Schneider Shorts 27.10.2023 – A common practice at the time

Schneider Shorts of 27 October 2023 – The Real Iron Man in Texas, Swedish researchers escape investigation, with a Heidelberg papermill, a brave whistleblower, concerns expressed and cancer cured, and finally, why FASEB is worse than Asian papermills.

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Science Elites

The Real Iron Man

Meet yet another successful scientist who seems to owe his impressive career, in USA no less, to fake science and papermills.

Virender K Sharma is professor and director of the Program on Environment and Sustainability at the School of Public Health, Texas A&M University. He is paid almost $170k a year and described by Texas A&M University as “The Real Iron Man”:

“Sharma’s honors include being named a Highly Cited Researcher (Top 1 %) by the Clarivate (Web of Science) and Google Scholar with more than 36,500 citations (H-Index 92). He has been globally ranked 24^th in citations in the field of environmental science (Stanford University, PLOS biology October 2021). He was elected a 2021 Fellow of of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and he was named the 2019 Steven K. Dentel AEESP Award for Global Outreach, Bush Excellence Award for International Research, 2019 Bush Excellence Award for International Research, and 2019 Outstanding Distinguished Scientist by Texas A&M University’s research honor society Sigma Xi.”

Previously, Sharma used to be at Florida Tech, where he was financed by an Environmental Chemistry endowment named after his father, Sant Ram Sharma. And this is Sharma junior’s iron-clad secret to success, as per his growing record on PubPeer, flagged mostly by Thallarcha lechrioleuca:

Jaspreet Kaur Grewal , Manpreet Kaur, Rajeev K. Sharma , Aderbal C. Oliveira , Vijayendra Kumar Garg , Virender K. Sharma Structural and Photocatalytic Studies on Oxygen Hyperstoichiometric Titanium-Substituted Strontium Ferrite Nanoparticles Magnetochemistry (2022) doi: 10.3390/magnetochemistry8100120 

Here Dr Sharma proposes to use graphene fraud doping to remove toxic pollution:

Manpreet Kaur Ubhi , Manpreet Kaur , Dhanwinder Singh , Virender K. Sharma Structural and adsorptive properties of boron- and phosphorous-doped graphene oxide: Insight into effective removal of Pb(II) and As(III) Journal of Water Process Engineering (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.jwpe.2023.103539 

More uses of of ferrity-fraud to fight environmental pollution:

And some more fraud, with titanium again:

There is more on PubPeer, and Sharma’s regular co-author Manpreet Kaur (associate professor at Punjab Agricultural University in India) has even more on PubPeer. It seems, every paper she ever published is fake. Sometimes she loses patience and draws spectra by hand, i.e. when her student (and likely daughter!) Harmilan urgently needs a paper:

Harmilan Kaur, Manpreet Kaur, Renuka Aggarwal , Sucheta Sharma, Davinder Singh Nanocomposite of MgFe2O4 and Mn3O4 as Polyphenol Oxidase Mimic for Sensing of Polyphenols Biosensors (2022) doi: 10.3390/bios12060428 

Now, how do we know that Sharma buys papers from papermills and doesn’t rely on artisan forgers like Kaur?

Interestingly, Sharma previously retracted a fraudulent paper with Chinese fraudsters Xiangke Wang and Yubing Sun, plus the Pakistani maths plagiarist Tasawar Hayat. Read about them here:

Here is their common retraction:

Yubing Sun , Wencheng Song , Yang Liu , Tasawar Hayat , Ahmed Alsaedi , Yuejie Ai , Virender K. Sharma , Xiangke Wang Mutual effect of Cs(i) and Sr(ii) sorption on nano-talc investigated by EXAFS, modeling and theoretical calculations Environmental Science Nano (2019) doi: 10.1039/c8en01313f

The retraction notice appeared in April 2020:

“The Royal Society of Chemistry, with the agreement of the named authors, hereby wholly retracts this Environmental Science: Nano article due to concerns with the reliability of the data in the published article.

The EXAFS data in Fig. 3 are unreliable given that the three spectra presented in Fig. 3B have been duplicated in the region R(A) > 5.1.

Given the significance of the concerns about the validity of the data, the findings presented in this paper are no longer reliable.

Signed: Yubing Sun, Tasawar Hayat, Yuejie Ai, Virender K. Sharma and Xiangke Wang Date: 27th March 2020″

And here are some other interesting collaborations of Sharma, with a fellow Indian papermiller in USA, Rajender S Varma!

• Virender K Sharma , Radek Zboril , Rajender S Varma Ferrates: greener oxidants with multimodal action in water treatment technologies Accounts of Chemical Research (2015) doi: 10.1021/ar5004219

And while mentioning Varma, who was dismissed by the Palacky University of Olomouc in Czechia, here is Sharma acting as corresponding author with Varma’s close associate there, Radek Zboril:

• Aleš Panáček , Libor Kvítek , Robert Prucek , Milan Kolář , Renata Večeřová , Naděžda Pizúrová , Virender K. Sharma, Tat‘jana Nevěčná , Radek Zbořil Silver colloid nanoparticles: synthesis, characterization, and their antibacterial activity The Journal of Physical Chemistry B (2006) doi: 10.1021/jp063826h

There are more papers of Sharma’s with Varma and even more with Zboril, sometimes with both. In fact, Sharma used to be a Visiting Scientist in Olomouc 2013-2017.

More papermillers: Here is Sharma with the University of Cincinnati professor drunkenly named Dionysios Dionysiou (his PubPeer record here), a unique collaboration with scholars in China, Germany and Czechia:

• Stanisław Wacławek , Holger V Lutze , Virender K Sharma , Ruiyang Xiao , Dionysios D Dionysiou Revisit the alkaline activation of peroxydisulfate and peroxymonosulfate Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.coche.2022.100854

Here another Sharma-Dionysiou collaboration, this time with the King of Papermillers, Rafael Luque!

• Virender K. Sharma , Xin Yang , Leslie Cizmas , Thomas J. McDonald , Rafael Luque , Christie M. Sayes , Baoling Yuan , Dionysios D. Dionysiou Impact of metal ions, metal oxides, and nanoparticles on the formation of disinfection byproducts during chlorination Chemical Engineering Journal (2017) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2017.02.071

Isn’t it nice that Dr Sharma is in charge of environmental science and pollution clean-up? Isn’t your money well invested in grants to him?

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No work carried out in Sweden

Speaking about Rafael Luque.

He got lucky, the Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct (NPOF) dropped the investigation against him, because… well, because Luque convinced them that his papermilled forgeries were forged outside of Sweden.

The reason why I reported Luque to NPOF was because, while being sacked by his University of Cordoba in Spain, he managed to acquire a short-term paid affiliation at the Mid Sweden University (as a visiting professor from July 2022 to June 2023).

In that short time, Luque published together with fellow papermillers like Navid Rabiee, Sadegh Rostamnia, Esmail Doustkhah, Christophe Len and others these 8 fake papers which NPOF considered investigating:

1. Ahmad, A., Javed, M.S., Khan, 5., Almutairi, T.M., Mohammed, A.A.A., Luque, R. (2023). Green synthesized Ag decorated Ce02 nanoparticles: Efficient photocatalysts and potential antibacterial agents Chemosphere, doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.136841

2. Rabiee, N., Ahmadi, S., Akhavan, 0., and Luque, R. (2022). Silver and Gold Nanoparticles for Antimicrobial Purposes against Multi-Drug Resistance Bacteria. Materials doi: 10.3390/ma15051799
3. Asadi, Z., Dobaradaran, 5., Arfaeinia, H., Omidvar M., Farjadfard S., Foroutan R., Ramavandi B., Luque R. (2023). Photodegradation of ibuprofen laden-wastewater using sea-mud catalyst/H202 system: evaluation of sonication modes and energy consumption. Environ Sci Pollut Res doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-23253-9

4. Kargar, P.G., Len, C., Luque, R. (2022). Cu/cellulose-modified magnetite nanocomposites as a highly active and selective catalyst for ultrasound-promoted aqueous 0-arylation Ullmann and sp-sp2 Sonogashira cross-coupling reactions. Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy, doi: 10.1016/j.scp.2022.100672.

5. Mohammad, R.S., Rabiee, N., Mozafari, M., Verpoort, F., Voskressensky, L.G., and Luque, R. (2021). Metal—Organic Frameworks (MOF5) for Cancer Therapy. Materials doi: 10.3390/ma14237277
6. Chen L., Zhang L., Chen Z., Liu H., Luque R and Li Y. (2016). A covalent organic framework-based route to the in situ encapsulation of metal nanoparticies in N-rich hollow carbon sphere. Chem. Sci., doi: 10.1039/c6sc01659f 
7. Rostamnia, S., Doustkhah, E., Karirni, Z., Amini, S. and Luque, R.(2015). Surfactant-Exfoliated Highly Dispersive Pd-Supported Graphene Oxide Nanocomposite as a Catalyst for Aerobic Aqueous Oxidations of Alcohols. ChemCatChem, doi: 10.1002/cctc.201500126
8. Budarin, V.L., Clark, J.H., Luque, R., Macquarrie, D.J. and White, R.J. (2008). Palladium nanoparticles on polysaccharide-derived mesoporous materials and their catalytic performance in C—C coupling reactions. Green Chem., doi: 10.1039/b715508e

NPOF received this from Luque (fixed Google-translation):

“He states that he did not have a Swedish Forskningshuvudman (entity responsible for research) for any of the eight articles. […] He points out that no experiments or work have been carried out in Sweden, no Swedish affiliation is stated on the article and no acknowledgment either. He believes that all experiments has been done long before his visiting professorship at Mid Sweden University”

According to Luque, the experiments were done in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Indeed, he used on these papers his affiliation with University of Cordoba in Spain, and with Peoples Friendship University of Russia (Luque has officially a lab there, read here). But in reality, the experiments were done nowhere, it is all fake and fabricated by some papermills.

NPOF concluded:

“Rafael Luque has not listed Mid Sweden University as his affiliation on any of the eight the notified articles. The two articles that overlap in time with the guest professorship at Mittuniversitetet were published shortly after he began his guest professorship and the visiting professorship constituted only 30% of a full-time position. He’s had his main employment with the foreign Forskningshuvudman that he also indicated in the corresponding articles. He states that he did not carry out any part of the research at Mid Sweden University. The board considers that nothing has come to light that gives reasons to make another assessment. Against this combined background, the board considers that research was not carried out at Mid Sweden University but at a foreign research institution.
The articles are therefore not covered by the law’s scope of application according to section 3 of the law and shall therefore not be examined by the committee. The board therefore decides to reject the notification.”

I understand this, but will anyone kick the behinds of those at Mid Sweden University, for wasting rescources and public money on a papermilling fraudster?

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The publisher has corrected their mistake

Another notification was rejected by NPOF because the notifier was 3 months late and the paper passed the 10 year age deadline.

Such a pity, this is the paper, the issue was flagged in July 2023 and reported to NPOF immediatedly:

Ingeborg M M Van Leeuwen , Maureen Higgins , Johanna Campbell , Anna R McCarthy , Marijke C C Sachweh , Ana Marín Navarro , Sonia Laín Modulation of p53 C-terminal acetylation by mdm2, p14ARF, and cytoplasmic SirT2 Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2013) doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-12-0904

The last and correspondign author Sonia Lain is Professor of Molecular Cancer Pharmacology at the Microbiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. She reacted right away by posting this on PubPeer:

Pardon what? A “copy-paste mistake“? And Lain demands that her critics admit in writing that it is just that, a “mistake/erratum“? In any case, no correction was issued yet.

Despite raw data allegedly being publicly available, NPOF decided (translated):

“When the article was published on 1 April 2013 but was reported on 29 July 2023, the notification is based on facts that are older than 10 years.
The Board considers that that there are no special reasons for a review. The Board therefore decides to reject the notification.”

Another “copy-paste error” in Lain’s paper, this one is not too old:

Marcus J. G. W. Ladds , Ingeborg M. M. Van Leeuwen , Catherine J. Drummond , Su Chu , Alan R. Healy , Gergana Popova , Andrés Pastor Fernández , Tanzina Mollick , Suhas Darekar , Saikiran K. Sedimbi , Marta Nekulova , Marijke C. C. Sachweh , Johanna Campbell , Maureen Higgins , Chloe Tuck , Mihaela Popa , Mireia Mayoral Safont , Pascal Gelebart , Zinayida Fandalyuk , Alastair M. Thompson , Richard Svensson, Anna-Lena Gustavsson, Lars Johansson, Katarina Färnegårdh, Ulrika Yngve, Aljona Saleh, Martin Haraldsson, Agathe C. A. D’Hollander, Marcela Franco, Yan Zhao, Maria Håkansson, Björn Walse, Karin Larsson, Emma M. Peat, Vicent Pelechano, John Lunec, Borivoj Vojtesek, Mar Carmena, William C. Earnshaw, Anna R. McCarthy, Nicholas J. Westwood, Marie Arsenian-Henriksson, David P. Lane, Ravi Bhatia, Emmet McCormack, Sonia Laín A DHODH inhibitor increases p53 synthesis and enhances tumor cell killing by p53 degradation blockage Nature Communications (2018) doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-03441-3 

Same flow cytometry plots, different quantification numbers? Lain replied on Pubpeer in August 2023:

“This publisher error will be corrected by the editors of the journal shortly. I hope you can proceed with your reading ASAP.”

And in September 2023, she wrote this:

“The publisher has corrected their mistake”

Their mistake? Springer Nature forges figures of Swedish professors? A scandal! Because this is what the Publisher Correction from 18 August 2023 stated indeed:

“This Article contains an error in Fig. 6. The submitted and peer reviewed versions of this article contain distinct distributions of sub-G1 cells in Fig 6 d, however, one of those distributions was inadvertently duplicated during the production process. Additionally, one of the distributions in Fig 6 d was omitted during the production process.”

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A minor mistake of one author

You might recall the eternal German postdoc from Iran, Mostafa Jarahian. True, he left the German Cancer Research Centre DKFZ in Heidelberg ages ago, but keeps using this affiliation for purchased authorships on papermilled forgeries, as I reported in earlier Friday Shorts here. The affair was uncovered and reported to DKFZ by Alexander Magazinov, retractions ensued (read here).

And now Retraction Watch reported on the affair (no mention of Magazinov this time!) with the headline “Cancer researcher with nine retractions says he’ll take publisher to court“. Obviously Jarahian says many things he doesn’t mean, he certainly won’t pay a Swiss lawyer to sue Frontiers. Now, the actually interesting thing in that article is this email by his former boss at DKFZ which Jarahian shared with Retraction Watch, Martin R. Berger (apparently retired):

“As I understand the situation, the only allegation, which is correct, is that the article(s) under concern was (were) labelled with his old affiliation. On the other hand, there is some period after leaving an institution, during which it is normal to use the old affiliation, as the work originated and was carried out there. In addition, during the period in question, Dr. Jarahian did not have a new position / new employer. In this situation, he used his private email address, which clearly differs from official DKFZ email addresses.

Finally, the science of the article(s) is not being disputed. In addition, the co-authors have not been involved in any accusation regarding science integrity. Therefore, it does not seem appropriate, to harm all authors because of a minor mistake of one author. If you deem it necessary to establish justice in this regard, I suggest that you allow Dr. Jarahian to write a short erratum.

If you can follow this suggestion, you would solve the underlying problem with distinction and grace and avoid the punishment of many co-authors. In the case, in which a PhD is pending on a publication, this would seem clearly unfair and exaggerated.“

This is wrong on many levels, e.g., there is no science to be disputed, Jarahian bought his papers from a Latvia-based russian papermill. But if Berger insists that DKFZ is the papermill, so be it. It’s not like they are foreign to predatory businesses there.

Magazinov notified DKFZ about Berger’s twisted email. He also informed DKFZ about this interesting paper where all authors are in Pakistan except Berger:

Asim Pervaiz , Nadia Naseem , Talha Saleem , Syed Mohsin Raza , Iqra Shaukat , Kinzah Kanwal , Osheen Sajjad , Sana Iqbal , Faiza Shams , Bushra Ijaz , Martin R. Berger Anticancer genes (NOXA, PAR-4, TRAIL) are de-regulated in breast cancer patients and can be targeted by using a ribosomal inactivating plant protein (riproximin) Molecular Biology Reports (2023) doi: 10.1007/s11033-023-08477-3 

Unlike the eternal DKFZ member Jarahian, Berger declared as his only affiliation “Immundiagnostik Comp, Bensheim, Germany”, and this:

“MRB facilitated the microarray experiments and also supervised the drafting/editing of the manuscript.”

How did he do all that? Via Zoom?

In fact, it seems in the last years the DKFZ researcher Berger went truly international: many of his recent papers are from Asia, with him sometimes being the only white man. Here is one of several recent studies Berger co-authored with Jarahian (and people from Turkey and Saudi Arabia):

Mostafa Jarahian , Faroogh Marofi , Marwah Suliman Maashi , Mahnaz Ghaebi , Abdolrahman Khezri , Martin R. Berger Re-Expression of Poly/Oligo-Sialylated Adhesion Molecules on the Surface of Tumor Cells Disrupts Their Interaction with Immune-Effector Cells and Contributes to Pathophysiological Immune Escape Cancers (2021) doi: 10.3390/cancers13205203

“Therefore, sialic acid has been repeatedly proposed as a possible therapeutic target against tumors [11,20,24,25].”

[20] Fossella, F.; McCann, J.; Tolcher, A.; Xie, H.; Hwang, L.L.; Carr, C.; Berg, K.; Fram, R. Phase II trial of BB-10901 (huN901-DM1) given weekly for four consecutive weeks every 6 weeks in patients with relapsed SCLC and CD56-positive small cell carcinoma. J. Clin. Oncol. 2005, 23 (Suppl. 16), 7159.

Only a DKFZ professor can understand how this citation fits to this specific claim about sialic acid. This oncology paper has almost 500 citations, many on Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders.

Here some Bulgarians published an Asian classic about curcumin (!), and Berger is on board (credited for “Conceptualization” and “writing—review and editing“:

Antonios G. X. Trochopoulos , Yana Ilieva , Alexander D. Kroumov , Lyudmila L. Dimitrova , Ivanka Pencheva-El Tibi , Stanislav Philipov , Martin R. Berger , Hristo M. Najdenski , Krassimira Yoncheva , Spiro M. Konstantinov , Maya M. Zaharieva Micellar Curcumin Substantially Increases the Antineoplastic Activity of the Alkylphosphocholine Erufosine against TWIST1 Positive Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma Cell Lines Pharmaceutics (2022) doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics14122688 

An all-Turkish paper with Berger who is credited with providing “Resources“:

Ezgi Avsar Abdik , Hüseyin Abdik , Duygu Turan , Fikrettin Sahin , Martin R. Berger , Ferda Kaleagasioglu Dual Akt and Bcl-2 inhibition induces cell-type specific modulation of apoptotic and autophagic signaling in castration resistant prostate cancer cell lines Molecular Biology Reports (2021) doi: 10.1007/s11033-021-06786-z

This same Fikrettin Sahin published this Kasikci et al 2020 forgery, pity Berger was not on board:

Maybe DKFZ is a papermill after all?

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Storming in and shouting ‘you suck’

Francesca Gino is a fallen star psychologist who was caught with massive fraud in her papers on the topic of honesty, and is therefore now suing her employer, the Harvard University, and the three sleuths of Data Colada. Zoé Ziani, another whistleblower in the Gino case who collaborated with Data Colada and who featured in the New Yorker long read “L’affaire Ariely/Gino”, tells her story in a blog post from 23 October 2023:

“I started having doubts about one of Francesca Gino’s paper (Casciaro, Gino, and Kouchaki, “The Contaminating Effect of Building Instrumental Ties: How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty”, ASQ, 2014; hereafter abbreviated as “CGK 2014” ) during my PhD. At the time, I was working on the topic of networking behaviors, and this paper is a cornerstone of the literature. […] I started suspecting that part of the evidence presented in CGK 2014 was not just p-hacked but based on fabricated data.”

Ziani’s doctoral advisor pressured her to continue with research based on Gino’s paper, and dismissed her concerns. Ziani writes she decided to “distance myself from this supervisor.“

“I therefore decided to write a 10-page criticism of the paper and to include it in the first chapter of my dissertation. This criticism summarized my argument against CGK 2014, explained why I chose not to rely on this paper in my research, and justified my choice of studying different psychological underpinnings of networking discomfort. This criticism, again, only focused on the theoretical and methodological issues in CGK 2014.”

It didn’t go down well.

“The three members of my committee (who oversaw the content of my dissertation) were very upset by this criticism. They never engaged with the content: Instead, they repeatedly suggested that a scientific criticism of a published paper had no place in a dissertation. After many frustrating exchanges, I decided to write a long letter explaining why I thought it was important to document the issues I had discovered in CGK 2014. This letter stressed that I was not criticizing the authors, only the article, and encouraged the members of my committee to highlight anything in my criticism that they viewed as inaccurate, insufficiently precise, or unfair.

The three committee members never replied to this letter. Given this lack of response, I decided to keep the criticism in the dissertation draft that was shared with them before my defense. On the day of the defense, external committee members called the criticism “unusual,” “unnecessary,” and argued that since I had not run a replication of the study, I could not criticize it. Only one committee member found it “brave and interesting.”

After the defense, two members of the committee made it clear they would not sign off on my dissertation until I removed all traces of my criticism of CGK 2014. Neither commented on the content of my criticism. Instead, one committee member implied that a criticism is fundamentally incompatible with the professional norms of academic research. She wrote that “academic research is a like a conversation at a cocktail party”, and that my criticism was akin to me “storming in and shouting ‘you suck’ when you should be saying ‘I hear where you’re coming from but have you considered X’”. The other committee member called my criticism “inflammatory,” and lambasted me for adopting what he called a “self-righteous posture” that was “not appropriate.”

At this point, the only option left for me was to cave.”

After the graduation, Ziani uploaded her original thesis, and with this disclaimer:

I hope this inspires many other PhD graduates to stand up to research fraud and faculty censorship.

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Scholarly Publishing

5 Stages of Grief

The German-born Nobel Prize Laureate and Stanford professor of neuroscience Thomas Südhof is going through the famous 5 Stages of Grief for his PNAS paper as it moves on towards retraction.

This is the paper, which soon after its publication had its raw data determined as most likely falsified, by Maarten van Kampen and other PubPeer commenters:

Pei-Yi Lin, Lulu Y. Chen, Peng Zhou, Sung-Jin Lee , Justin H. Trotter, Thomas C. Südhof Neurexin-2 restricts synapse numbers and restrains the presynaptic release probability by an alternative splicing-dependent mechanism Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023) doi: 10.1073/pnas.2300363120

It seems, Südhof’s postdoc and first author Pei-Yi Lin is to blame, she even posted on PubPeer fabricated replacement “raw data” when challenged. But the Nobelist, instead of asking for retraction and institutional investigation straight away, went through all the 5 classic stages. He started with Denial, pushing for some very unconvincing and unlikely explanations, proceeded to Anger (at me and Maarten), and to Bargaining (by offering to have his subordinate lab member re-analyse the data). Südhof’s last PubPeer post showed sadness (even if not outright Depression):

“Overall, we concur that there are major inconsistencies with the source data of this paper compared to the existing raw data, which we are puzzled by. […] Our current preliminary conclusion thus is that, consistent with some of the comments, the source data of this paper contain major flaws that cannot be explained by copy-paste mistakes as I had mistakenly surmised earlier but must have another origin.“

I believe Südhof has by now reached the final stage of Acceptance, and is negotiating the retraction notice with the journal. Meanwhile, PNAS published an editorial Expression of Concern on 17 October 2023:

PNAS is publishing an Editorial Expression of Concern regarding the following article: “Neurexin-2 restricts synapse numbers and restrains the presynaptic release probability by an alternative splicing-dependent mechanism,” by Pei-Yi Lin, Lulu Y. Chen, Peng Zhou, Sung-Jin Lee, Justin H. Trotter, and Thomas C. Südhof, which was first published March 24, 2023; 10.1073/pnas.2300363120 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.120, e2300363120). The editors note that significant concerns have been raised about the validity of some of the data reported in the article. We will update readers as more information becomes available.

May R. Berenbaum

Editor-in-Chief

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Throwing enough mud

Also Valerie Weaver, director of the Center for Bioengineering and Tissue Regeneration at the University of California San Francisco, got an expression of concern. The whole world has conspired against her!

Julie C. Friedland , Johnathon N. Lakins , Marcelo G. Kazanietz, Jonathan Chernoff, David Boettiger, Valerie M. Weaver α6β4 integrin activates Rac-dependent p21-activated kinase 1 to drive NF-κB-dependent resistance to apoptosis in 3D mammary acini Journal of Cell Science (2007) doi: 10.1242/jcs.03484

Unforgotten will be Weaver’s long rant in this PubPeer thread, directed at Elisabeth Bik, excerpt:

“I have been pestered by emails from a journalist claiming to work with you accusing me and my group of committing fraud – other comments by anonymous individuals have similarly started piling on I get your intent to troll papers to “search for” evidence of unethical activity However much of your efforts fail to identify such activities and actually seriously hurt those you go after […]
Obviously if you and your teams objective is to tarnish a persons reputation then throwing enough mud even if not justified will work
That is my objection
Admittedly out of close to 200 publications there are a few minor errors you have identified – unintentional I maintain – that while they don’t have any impact upon the findings either have been or will shortly be addressed
Does that mean I’m a terrible scientist? Or as I’ve been accused anonymously by others that I’m unethical or fraudulent – absolutely not“

On 19 October 2023, the journal published this Expression of Concern:

“There are potential issues in J. Cell Sci. (2007) 120, 3700-3712 (doi:10.1242/jcs.03484).

A duplication of the control blots in Figs 2A and 4A and an area of possible overlap between the PID/Control panel in Fig. 6C and the NFκB p65/Control panel in Fig. S3A were highlighted to us via the PubPeer website.

The authors have been able to retrieve the original blots for Figs 2A and 4A, showing that they were run on the same gel with a single shared control lane, which is shown in both figures.

However, given the time that has passed, and despite searching for the original images, the original data for Fig. 6 and Fig. S3 could not be found. Without the original data for Fig. 6 and Fig. S3 it is difficult to determine how the issues arose, so the journal is publishing this note to make readers aware of the…

You do not currently have access to this content.”

The publisher Company of Biologists offers me a “Pay-Per-View Access $30.00”. I’ll pass.

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A common practice at the time

The learned society FASEB and their so-called journal once again proved that they are worse than Chinese papermills. Yet another totally fraudulent paper got proudly corrected. One could call FASEB’s business model white-collar white people’s crime.

This paper’s dishonest co-author Leo Otterbein (now Harvard professor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) is a mentee of the dishonest Weill Cornell ex-dean Augustine MK Choi. The dishonest first author is the Chair of School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University in Canada named Michael Ott.

Michael C. Ott , Jeffrey R. Scott , Aurelia Bihari , Amit Badhwar , Leo E. Otterbein, Daryl K. Gray , Kenneth A. Harris , Richard F. Potter Inhalation of carbon monoxide prevents liver injury and inflammation following hind limb ischemia/reperfusion The FASEB Journal (2005)
doi: 10.1096/fj.04-2514fje 

As you see, Figure 3A was forged in Photoshop by a sociopath. In September 2020, Ott posted this on PubPeer:

“Those who posted such ridiculous claims above have no basis for their accusations. Nor do they provide any information other than doctored images above which do not represent the images published. See comments below from the editor of FASEB. After review there is no substance to the allegations.

Dr. Ott,

The FASEB Journal has completed its analysis. We obtained from our files the original submitted manuscript and determined that the version of Fig. 3A used as the basis for the allegation was itself not manipulated. Moreover, the allegation of similar or identical background areas and gel lanes was not confirmed in our analysis.

The FASEB Journal thanks you for your cooperation and now considers this matter closed.

Sincerely,

Thoru Pederson, Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief”

Ott then berated his PubPeer critics that it is misconduct to adjust “gradient, exposure and gray scale” in order to highlight the falsifications in his research data. Yes, Ott is not smart, but he compensates by bullying, apparently a typical Canadian professor of medicine.

Ott also kept accusing his critics of “slander” and “lack of transparency” for “not discussing how you have changed the image, and nor described the settings used to generate such analysis“, while insisting that “the Editor and publisher has performed independent forensic analysis and determined that no alteration was made on the original.”

Now, in the Erratum, Ott admitted to have lied. Of course also the then Editor-in-Chief Thoru Pederson, his current successor Loren E. Wold, and the rest of FASEB J team eventually admitted to be full of shit, with this Erratum from 24 October 2023 (colour highlight mine):

“In response to an inquiry, analyses of Figure 3A undertaken by FASEB found that the images were of sufficient resolution to meet the standards for publication and peer review at the time the manuscript was published. The authors state they no longer have original image or higher-resolution image files, given the time elapsed since publication; the qualitative image was attained using a flatbed scanner and cleaned for publication, which was a common practice at the time; and the figure is representative and does not affect the detailed data or conclusions of the article.

To clarify this for readers, a corrected legend for Figure 3 is provided as follows:

FIGURE 3. A trend toward increased heme oxygenase (HO-1) protein was measured in liver samples following hind limb I/R. A) A representative Western blot of HO-1 expression. The qualitative image shown here was attained using a flatbed scanner and cleaned for publication; it is representative and does not affect the detailed data provided in Panel B or the conclusions of the article. B) Average relative optical density measured from Western blots. Interestingly, inhalation of 250 ppm CO or application of CrMP resulted in a significant decrease in protein expression compared with I/R Values are presented as means ± SE. *P < 0.05 compared with I/R.”

They not only wrote this criminally insane trash with a straight face, FASEB are even proud of it and sent their editorial manager named Mariah MR Carey to inform Clare Francis about their “clarifying correction“.

Oh, and a permanent fixture on FASEB J board are these Associate Editors: the infamous cheaters Charles Serhan (read here) and C Ronald Kahn. Which kind of explains things?

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Science Breakthroughs

A Groundbreaking Solution

Cancer has been finally cured. This time, for sure. I mean, it’s in Nature!

Free University of Brussels issued a very modestly and responsibly worded press release, titled:

“Cancer Breakthrough: A Groundbreaking Solution to Metastasis & Chemotherapy Resistance”

“In a study published in prestigious journal Nature, researchers led by Pr Cédric Blanpain – WEL Research Institute investigator, director of the Stem Cells and Cancer Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine and professor at the Free University of Brussels showed that Netrin- 1, a molecule expressed by tumor cells in different types of cancers, stimulates the Epithelial-Mesenchymal transition (EMT) in tumor cells and a drug targeting Netrin-1 blocks EMT in cancer. […]

In collaboration with NETRIS Pharma which has developed a therapeutic antibody specifically blocking the interaction between Netrin-1 and its receptor UNC5B, the ULB researchers have shown that the administration of the therapeutic antibody leads to a reduction in tumor formation but also blocks EMT in these tumors, which reduces their ability to give rise to metastases and sensitizes the tumor cells to chemotherapy. […]

The researchers and clinicians administered the anti-Netrin antibody to patients in clinical trials in France. These studies showed that the administration of the therapeutic antibody was well tolerated and showed no toxicity. More importantly, they showed on biopsies from the tumors taken before and after administration of the drug, that this therapy decreased EMT in patients with endometrial cancers.

“This is a major world premiere, we have discovered a new drug that can reduce EMT, decrease metastasis, and stimulate the response to chemotherapy in preclinical models. […] comments Professor Cédric Blanpain, the leader of this project.”

This is the paper:

Philippe A. Cassier, Raul Navaridas, Melanie Bellina, Nicolas Rama, Benjamin Ducarouge, Hector Hernandez-Vargas, Jean-Pierre Delord, Justine Lengrand, Andrea Paradisi, Laurent Fattet, Gwenaële Garin, Hanane Gheit, Cecile Dalban, Ievgenia Pastushenko, David Neves, Remy Jelin, Nicolas Gadot, Nicolas Braissand, Sophie Léon, Cyril Degletagne, Xavier Matias-Guiu, Mojgan Devouassoux-Shisheboran, Eliane Mery-Lamarche, Justine Allard, Egor Zindy, Christine Decaestecker, Isabelle Salmon, David Perol, Xavi Dolcet, Isabelle Ray-Coquard, Cédric Blanpain, Agnès Bernet and Patrick Mehlen, “Netrin-1 blockade inhibits tumour growth and EMT features in endometrial cancer” Nature (2023) DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06367-z

Several authors are employees, shareholders, or paid consultants of Netris Pharma. The last author, director of Research Cancer Center of Lyon Patrick Mehlen, is the company’s co-founder and CEO. The penultimate author and professor at University Claude Bernard Lyon I, Agnès Bernet, is the company’s other co-founder and CSO. “The remaining authors declare no competing interests“, including Cedric Blanpain despite his sitting on Netris advisory board.

From Mehlen’s past attempts to cure cancer and other diseases as recorded on PubPeer, here again with Netrin-1:

Xiaoling Tang , Sung-Wuk Jang , Masashi Okada , Chi-Bun Chan , Yue Feng , Yu Liu , Shi-Wen Luo , Yan Hong , Nicolas Rama , Wen-Cheng Xiong , Patrick Mehlen , Keqiang Ye Netrin-1 mediates neuronal survival through PIKE-L interaction with the dependence receptor UNC5B Nature Cell Biology (2008) doi: 10.1038/ncb1732

In the following case, Mehlen explained on PubPeer that this peculiar method of digital gel splicing was “not forbidden in the author guidelines and a common use“. He also warned that the results have “been confirmed in serveral other pathological contexts” in two more publications from his own lab.

Servane Tauszig-Delamasure , Li-Ying Yu , Jorge Ruben Cabrera , Jimena Bouzas-Rodriguez , Catherine Mermet-Bouvier , Catherine Guix , Marie-Claire Bordeaux , Urmas Arumae , Patrick Mehlen The TrkC receptor induces apoptosis when the dependence receptor notion meets the neurotrophin paradigm Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2007) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0701243104 

Another example of inappropriate splicing, and a duplicated image, by Mehlen & Bernet:

Céline Guenebeaud , David Goldschneider , Marie Castets , Catherine Guix , Guillaume Chazot , Céline Delloye-Bourgeois , Avital Eisenberg-Lerner , Galit Shohat , Mingjie Zhang , Vincent Laudet , Adi Kimchi , Agnès Bernet , Patrick Mehlen The dependence receptor UNC5H2/B triggers apoptosis via PP2A-mediated dephosphorylation of DAP kinase Molecular Cell (2010) doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2010.11.021 

8 years ago, in 2015, Mehlen announced on PubPeer:

“there is indeed a problem with Fig.5C. It seems that there is twice the same DAPI representative image. We will inform the Journal that there is mistake that has occurred when the initial figure was prepared. It does not change the quantification made. Thanks for noticing this.”

But then he was distracted by the need to cure cancer, and forgot to publish the promised correction.

Maybe this needs some editorial action:

Stéphanie Simon , Valeriya Dimitrova , Benjamin Gibert , Sophie Virot , Nicole Mounier , Mathieu Nivon , Carole Kretz-Remy , Véronique Corset , Patrick Mehlen , André-Patrick Arrigo Analysis of the dominant effects mediated by wild type or R120G mutant of αB-crystallin (HspB5) towards Hsp27 (HspB1) PLoS ONE (2013) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0070545

Mehlen curing cancer with Spanish colleagues:

Angela R. Garcia-Rendueles , Miguel Chenlo , Fernando Oroz-Gonjar , Antonia Solomou , Anisha Mistry , Sayka Barry , Carles Gaston-Massuet , Montserrat Garcia-Lavandeira , Sihara Perez-Romero , Maria Suarez-Fariña , Alberto Pradilla-Dieste , Carlos Dieguez , Patrick Mehlen, Márta Korbonits, Clara V. Alvarez RET signalling provides tumorigenic mechanism and tissue specificity for AIP-related somatotrophinomas Oncogene (2021) doi: 10.1038/s41388-021-02009-8 

Oh, and remember the Schneider Rule of following research fraudsters around? You will meet Mehlen if you follow the fallen Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and his unhinged protege Elke Stein – over two decades ago, again with Netrin-1 and again in Nature!

Christelle Forcet , Elke Stein , Laurent Pays , Véronique Corset , Fabien Llambi , Marc Tessier-Lavigne , Patrick Mehlen Netrin-1-mediated axon outgrowth requires deleted in colorectal cancer-dependent MAPK activation Nature (2002) doi: 10.1038/nature748 

The study relied on references to 3 papers by Tessier-Lavigne and Stein. All have been recently retracted for fraud.

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News in Brief

• HHS-ORI issued another misconduct finding: “ORI found that Lara S. Hwa, Ph.D., who is an Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, BU, and formerly was a Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Medicine, UNC-CH, engaged in research misconduct in research supported by U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) funds […] ORI found that Respondent engaged in research misconduct by knowingly or recklessly falsifying and/or fabricating data, methods, results, and conclusions in animal models of alcohol use disorders. Specifically, Respondent falsified and/or fabricated experimental timelines, group conditions, sex of animal subjects, mouse strains, and behavioral response data in the following two (2) published papers and two (2) PHS grant applications“. The papers are Hwa et al 2019 and Hwa et al 2020, the latter was retracted in 2020. Last author on both is Hwa’s postdoctoral advisor, UNC professor Thomas L Kash.
• Canadian whistleblower Nancy Olivieri was awarded the 2023 John Maddox Prize: “In 1996, Olivieri was working at the SickKids Hospital in Toronto, acting as lead investigator in a clinical trial of deferiprone. Deferiprone is a medicine used to remove excess iron from the body in patients with thalassaemia major. She began to suspect the drug was causing serious adverse events, which Apotex, the drug manufacturer and a funder of the trial, denied. When Olivieri indicated she intended to inform participants of her concerns, Apotex terminated the trials and invoked a confidentiality agreement in the research contract and threatened legal action if she made the findings public. Undeterred, Olivieri shared her results at a scientific meeting and submitted them for publication.  Through her actions, Olivieri championed the importance of patient safety. In 2000 Olivieri was fired from her position at SickKids hospital and charged with professional misconduct, despite the fact it was revealed that the hospital had received a large donation from Apotex. From 2000 to 2009 Olivieri worked at the University Hospital Network (UHN), but she was subsequently replaced with a clinician supported by Apotex. “ Olivieri also blew the whistle on the Motherisk fraud by Gideon Koren, who was whitewashed by UHN and who personally retaliated against Olivieri. Read about this affair here:

• The journal eLife sacked their Editor-in-Chief Mike Eisen, after he sparked a controversy with a post on X/Twitter about Gaza. This was announced in Science on 23 October 2023, a Statement of the eLife Board of Directors followed a day later: “Mike has been given clear feedback from the board that his approach to leadership, communication and social media has at key times been detrimental to the cohesion of the community we are trying to build and hence to eLife’s mission. It is against this background that a further incidence of this behaviour has contributed to the board’s decision.” The UC Berkeley professor indeed went badly wrong in some of his Twitter campaigns, e.g. his support for the psychopathic liar, bully, racist and fraudster, BethAnn McLaughlin:

• In Sweden, the newspaper Aftonbladet reports (Google-translated): “Researcher Tobias Hübinette was forced to take sick leave earlier this year after systematic harassment. The right-wing radical activist Christian Peterson – with a background in Nazi NMR – had enrolled in Hübinette’s course Race and Whiteness in Sweden . During the semester, Hübinette was then bombarded with messages and phone calls. His emails were subpoenaed and published on Twitter/X, as were racist posts insinuating Hübinette’s Asian origins. […] Last week, the message came from Karlstad University’s disciplinary board – Christian Peterson may remain on the course. The disciplinary board felt that there was a lack of legal support for suspending him, despite the fact that he had subjected both teachers and other students to harassment.”

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