide Decomposition Performance Catalysts (2017) doi: 10.3390/catal7070216 

Basically, the same XRD spectrum was used 3 times in different context and additional digital forgeries. I became privy to an email by the MDPI Research Integrity Manager Tim Tait-Jamieson, where he pronounced the decision regarding this paper:

“Following the evaluation of author comments and access to the extended raw data of this study, an Editorial Board member with expertise in XRD spectroscopy evaluated the concerns raised on pub-peer and concluded that, although certain similarities do appear to be present, the spectra do not overlap. This evaluation was checked and confirmed by a second senior member of the Catalyst Editorial Board. Consequently, the Editorial Board decided that this case should be closed without further action. From our side, we consider this case closed unless further detailed information is brought to the attention of the Catalyst editorial office.”

I am sure that member with expertise was one of the numerous papermill fraudsters MDPI proudly keeps recruiting. Because they bring papers.

Anyway. Luque is valued not just at MDPI.

Continuous Flow Hydrogenation of Lignin-model Aromatic Compounds over Carbon-supported Noble Metals (Rafael Luque and co-workers) https://t.co/Icr3VUP2Au pic.twitter.com/B4LB6Tz10D

— ChemSusChem (@ChemSusChem) June 22, 2023

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News in Tweets

• Nature informs that “Former staff and students of the ancient-DNA researcher Alan Cooper have expressed surprise that Charles Sturt University has appointed him as a faculty member after the University of Adelaide dismissed him in 2019 for “serious misconduct”. But some say that he still has important scientific contributions to make.” Michael Balter, who originally exposed Alan Cooper‘s bullying, goes completely unmentioned because this is how professional journalism works. And Cooper paints himself on his blog as never a bully, but rather a “neuro-atypical” victim of ablist bullying himself: “I have undertaken professional counselling and management training since 2020, which has taught me an enormous amount about my abilities and limitations. This has included accepting that I am neuro-atypical, which  has helped me identify areas to work on such as low frustration tolerance when under stress, and how this can impact relationships.“

1/ Alan Cooper, fired from @UniofAdelaide for severe #bullying of younger researchers (and also for sexual harassment, although that part was never made public) has been hired at another Australian university: https://t.co/e7EiD36v5S (report by @dyanilewis) …

— @mbalter — investigations and commentary (@mbalter) June 28, 2023

• Scientific Reports in February 2022: “We have looked into the recent issues raised at [Zhu et al 2017] but given the information received from the authors (including original images), we are not convinced that formal editorial action is warranted at this time.” Scientific Reports in June 2023: “The Editors have retracted this Article. Concerns were raised about duplication of areas […] Analysis of data files provided by the authors has shown multiple irregularities. The Editors therefore no longer have confidence in the data presented.” Maybe a russian editorial office member left in between?

After twice dismissing concerns about this paper, @SciReports finally retracts it. Makes me question the competence of the people reviewing concerns. If even a fictional cat can see this stuff, who is on their staff? 🙃

h/t anon Hoyahttps://t.co/blfkrSyoCz pic.twitter.com/7Wihopl72A

— Cheshire (@Thatsregrettab1) June 24, 2023

• University of Albany (NY) cheater Shaker Mousa just published another paper: Steve Harakeh et al, Journal of King Saud University – Science (2023). It is also fake, so much for “Every Paper on Its Own Merit” maxime by which editors live and breathe.

Another Shaker Mousa paper, another image concern. The leadership @acphsofficial, like @ACPHSPrez, must be so proud. About 50 papers flagged @PubPeer. https://t.co/fhwOcXSSTd pic.twitter.com/xo44fZqgas

— Cheshire (@Thatsregrettab1) June 27, 2023

• Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, published by Springer, founded and edited since 2010 by Vincenzo Loia, Rector of University of Salerno in Italy. Let’s see how he deals with those 72+ papermilled publications.

🧠🤖 72+ problematic papers flagged in the “Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing” published by @SpringerNature @SpringerEng. They contain tortured phrases, questioned references, and other anomalies 😵‍💫. Retractions/corrections needed++. https://t.co/afNWRXJcNG pic.twitter.com/LvfXDMArJI

— Guillaume Cabanac (@gcabanac@sciences.re) (@gcabanac) June 22, 2023

• Nothing to be expected from the French CNRS research director Philippe Garrigues, Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Science and Pollution Research, also by Springer. He personally handles as editor at least 4 papers EACH DAY. Imagine, hypothetically, if the papermills paid a fee for his trouble.

🏚️ 66+ problematic papers flagged in the “Environmental Science and Pollution Research” journal published by @SpringerNature. They contain tortured phrases, questioned references, and other anomalies 😵‍💫. Publisher + @C0PE informed. Retract/correct ASAP. https://t.co/IztPFy7ceA pic.twitter.com/ztScbgmbde

— Guillaume Cabanac (@gcabanac@sciences.re) (@gcabanac) June 21, 2023

Philippe Garrigues, the editor-in-chief of Environmental Science and Pollution Research, acts as "responsible editor" for 1600+ publications per year. Moving on, nothing to see here. pic.twitter.com/2PUoaBCXgx

— A random cat (@wool_yeah) June 25, 2023

• The Royal Society of Chemistry is still not sure if papermills and citation scams are a bad thing. Siavash Iravani, really? 17 inappropriate self-citation in another RSC paper (Iravani 2021). Iravani is an associate of Rajender Varma and other papermill fraudsters.

NEW #RSCAdvReview📝

Carbon dots with tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications by Mohammad Hadi Nematollahi, Siavash Iravani et al. 🔗 https://t.co/eJjkYyWnvj#OpenAccess pic.twitter.com/7GtyRGW3RH

— RSC Advances (@RSCAdvances) June 27, 2023

Siavash Iravani / Abbas Rahdar retraction. Do remember these names.https://t.co/neWYlvthSp

LOADS of irrelevant citations to Yu-Ming Chu and Changhe Li. Also, spectacular XRDs.
PubPeer: https://t.co/WsC4TP0x4s pic.twitter.com/sj8Hejzpk2

— A random cat (@wool_yeah) June 6, 2023

• Yes, but Brouqui, Drancourt & Raoult There is no such thing as a Ministry of Truth and why it is important to challenge conventional “wisdom” – A personal view New Microbes and New Infections (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.nmni.2023.101155 passed peer review, so you can’t touch this.

Authors from the @IHU_Marseille wrote an article to complain that some many of their papers have been flagged on @PubPeer. https://t.co/Xo7cCs2xu6 pic.twitter.com/jHiSClCn8a

— Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest) June 27, 2023

• Adrian Barnett, statistics professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, writes on The Conversation: “Research funders wait for scientific publishers to take action. Publishers expect universities and other institutions to do something. Those institutions in turn look to government for a solution.” True that. His suggestion: “Publicity would be a good start“. Well, I am publicising the work of Bik and other sleuths, and Barnett and other thought leaders pretend For Better Science doesn’t exist. But it does, and it has an impact.

"Somebody should employ lots of people like [@MicrobiomDigest ] to check quality. However, “somebody should” is a dangerous phrase, because it could easily mean nobody will." – @aidybarnett of @aimos_inchttps://t.co/KlpBRG9TRN#ResearchIntegrity #PaperMills #ScientificFraud

— UK Research Integrity Office (@UKRIO) June 28, 2023

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