Schneider Shorts 18.08.2023 – In the first instance you make contact with the journal editors

Schneider Shorts 18 August 2023 – Australian university outsources faculty affairs to Elsevier, Elsevier editor reports sleuth for misconduct, Mexican fraudster’s post-mortem retractions, more retractions in Dresden, with lying russians, Vicker’s Curse striking twice, and finally, Nobelist and struck-off dentist sell business for many millions.

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Scholarly Publishing

In the first instance you make contact with the journal editors

An Australian university ordered Sholto David to stop pestering them about their faculty fraudsters. Sholto was instead informed that the decision lies with the publisher Elsevier, and ordered to contact the journal’s editor, a notorious antivaxxer and covidiot.

I wrote about the journal before:

This is the paper, its authors are Chinese, yet one of the corresponding authors, Pu Xiao, is affiliated with the Australian National University in Canberra:

Yongjia Xiong , Hailing Zou , Shuhui Wang , Jiawen Guo , Boning Zeng , Pu Xiao , Jing Liu, Feiyue Xing Characteristics of a novel photoinitiator aceanthrenequinone-initiated polymerization and cytocompatibility of its triggered polymer Toxicology Reports (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.toxrep.2022.01.008 

In may 2022, a Corrigendum was issued:

“The authors regret that there are faults in Fig. 3, including subimages BAPO 5 μM, AATQ 25 μM, AATQ 50 μM, AATQ 100 μM in Fig. 3A, and Control in Fig. 3B. These wrong subimages have been replaced by the correct ones below. However, all the legends to Fig. 3 still remain invariant. It should be mentioned that the changes will not alter their outcomes and conclusions.”

The Corrigendum was of course fraudulent, as Sholto noticed:

Thus, Sholto wrote to the Australian National University. He now received this unsigned patronising idiocy from ANU Research Integrity Team, Office of Research and Innovation Services (highlights mine):

“As you note, one of the researchers is an ANU researcher. However, we are also aware that there have been concerns raised regarding this publication on the forum PubPeer since March 2022. We recommend that in the first instance you make contact with the journal editors. From your email below, you appear to have already contacted the Editor-in-Chief of Toxicology Reports, Aristides Tsatsakis. May I also suggest that you also contact the Guest Editor of the journal issue (vol. 9), Erica Bruce (erica_bruce@baylor.edu)? According to the journal’s Special Issue Guidelines, the Guest Editor, the Elsevier Content Acquisition Specialist Nicolae Craciunescu (n.craciunescu@elsevier.com) and the Journal Manager (toxrep@elsevier.com) are in the best position to address your concerns.”

And then same university experts who invite Elsevier to judge about their own faculty affairs, educate us about the dangers of predatory publishing. Anyway, it takes some nerve to order a whistleblower to complain to such utter crook like Tsatsakis. Read below.

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My investigation found no evidence of misconduct

Masoud Afrand is a papermilling fraudster, his PubPeer record proves this more than enough. Alexander Magazinov reported a papermilled Special Issue (edited by Afrand, Cong Qi and Mohammad Arjmand), published in the Elsevier journal Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements (EABE) to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE,) because of editorial inaction.

COPE contacted the Editor-in-Chief Alexander Cheng, Emeritus Dean of Engineering and Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Mississippi, USA. This is the email Cheng sent to COPE in reply (TL;DR: Magazinov is a nobody, Afrand is an honest titan of science and Cheng a victim of harassment):

“Dr. Magazinov is a software engineer who specializes in data analysis and is known as a “scientific sleuth”. He developed an algorithm to analyze citations of authors, and a theory to interpret the results. From what I am aware of, he seemed to have published one or two papers on this subject and have a few posted online archives. Based on his analysis of the 94 papers published in a special issue in Mathematical Methods in the Applied Sciences, he showed the number of times that authors were cited in that special issue. Masoud Afrand ranked 4^th with 132 citations, that is, on average 1.4 citations per paper. Based on his theory, this was an improper number. He decided that Afrand used the special issue to artificially boost his citations, which was an act of Paper Mill. (We should note that Afrand had no editorial role in the special issue and did not publish a paper in the issue.) Dr. Magazinov started to pursue Afrand, which resulted this page in Retraction Watch 

Editorial board member dropped from journal site after Retraction Watch-Undark report links him to paper mill

among other postings.  

At a certain point, Dr. Magazinov found that Afrand was editing a special issue for EABE, and he questioned the decision of the journal to involve him (see postings in the above site). I was not aware of the existence of the site, until an EABE editorial board member alerted me. I immediately launched an investigation and questioned Afrand about the accusations. Afrand denied all charges made by the site and showed me his communication with the editor of Scientific Report to dispute the accusation of misconduct. He in turn accused Dr. Magazinov of misconduct and provided evidence.    

As I was not privy to the information to make a judgment, I decided to investigate Afrand’s conduct in the EABE journal. My investigation found no evidence of misconduct in his editorial role for the journal. A rigorous review process was followed. He did not publish a paper in the special issue and did not make a request for citation of his papers. Nevertheless, to avoid the ongoing controversy, Afrand offered to resign from the editorial board, and I agreed. New submission to the special issue was also closed.  

I announced Afrand’s resignation at the site and posted my own investigation. In short, my findings were: 

1. Afrand receives a large number of citations, more than 20,000 by Google Scholar, in his 9-year career after Ph.D., and 15 as assistant professor. Eighty of his publications received more than 100 citations. Analyzing the highest cited paper with 379, the first 50 shows that 4 were self-cited. The self-citation rate is low. 
2. Afrand guest edited a special issue for EABE on “Computational approaches in multiphase simulation of nanofluids in multiphysics systems”. He himself did not publish a single paper in the issue, though he published 4 papers in the journal. 
3. The special issue contains 56 papers: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/engineering-analysis-with-boundary-elements/special-issue/10QV09LJ40D. Scanning the first 10 papers for citation of Afrand’s papers reveals the following: 0(34), 2(28), 1(26), 2(29), 0(26), 0(27), 3(36), 2(27), 1(27), 1(29), in which the numbers in the parentheses are the total number of papers cited in each article. These are not out of the ordinary. 
4. His editorial work was monitored by the editor-in-chief. As the editor-in-chief, I did not find any irregularities on his work. 

(See my full response on the site.) 

The above, however, was disagreeable with Dr. Magazinov, so he analyzed the EABE special issue for citations. He found that Afrand ranked 5^th in citation and was cited on average 1.5 times per article, consistent with what I reported above. He insisted that this number of citations was a misconduct and should be punished. I offered a possible explanation, which can be summarized as follows (see my full response at the site): 

• The special issue was on a very narrow scientific subject. It was on computation techniques for “multiphase” nanofluid (meaning nanoparticles and fluid move separately). 
• Afrand is an expert on this subject and has published extensively on the subject. 
• He sent invitations to researchers he knew in the field, who likely were aware of his work. 
• Is it unusual that he was cited 1.5 times for a typical paper containing more than 30 citations? 
• He did not submit a paper to the special issue. 
• He did not request authors to cite his work. 

I was offering a plausible explanation for a rational discussion. Unfortunately, the site turned into a coordinated attack on me, on my integrity, on the journal, and the scientific field of nanofluid. I said coordinated because I was tipped off that the same several people posted attacks on the site were active on other sites. […]

With this response I invite COPE to examine the cause, the exchange, the process, and the conducts, not only of the journal, but also of Dr. Magazinov. I can provide the journal data at COPE requests. COPE may want to examine Dr. Magazinov’s theory, his qualification to create the theory, his level of expertise in the many fields he criticized, his approaches, and conducts. Were all these ethical? A person may have good intentions, but improper conducts can do a disservice to the academic community’s effort to fight unethical behaviors in scientific publishing.”

Magazinov pointed to several specific papers “authored” by known papermillers or with rigged citations to various papermillers in EABE:

• Zhou et al 2023 (mass-citations to C-Li)
• Wang et al 2023 (mass-citations to C-Li)
• Alqaed et al 2022 (by papermiller Mohsen Sharifpur, with mass citations to C. Li)
• Liao et al 2023 (by papermiller Grzegorz Królczyk, with false references)
• Eshgarf et al 2023 (Vickers Curse)

One of the papers Magazinov reported was retracted the same day the above email exchange happened (Elsevier announced to investigate the rest). This is the retracted paper, totally out of scope yet it passed editorial gatekeeping and peer review:

Quynh Hoang Le , Bahareh Farasati Far , S. Mohammad Sajadi , Bahar Saadaie Jahromi , Sogand Kaspour , Bilal Cakir , Zahra Abdelmalek , Mustafa Inc Analysis of Conocurvone, Ganoderic acid A and Oleuropein molecules against the main protease molecule of COVID-19 by approaches: Molecular dynamics docking studies Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.enganabound.2023.02.043 

The retraction notice from 16 August 2016 went:

“Post publication, the editors discovered suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version, in which two (2) authors were removed from the paper and four (4) new authors (Quynh Hoang Le, Bahar Saadaie Jahromi, Sogand Kaspour, Zahra Abdelmalek), were added, among which was a new first author.

The editor investigated further and found that the explanation provided by the authors was deemed unsatisfactory. The editor therefore feels that the findings of the manuscript cannot be relied upon and that the article needs to be retracted.”

Funny how Cheng, who defends the fraudster Afrand and wants Magazinov to be tried for misconduct, plays the champion of research integrity here. Not just that, Cheng also lies that he alone discovered the problems with this paper.

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Your arguments are baseless

You may recall an earlier article by Alexander Magazinov about the rascist “scientists” Roman Fediuk and Nikolai Vatin, who buy their authorships from Iranian papermills and seem quite proud of that. Well, it seems our article worked and Fediuk, an officer in putin’s mass-murdering army, is now in trouble, with MDPI even.

Lt-Colonel Fediuk started to place PubPeer comments on his papermilled publications where he either hides behind editorial authorities or complains of russophobia. Vatin, a machine-gun-totting Z-swastika patriot, is co-author on some of these papers. Here a selection of Fediuk’s PubPeer comments:

• “Unlike the anonymous commenter, I introduced myself. I am confused by those scientists (including journal editors) who listen to anonymous commentators (who probably don’t even have a degree). If journal editors have questions for authors, let them contact the authors themselves, and do not link to this site.” (Loganina et al 2010)
• “You understand that if in this articles we are declared as authors, then we could not influence the editorial process of passing the articles in any way” (Ahmad et al 2022)
• “In the methods section, the equipment used for energy dispersive spectroscopy was not mentioned because it is obvious to scientists who read this highly rated journal.” (Amran et al 2022)
• “This is a typo that does not affect the scientific content of the article” (Chakrawarthi et al 2022)
• “Your arguments are baseless. The fact that the authors refer to the articles of their colleagues indicates that a large-scale and multi-dimensional long-term study was carried out.” (Ali et al 2022 and Hakro et al 2022)
• “The first volume of our special issue was very successful, with more than 50 articles published. Therefore, the publishers of the MDPI offered us to organize the second volume. However, this proposal was later withdrawn without explanation. We think this is due to the fact that one of the guest editors from Russia….” (editorial Fediuk & Ali 2022)

But there are more reasons to disregard ALL science from the rascist empire as fraudulent. Meet another chemist: Marina Olkhovich, of Krestov Institute of russian Academy of Sciences, and here is her PubPeer record.

Marina Ol’khovich , Angelica Sharapova , Svetlana Blokhina , German Perlovich , Sofia Skachilova , Elena Shilova A study of the inclusion complex of bioactive thiadiazole derivative with 2‑hydroxypropyl‑β‑cyclodextrin: Preparation, characterization and physicochemical properties Journal of Molecular Liquids (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.molliq.2018.10.053

Olkhovich claimed on PubPeer it is supposed to look like this because her science is that reproducible or something. But Orchestes quercus informed her:

“The XRD data is stored in vector format […] This allows one access to (nearly) the raw underlying data. And I can only conclude that the spectrum 1 and 2 are the same. Except for some shifting and scaling.”

Same for other graphs. And this one, in Fig 6, was attacked with the eraser tool to remove undesired peaks:

Similar kind of fraud and same kind of denial by Olkhovich here:

Here, Planchonella Sandwicensis‘ PubPeer comments got moderated for some reason, but Orchestes quercus figured out the problem.

Svetlana V. Blokhina, Angelica V. Sharapova , Marina V. Ol’khovich, Igor B. Levshin , German L. Perlovich Solid–liquid phase equilibrium and thermodynamic analysis of novel thiazolidine-2,4-dione derivative in different solvents Journal of Molecular Liquids (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.molliq.2020.115273

Same issue, with all XRD graphs in a figure being identical (after some stretching) was found in Sharapova et al J Mol Lipids 2021.

Maybe just ban russian scientists from submitting papers? Since russia is so technologically, spiritually and racially superior to the rest of the world, why don’t they just publish in their own russian journals? Fediuk and Vatin do prove that science is most definitively not outside of politics.

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Authors failed to provide a satisfactory explanation

As I wrote in May 2023 Friday Shorts, the Elsevier journal Optik has a new Editor-in-Chief: Jer-Shing Huang, professor at the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena, Germany. He now made up on his announcement to retract the fraud my colleagues and myself unsuccessfully reported to his predecessor, Theo Tschudi. Not just the Asian papermill fraud, even the Mexican nanotechnology fraudster Oscar Portillo-Moreno got some long-deserved retractions. Posthumously.

Portillo-Moreno died on 7 May 2023, and here are his five fresh retractions:

• Retraction notice for Portillo Moreno et al “Morphological, structural, optical and electrical properties of PbS nanocrystals doped with Fe2+ grown by chemical bath” (2016)
• Retraction notice for Portillo Moreno et al “Synthesis, morphological, optical and structural properties of PbSSe2- nanocrystals” (2016)
• Retraction notice for Portillo Moreno et al “Near-infrared-to-visible upconverting luminescence of Er3 + -doped CdSe nanocrystals grown by chemical bath” (2017)
• Retraction notice for Reyes Gracia et al “Growth of Er3+-doped PbS nanocrystals by chemical bath” (2018)
• Retraction notice to Portillo Moreno et al “Morphological, optical and structural analysis in CdS, CdS-CdCO3 and CdCO3 thin solid films grown by chemical bath” (2018)

All have a similar retraction notice:

“This article has been retracted at the request of the editor.

In investigating concerns brought up regarding the duplication of images […], the editors reached out to the contactable authors for an explanation.

The authors failed to provide a satisfactory explanation. The editor therefore feel that the findings of the manuscript cannot be relied upon and that the article needs to be retracted.”

For completeness, here is one retraction notice, for one of the several now retracted papermill fabrications Nick Wise and myself reported to the journal in spring 2023:

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

The journal was alerted about a post, stating that the article contains tortured phrases that make some passages hard to parse, as detailed here: PubPeer – Modality feature fusion based Alzheimer’s disease prognosis. The journal requested the authors to provide an explanation of these concerns, as well as raw data and any related evidence, but the corresponding author’s response did not satisfactorily address the editor’s concerns. The editor-in-chief reviewed the case and decided to retract the article.”

What a mess the former EiC Tschudi left behind. Who only seems to reply to emails from Elsevier and other important people.

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News in Brief

• Nobelist Sir Martin Evans and Ajan Reginald sold their trash stem cell company Celixir/Cell Therapy Ltd for whooping GBP 135 million. The buyer proudly announced: “Ashington Innovation […] is pleased to announce that the Company has entered into a non-binding term sheet (the “Term Sheet”) with Cell Therapy Limited (“Cell Therapy”) pursuant to which Ashington Innovation will acquire 100% of the total issued equity for GBP135 million in an all share transaction (the “Transaction”). Cell Therapy is a clinical stage biotechnology firm with a portfolio of patented cellular medicines with a lead program that successfully completed an early-stage human clinical trial in heart failure. […] To fund the Transaction, Ashington Innovation will be seeking to carry out a placing of new ordinary shares to new and existing investors (“Placing”) to raise funds of up to GBP3 million to finance the drug development program and working capital. As such, the Transaction is conditional, inter alia, on the completion of due diligence, definitive sale and purchase documentation, obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals from the FCA…” In reality, Cell Therapy /Celixir is a steaming pile of fraud and patient abuse, brought to its knees by Patricia Murray.

• The WHO-IARC cancer research cheater Massimo Tommasino died in December 2022. He leaves behind many little cheaters he trained and installed into high positions internationally. Here is the obituary: “The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is deeply saddened by the passing of Dr Massimo Tommasino at the age of 64. Dr Tommasino was a beloved member of the IARC community for 19 years, making indelible scientific contributions in his position as Head of the Infections and Cancer Biology Group (2002–2020) and then as Head of the Early Detection, Prevention, and Infections Branch (2020–2021) until his retirement at the end of 2021. […] Dr Tommasino was an enthusiastic and dedicated scientist, colleague, and friend, with a deep love for science and for life. His contributions to the research community, both at IARC and beyond, will be sorely missed.” As reminder, WHO refused to investigate Tommasino’s fraudulent western blots. Read below:

• Petra Pötschke has no luck with her Asian collaborators. The Dresden polymer chemist mentored Mohammad Arjmand, and now she will retract two papers with Haisong Qi: Chen et al 2020 and Chen et al 2019. Qi, who is now professor at South China University of Technology, announced on PubPeer in both threads: “After checked the data and discussed with our co-authors, we decided to retract this paper at first.” Pötschke confirmed to me in an email that the retractions were decided after an “internal preliminary investigation”. Interesting aspect: Pötschke’s institute director Brigitte Voit (recently found guilty of research misconduct) is co-author. Read about Pöschke’s and Voit’s fake papers below.

• Cain CT Clark, assistant professor at the Coventry University in UK, became, all because of his unscrupulous greed for papermill career boost, a victim of The Vickers Curse, twice! First, in Rasaei et al 2022, and the second time, in Mohammadi et al 2023. In both cases, his papermill providers inserted a nonsense reference to an editorial about moth pheromones. But Clark can relax now: Google Scholar recently fixed this Elsevier bug. Our author of “~400 peer reviewed publications” can safely continue his forays into papermill industry, the Vickers Curse is no more. And anyway, his university probably doesn’t care.

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