Joe Loscalzo’s Drag Show

“1’ll tell you the story of Joey Lo –
And you know what I tell you is true.”

Author “unknown”

The Harvard professor and Brigham & Women’s Hospital cardiologist Joseph Loscalzo became a central figure of a circus of fraud accusations. Female- and male sockpuppets were deployed to troll and protect the honour of a 70 year-old white millionaire.

Loscalzo, described by his employer as “an outstanding cardiovascular scientist, clinician, and teacher” became known to the wider scientific community as the dude who collaborated at Brigham & Women’s with the mega-fraudster Piero Anversa in inventing fictional heart stem cells. You can read about the Anversa scandal in New York Times:

After he got sacked by Harvard in November 2015, Anversa buggered off to the Cardiocentro Ticino in the Italian-speaking canton in Switzerland, as I was the first to find out.

In summer 2022, Reuters investigated that despite Anversa’ proven fraud, federal research money was still being pumped into the research of non-existent heart stem cells. Because his bigwig collaborators were still running the show:

“Anversa and his collaborators also sat on editorial boards of the high-profile AHA journals that published adult stem cell research.

Bolli was editor-in-chief of Circulation Research between 2009 and 2019. And Joseph Loscalzo, also an Anversa collaborator and the chair of Brigham ’s Department of Medicine since 2005, was editor of Circulation between 2004 and 2016.

All told, Circulation Research and Circulation published hundreds of pieces about cardiac adult stem cell research, including more than 300 that cited Anversa’s work, a Reuters review found.

Fourteen of 56 articles from Anversa’s lab in those two journals alone were retracted as a result of  the Brigham-Harvard probe, including one co-authored with Bolli and three with Loscalzo.

Through a Brigham spokesman, Loscalzo declined to comment.”

As a side note: Roberto Bolli tripped over his excessive homophobia and religious fundamentalism, and got sacked as chief editor. Other prominent members of the Anversa gang were Jan Kajstura and Annarosa Leri, both got sacked and charged with fraud, at least the latter was later seen at Ticino with Anversa.

Worse, even some of Anversa’s critics are bad scientists themselves, like Jeffery Molkentin at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital (see PubPeer record), or Steven Houser at Temple University:

Loscalzo presently has 4 retractions, all with Anversa. Three of these retracted papers were about their fictional heart stem cells (Ferreira-Martins et al Circ Res 2012, Kaistura et al Circ Res 2012, Kajstura et al Circulation 2012), but in this retracted study, Loscalzo’s and Anversa’s heart stem cell fraud metastasised into the lung:

Jan Kajstura , Marcello Rota , Sean R. Hall , Toru Hosoda , Domenico D’Amario , Fumihiro Sanada , Hanqiao Zheng , Barbara Ogórek , Carlos Rondon-Clavo , João Ferreira-Martins , Alex Matsuda , Christian Arranto , Polina Goichberg , Giovanna Giordano , Kathleen J. Haley , Silvana Bardelli, Hussein Rayatzadeh , Xiaoli Liu , Federico Quaini , Ronglih Liao , Annarosa Leri, Mark A. Perrella, Joseph Loscalzo, Piero Anversa Evidence for human lung stem cells New England Journal of Medicine (2011) doi: 10.1056/nejmoa1101324

The retraction notice from November 2018 had the authors collectively inform us that their data faked itself:

“We have been contacted by several authors of the article by Kajstura J et al., Evidence for Human Lung Stem Cells, N Engl J Med 2011;364:1795-1806.1 An investigation by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital has determined that some of the images in the article were manipulated. The authors tell us that “a review of the original data affirms this conclusion and has led us to conclude that we no longer have faith in the veracity of these images. As we were not aware of this manipulation of the data until long after the paper had been published, we now request that the article be retracted.”

The Schneider Rule of Fake Scientists states that if you wish to meet many research fraudsters, you must follow one of them around. In order to scientifically advance (i.e., monetize) their lung stem cell fraud, the cardiologists Anversa and Loscalzo joined forces with the pulmonologist Augustine MK Choi, e.g. in this review Anversa et al 2012. Years later, Choi was forced to retire as dean of Weill Cornell and slapped with retractions, and presumably also with misconduct findings, following this reporting:

Anversa’s own total count is 19 retractions as of today, all notices reference the investigation by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

But Loscalzo didn’t really need Anversa to produce fake science, a visit to PubPeer is quite informative. This evidence of a bizarrely fake loading control gel (one gel band copy-pasted 7 times!) rots on PubPeer for 7 years already, the first author Paul C Kuo became professor at University of South Florida since:

P C Kuo , R A Schroeder , J Loscalzo Nitric oxide and acetaminophen-mediated oxidative injury: modulation of interleukin-1-induced nitric oxide synthesis in cultured rat hepatocytes Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (1997) Aug;282(2):1072-83.

The next forgery was flagged 6 years ago, but it cannot be addressed because Loscalzo’s collaborator and the last author Louis Ignarro before his career as Herbalife shill once won a Nobel Prize:

The Italo-American Nobelist actually has a long history of fake science with his Neapolitan buddy Claudio Napoli, read here:

These days, Loscalzo is into bioinformatics, where there are no images to be scrutinised. Still, some months ago, his recent bioinformatics papers received PubPeer criticisms, see for example Cheng et al 2018 or Wang & Loscalzo 2023. Yet a number of comments were moderated by PubPeer (which by no means implies they were wrong). In any case, someone started to share those PubPeer links with me and probably with other people. Soon, someone else reacted.

This email was sent to multiple recipients by “TogetherJoe@proton.me” on 29 September 2023:

Together Joe: We are here to protect Joe Loscalzo

Dear Science Integrity Investigators,

We are gathered here to protect Dr. Loscalzo. We will do our best to protect Dr. Loscalzo from constant slander, research integrity allegations, and defamation directed at Dr. Loscalzo. Please ignore any malicious emails and PubPeer comments by bad actors. Dr. Loscalzo’s papers have no ethical issues. Please contact us anytime. We will always be with Dr. Loscalzo’s colleagues.

Best,

Jennie Lee

Manager & Coordinator

Together Joe

We are stronger together with Joe Loscalzo

Boston, MA, USA

New York, NY, USA

Seoul, South Korea

As a reminder, Loscalzo’s papers were retracted for fraud. After I asked what they have been drinking, this “Jennie Lee” replied with:

“Dr. Loscalzo’s papers are being criticized for the purpose of defamation, and some bad detractors are sending baseless defamatory emails claiming that Loscalzo Lab has research integrity issues. We are actively responding to these malicious actions. For example, PubPeer recently retrospectively removed some comments that lacked evidence. We hope you are aware of this fact.”

On 30 September 2023, same “Jennie Lee” from TogetherJoe@proton.me sent this round email:

Together Joe: The highest ethical standards

Dear Science Integrity Investigators,

We are gathered here to protect Dr. Loscalzo. We will do our best to protect Dr. Loscalzo from constant slander, research integrity allegations, and defamation directed at Dr. Loscalzo.

Dr. Loscalzo is a world-renowned scholar in the field of redox vascular biology and a leading figure in the academic medicine. He also has a more cool-headed awareness and philosophy of research ethics than anyone else. We are here to stop the reckless defamation of Dr. Loscalzo and baseless attacks on his papers. Please ignore any malicious concerns and conspiracies. Please contact us at any time.

Through the following papers, we can see Dr. Loscalzo’s extraordinary achievements and rigorous sense of research ethics.

Leopold J. A. (2010). Redox Pioneer: Professor Joseph Loscalzo. Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, 13(7), 1125–1132. https://doi.org/10.1089/ars.2010.3205

Loscalzo J. (2012). Irreproducible experimental results: causes, (mis)interpretations, and consequences. Circulation, 125(10), 1211–1214. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.112.098244

Anversa, P., Kajstura, J., Leri, A., & Loscalzo, J. (2011). Tissue-specific adult stem cells in the human lung. Nature Medicine, 17(9), 1038–1039. https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2463

This was attached to the email:

As for the recommended reading: the 2011 Nature Medicine study by three convicted fraudsters and Loscalzo relies on their retracted NEJM paper from 2011. That’s why it was criticised on PubPeer, with comments “The existence of c-kit-positive human lung stem cells has not yet been proven” and “Figure 1 seems to come from the retracted study“:

There, Loscalzo personally replied ob PubPeer in May 2023 with “Thank you for this attention. I will look into this point.” Indeed, Loscalzo is a champion of research ethics and reproducible science, as we were instructed to read his 2012 editorial “Irreproducible Experimental Results”. It opens with, uhm, climate change denialism, but actually is meant to indirectly defend Loscalzo’s and Anversa’s fake stem cell research from criticism:

“It is important, however, to avoid equating failure to reproduce a scientific finding with scientific fraud; unfortunately, the conflation of these two phenomena is the norm in the current era.”

The Together Joe campaign continued. This was sent by TogetherJoe@proton.me on 4 October 2023:

Together Joe: We are growing to protect Joe Loscalzo

Dear Colleagues,

We are gathered here to protect Dr. Loscalzo. We will do our best to protect Dr. Loscalzo from constant slander, research integrity allegations, and defamation directed at Dr. Loscalzo.

We are growing to protect Dr. Loscalzo. Outstanding researchers from Boston, New York, Providence, Bethesda, Seoul, and Daejeon have joined. We are stronger together with our outstanding scientists with the highest ethical standards.

Please ignore any malicious PubPeer comments. Dr. Loscalzo’s papers have no ethical issues. Please contact us anytime. We will always be with Dr. Loscalzo’s colleagues.

Best,

Jennie Lee

Manager & Coordinator

Together Joe

We are stronger together with Joe Loscalzo

Boston, MA, USA

New York, NY, USA

Providence, RI, USA

Bethesda, MD, USA

Seoul, South Korea

Daejeon, South Korea

Obviously, also Elisabeth Bik was a recipient of these emails. So she had a look, and here she found image duplications “with a rotation and the removal of some features“:

The co-author Alex Loscalzo is according to his LinkedIn a trained chef and since 2006 he cooks as Cardiovascular Physiology CORE Operation manager at Brigham & Women’s. He must be, a wild stab in the dark now, Little Jo’s son.

Here, Elisabeth found a fake gel:

More fake gels to prove that “Dr. Loscalzo’s papers have no ethical issues“:

And why did someone paint a black dot where one was determined to find a gel band, almost three decades ago?

More of the “reckless defamation of Dr. Loscalzo and baseless attacks on his papers“:

Even more dodgy data found by Elisabeth:

Reza Aghamohammadzadeh , Ying‐Yi Zhang , Thomas E. Stephens , Elena Arons , Paula Zaman , Kevin J. Polach , Majed Matar , Lai‐Ming Yung , Paul B. Yu , Frederick P. Bowman , Alexander R. Opotowsky , Aaron B. Waxman , Joseph Loscalzo, Jane A. Leopold , Bradley A. Maron Up‐regulation of the mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 subunit Raptor by aldosterone induces abnormal pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell survival patterns to promote pulmonary arterial hypertension The FASEB Journal (2016) doi: 10.1096/fj.201500042 

So Loscalzo’s sock-puppets had to act again. This was sent from the account “AliceShah99@protonmail.com” on 13 October 2023:

“Save Joseph Loscalzo – Concern about PubPeer comments

Dear Researchers,

I hope this email finds you well. I am a medical student who enthusiastically enjoys Dr. Joseph Loscalzo’s medical bible, Harrison’s Internal Medicine. Recently, I learned that a world-renowned sociopathic detractor, Dr. Elisabeth Bik maliciously attacked Dr. Joseph Loscalzo’s papers. Dr. Bik’s defamatory PubPeer comments, for example, fake western blot issues, are clearly malicious.  https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Loscalzo  We all know that Dr. Joseph Loscalzo’s papers are clean and most PubPeer comments are misinformation and trivial things. Please ignore any defamatory emails and PubPeer comments. Let’s protect Dr. Joseph Loscalzo.

Yours sincerely,

Alice Shah”

After I replied-all describing Loscalzo as a dirty old man with female sock-puppets and fake data in his papers, my email was forwarded to Retraction Watch by a male sock-puppet named “Louis Mo” (LouisMo10@protonmail.com), with this plea for justice:

“Dear Retraction Watch,
My colleague received the following email from Leonid Schneider. This email is clearly defamatory. Could you please investigate his malicious slandering? It is hard to understand why people criticize Joseph Loscalzo’s papers.”

But of course even Loscalzo’s imaginary lady friends Jennie and Alice, just like “Little Jo” himself, will know that the evidence is undeniable. So this defence plan was deployed in parallel, sent by “davidsal9@protonmail.com” on 17 October 2023:

“A prominent cardiologist Jane Leopold at Harvard Medical School ruined Joseph Loscalzo by manipulating her Western blot images.

Jane Leopold is a snob who praises Joseph Loscalzo. See her snobbery article “Redox Pioneer: Professor Joseph Loscalzo.”

• Leopold J. A. (2010). Redox Pioneer: Professor Joseph Loscalzo. Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, 13(7), 1125–1132. https://doi.org/10.1089/ars.2010.3205

She, however, manipulated numerous images in her papers published in prestigious cardiology journals. Her PubPeer page is impressive.

https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Jane+Leopold

Jane Leopold blesses Cardiology by publishing faking data in Joseph Loscalzo’s papers.

Where did she learn her Photoshop skills? Loscalzo, yes.

https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Loscalzo “

One could wonder why an old rich white man turns from impersonating imaginary women to trolling and scapegoating of a real one, even if she is not entirely innocent. The Harvard professor Jane Leopold, now director of the Women’s Interventional Cardiology Health Initiative at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, did not protest when I asked her if it’s OK to cite this email. It is indeed impressive what Leopold learned in Loscalzo’s lab:

Lahouaria Hadri, Razmig G Kratlian , Ludovic Benard , Bradley A Maron , Peter Dorfmüller , Dennis Ladage , Christophe Guignabert , Kiyotake Ishikawa , Jaume Aguero , Borja Ibanez , Irene C Turnbull , Erik Kohlbrenner , Lifan Liang , Krisztina Zsebo , Marc Humbert , Jean-Sébastien Hulot , Yoshiaki Kawase , Roger J Hajjar , Jane A Leopold Therapeutic efficacy of AAV1.SERCA2a in monocrotaline-induced pulmonary arterial hypertension Circulation (2013) doi: 10.1161/circulationaha.113.001585

Loscalzo is sure great in making money with bullshit, but he is really awful in trolling. And while it looks really bad for an old rich white man to invent female sock-puppets, that poem he wrote about himself is even worse!

“And he came each week to share his thoughts
So we all came to hear little Jo.
And we all waited with baited breathe
For him to put on his spectacular show”

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Update 5.12.2023

Loscalzo is indeed a troll. His female sockpuppets commented under this article as “Alice”, “Kimb” and “Miss. Kim”. On 4 December 2023, Retraction Watch brought an article titled “Cyberstalking pits Harvard professor against PubPeer“, which ended with:

“After declining several interview requests, Loscalzo forwarded an email showing that on November 8, someone using a Proton Mail account had submitted a manuscript titled “Abilify Network medicine: Drug repurposing of aripiprazole in cardiovascular diseases” to Preprints.org, a server for archiving scholarly works in advance of publication. Loscalzo and several of his colleagues were listed as authors, but had never heard of the article, he wrote in an email to Preprints.org.

“No doubt, after the paper is published, the plan would be for the malicious culprit to post errors on PubPeer that would be used to defame us yet again,” Loscalzo said.”

Yeah right. Also these fake papers, recently flagged by Elisabeth Bik, were published without Little Joe’s knowledge, I presume.

 

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