Schneider Shorts 12.01.2024- White Man’s Burden

Schneider Shorts of 12 January 2024 – a white victim of Indian fraud, whom Royal Society of Chemistry really trusts, with image analysis software expertly applied, a cold fusion breakthrough, retractions for killer doctors, and where US universities went wrong.

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Science Elites

I have faith in Gary’s work

In USA, the predictable thing happened with Gary Dunbar. I previously wrote about his retractions and his earlier attempts to force his lab members to publicly apologise and take all blame upon themselves. Dunbar has a serious PubPeer record now.

Well, now US media paints Dunbar as a white knight of research integrity, a white American man who became an innocent yet heroic victim of fraud by brown foreigners. The Transmitter brought this story on 9 January 2024:

“Due diligence: Gary Dunbar at Central Michigan University is working to correct or retract four additional articles with image duplications. […]

Dunbar is a neuroscientist at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant. He also served, from 2008 to 2022, as executive director of the Field Neurosciences Institute at Ascension St. Mary’s Hospital in nearby Saginaw, according to tax records.

In 2015, the institute hired neuroscientist Panchanan Maiti to run a lab focusing on neurodegenerative conditions. […]

Over the next six years, the two researchers published 24 papers together. Many of them focused on whether nutraceuticals, such as those derived from turmeric or Michigan’s abundant tart cherries, could ward off symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in a mouse model.

But after questions were raised, starting in 2021, about duplicate images or figures in at least nine of those papers, the university launched an investigation, which has resulted in two retractions and three corrections so far, with more likely to come.

“To be charitable, Dr. Maiti was meticulous in producing images but not in documenting them,” Dunbar wrote in an August 2022 email to David Weindorf, the university’s vice president for research and innovation.

The lack of meticulousness was not limited to Maiti’s work, however.

Three former Ph.D. students at Central Michigan University — Zackary Bowers, Leela Paladugu and Sarah Peruzzaro — claimed responsibility for errors in images in three articles they co-authored with Maiti and Dunbar, according to comments on the post-publication review site PubPeer.”

White man’s burden – here was Dunbar trying to cure Alzheimer’s with curcumin, but some Indian spoiled everything, and even incited Dunbar’s white trainees to fraud. Tsk tsk. Here is an example of a corrected paper:

Panchanan Maiti, Sarah Peruzzaro , Nivya Kolli , Melissa Andrews , Abeer Al‐Gharaibeh , Julien Rossignol , Gary L. Dunbar Transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells overexpressing interleukin-10 induces autophagy response and promotes neuroprotection in a rat model of TBI Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine (2019) doi: 10.1111/jcmm.14396

The article then busies with narrating of Maiti’s general shiftyness. Dunbar was heroically investigating himself:

“He began trying to determine which articles still held up and would require only corrections, and which articles had issues so significant that they would need to be withdrawn.
At times, he seemed overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task and told Weindorf that he had begun using commercial image-duplication software to check all of their collaborative work for duplicates.”

And look, poor Professor Dunbar was (mildly) sanctioned because of Maiti:

“The university’s investigation concluded in 2022 that Dunbar did not knowingly commit scientific misconduct, and Maiti accepted full responsibility for the image issues. University officials nevertheless chastised Dunbar for failing to perform his due diligence in reviewing the data and putting his name on the articles.

“The intersection here of misfortune, mistake, and purposeful misconduct does not lend itself to confidence and you and your colleagues should increase your efforts at vigilance and the high standards of accuracy and data integrity,” wrote Dennis Armistead, executive director of faculty personnel services, in a letter addressed to Dunbar dated 19 January 2022. […]

The change in leadership at the institute is unrelated to the misconduct saga, says Dunbar’s collaborator Julien Rossignol, a Central Michigan University professor who co-authored three of the corrected papers and another two flagged by PubPeer. […}

Joseph Larkin, professor of chemistry at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, sent Dunbar boron-based compounds to evaluate in an Alzheimer’s mouse model for one study and says he is eager to have the flawed parts of the study repeated. “I have faith in Gary [Dunbar]’s work, and this should not negatively reflect on him,” Larkin says.”

By the way, no Maiti to blame here:

Soumyabrata Banerjee , Biswajit Mukherjee, Mrinal K. Poddar , Gary L. Dunbar Carnosine improves aging‐induced cognitive impairment and brain regional neurodegeneration in relation to the neuropathological alterations in the secondary structure of amyloid beta (Aβ) Journal of Neurochemistry (2021) doi: 10.1111/jnc.15357 

Dunbar previously had to retract a fraudulent paper he already “fixed” with a correction, and those are his current plans:

“According to emails obtained by The Transmitter, Dunbar has submitted additional corrections — one for a 2021 study in Antioxidants and another for a 2016 paper in Histochemistry and Cell Biology. He has also submitted corrections for two studies published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences — one in 2020 and the other in 2021 — both of which he hopes will not have to be withdrawn, according to emails. […]
“The lag time might actually be to our advantage,” Dunbar wrote in an October 2023 email to Weindorf, “as it is giving us time to start redoing these studies and, if given enough time, we could provide [the publisher] with extensive revisions, rather than having them retracted.””

Yes, children, Uncle Gary is the good guy and the real victim here.

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Scholarly Publishing

A natural next step

Holden Thorp, the Editor-in-Chief of the elite journal Science, is truly the master of virtue signalling. He achieves success where most other editors fail: cover up fraud and prevent retractions until the pressure gets too high is something many achieve, but only Thorp managed to become for exactly this an admired hero of research integrity.

So here is his new editorial, from 4 January 2024:

“In recent years, the research community has become increasingly concerned with issues involving the manipulation of images in scientific papers. Some of these alterations—involving images from experimental techniques such as microscopy, flow cytometry, and western blots—are inadvertent and may not change the conclusions of papers. But in rare cases, some are done deliberately to mislead readers. Image sleuths who can detect these alterations, like the scientific integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik, have risen to prominence, as has the website PubPeer, where many of the detected flaws are posted. High-profile incidents, such as one involving the laboratory of former Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, have eroded public confidence in science and harmed careers of investigators who missed doctored images coming from their own laboratories. To address these problems, in 2024, the Science family of journals is adopting the use of Proofig, an artificial intelligence (AI)–powered image-analysis tool, to detect altered images across all six of the journals. […]

If image integrity concerns are raised about a paper that a Science journal already published, we will use Proofig to carefully examine the suspicious images, which will inform subsequent actions (e.g., correction or retraction).”

You can read about Proofig, its owner Dror Kolodkin-Gal, his wife Ilana Kolodkin-Gal, and their attitude towards basic research ethics here:

Proofig’s success is due to its main weakness being its main selling point. By using Proofig, editors reassure themselves that there is no image manipulation in their journals’ published papers. They eagerly pay good money to buy themselves a good conscience. Thorp also openly announced that he will never again believe Bik’s or even his own lying eyes, only Proofig’s AI:

“Prior to the pilot phase, Science had been conducting “human-eye” image checks on a portion of papers, so Proofig is a natural next step. This tool will enhance Science’s review process and reduce the potential for human error because it captures many more alterations.”

Well, here is something freshly posted on PubPeer (and reported by me to Science), for Holden to try his Proofig on (which most likely won’t find anything because it’s an intra-image duplication):

Gabriela E Oprea , Sandra Krober , Michelle L McWhorter , Wilfried Rossoll , Stefan Muller , Michael Krawczak , Gary J Bassell , Christine E Beattie , Brunhilde Wirth Plastin 3 is a protective modifier of autosomal recessive spinal muscular atrophy Science (2008) doi: 10.1126/science.1155085  

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As it happens, I wrote about the German last author Brunhilde Wirth before. I can’t tell you more because a certain genetics professor sued her University of Cologne for daring to investigate her over bullying and harassing her PhD students. Read earlier Friday Shorts, and remember: bullying always leads to bad science. This is not for Holden, but for his colleagues at an even more problematic journal, another one from the cosy Wirth lab:

Yvonne Hoffmann, Brunhilde Wirth hnRNP-G promotes exon 7 inclusion of survival motor neuron (SMN) via direct interaction with Htra2-beta1 Human Molecular Genetics (2002) doi: 10.1093/hmg/11.17.2037 

The Ombudsman of the University of Cologne replied to me and announced to investigate both papers. From Wirth came this out-of-office reply:

“I will be unavailable for an uncertain time due to major surgeries and rehabilitation.“

Thorp did not reply to me at all. He talks to Proofig only, his new mirror on the wall telling him who’s the fairest one of all.

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An independent expert has viewed

A correction for the sacked papermiller Rafael Luque, because the Royal Society of Chemistry decided that he is a trustworthy honest hard-working researcher and it is his critics who are a bunch of lying frauds.

Abolfazl Ziarati , Alireza Badiei, Rafael Luque , Weiyi Ouyang Designer hydrogenated wrinkled yolk@shell TiO₂ architectures towards advanced visible light photocatalysts for selective alcohol oxidation Journal of Materials Chemistry A (2018) doi: 10.1039/c8ta02012d 

The journal issued this Correction on 29 November 2023:

“The authors regret that in the original Fig. 2 of this article, it appeared as though there was a partial overlap between 2b and 2c. This occurred as two samples were mixed prior to measurements, and different sections were selected during high resolution SEM analysis to showcase two distinct structures, which resulted in partial overlap in the images. […]

An independent expert has viewed the original and new images and has concluded that they are consistent with the discussions and conclusions presented.

The Royal Society of Chemistry apologises for these errors and any consequent inconvenience to authors and readers.”

Yes, they did say that there is nothing wrong with the images, but replace the duplicated ones nevertheless. The explanation is utter nonsense, as explained on PubPeer. Which suggests that Luque’s trusty papermills started to provide not just editors and reviewers to wave through their produce, but also “independent experts” in case trouble arises.

Of course there is more fraud in this paper.

Endorsed by the Royal Society of Chemistry and their “independent expert”. And by this journal’s incredible Editor-in-Chief Anders Hagfeldt, Rector of the University of Uppsala in Sweden, and himself a co-author of problematic papers with known papermillers.

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The allegations are not scientific fraud

Case closed also at another journal: Shock, which is run by the Queen Mary University London professor Chris Thiemermann, the dethroned University of Messina rector Salvatore Cuzzocrea, and their mafia. Read here:

So their decision is not surprising, but their stupidity and their idiotic explanations to educate others is a bit unexpected:

Salvatore Cuzzocrea, Prabal K. Chatterjee, Emanuela Mazzon, Laura Dugo , Angela De Sarro , Fons A. J. Van De Loo , Achille P. Caputi, Christoph Thiemermann Role of Induced Nitric Oxide in the Initiation of the Inflammatory Response After Postischemic Injury Shock (2002) doi: 10.1097/00024382-200208000-00014 

You can also read about Thiemermann’s first author, his former mentee Cuzzocrea (and his fellow Messina cheater, Achille Caputi) in this article:

On 9 January 2024, the pseudonymous Aneurus received this reply:

“Dear Dr. Inconstans:

Allegation of scientific fraud in manuscript:

Role of Induced Nitric Oxide in the Initiation of the Inflammatory Response After Postischemic Injury, Shock 2002. doi: 10.1097/00024382-200208000-00014 issn: 1073-2322 pubmed: 12166782

(https://pubpeer.com/publications/4DE5E79FE05A8AC807E3A4ED1D01A9)

Figure 6: P-selectin staining in different mice genotypes. Micrographs 6c and 6d overlap (boxes of same colors) with micrographs 9c and 9d of this same article, where the immunostaining is supposed to be for PAR.

These allegations were fully investigated including using ImageTwin. The figures in the original paper were also reviewed in conjunction with the findings in the paper.

1)    Figure 6c and 9c overlap

Response: The sections are from the same animal and the same portion of the ileum. In Figure 6c the section was stained for P-selectin while in Figure 9C the section was stained for PAR.

2)    Figure 6d and 9d overlap

Response: The sections are from the same animal and the same portion of the ileum. In Figure 6c the section was stained for P-selectin while in Figure 9C the section was stained for PAR.

Conclusion: The allegations are not scientific fraud.

Shock Editorial Office“

This was Aneurus’ reply:

“These cannot be consecutive sections immunostained with different antibodies, because they are IDENTICAL.Consecutive sections show many tiny differences in the shape of internal cellular structures. HERE this is not the case!!Either you are completely incompetent, or you are crooks helping your editorial board peers Cuzzocrea & Thiemermann, or BOTH.”

Poor Aneurus has to learn at some point how science is really done. One can produce not only pixel-identical consecutive section from a same mouse brain, one can also slice so thinly that the mouse brain mutates into a rat brain. Don#t believe me? Observe:

SHOCKingly, the authors also managed to produce protein gel sections, something nobody else can. They sliced so thinly that the electrophoresed samples transmutated with each section into different experiments! The same western blot appeared in four previous publications by Cuzzocrea and Thiemermann:

But the editors used ImageTwin, they say. You laugh, but these dumb crooks are professors who train other doctors and treat actual patients. Your life is in their hands.

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Retraction Watchdogging

Constituting falsification and/or fabrication

Killer surgeon Paolo Macchiarini and his German acolyte Philipp Jungebluth retracted yet another paper. Read about their recent retractions here, and the decision of the Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct (NPOF) which also led to the current retraction:

The newly retracted Elsevier publication is about the deadly plastic trachea replacements, for which Macchiarini was sentenced in Sweden to two and a half years of prison, which he will apparently serve in Spain where he lives, and very likely not actually in prison but under house arrest in his huge villa in Barcelona. The law is an asshole when the perpetrators have money.

Ylva Gustafsson , Johannes Haag , Philipp Jungebluth , Vanessa Lundin , Mei Ling Lim , Silvia Baiguera , Fatemeh Ajalloueian, Costantino Del Gaudio , Alessandra Bianco , Guido Moll , Sebastian Sjöqvist , Greg Lemon , Ana Isabel Teixeira , Paolo Macchiarini Viability and proliferation of rat MSCs on adhesion protein-modified PET and PU scaffolds Biomaterials (2012) doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2012.07.060

The Retraction appeared on 4 January 2024.

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

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief, following the investigation of the Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct (NPOF): https://npof.se/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Decision-in-case-3.2-22-0078_web.pdf.

According to the investigation report, “The article describes experiments regarding various plastic materials and their suitability as materials for constructing synthetic tracheas. The text refers to a previous operation in which a patient received a synthetic trachea. The operation is described as successful and said not, at the follow-up, to have entailed any serious complications. According to the allegations reported, these assertions do not correspond to what actually happened and are therefore suspected of constituting falsification and/or fabrication”.

Also, “… the Board considers that the description of the operation as successful and the statement that it did not lead to serious complications within six months are incorrect. Making up information in this way and documenting it as if it were true constitutes fabrication. In addition, the Board considers that the omission of the complications documented at the time when the article was published constitutes falsification”.

As reminder, because German courts decided that Macchiarini and his team never did anything wrong and anyone who says otherwise will stand trial, Jungebluth runs a private orthopaedics practice in his home town Wolfenbüttel, and Macchiarini’s other mentee, Johannes Haag, is in charge of lung transplantation at the university clinic of LMU Munich. These boys are the pride of German medicine, folks.

Luckily it’s different in Iceland, where Macchiarini’s partner in plastic trachea transplanting, Tomas Gudbjartsson, has been finally put on leave and under investigation for coercing his patient to participate in Macchiarini’s deadly experiment at Karolinska. The victim’s widow’s lawyer even tries to get Gudbjartson to face criminal responsibility. This is reported by Icelandic news, and you can read the backstory here:

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Marseille ethics

Yet another retraction also for the French chloroquine quack Didier Raoult.

The clinical study was part of a set of 35 and pretended to have the same ethics approval, but in reality, there was no approval at all according to the French law. The study even involved children:

Morgane Mailhe , Davide Ricaboni , Véronique Vitton , Jean-Michel Gonzalez , Dipankar Bachar , Grégory Dubourg , Frédéric Cadoret , Catherine Robert , Jérémy Delerce , Anthony Levasseur , Pierre-Edouard Fournier , Emmanouil Angelakis , Jean-Christophe Lagier , Didier Raoult Repertoire of the gut microbiota from stomach to colon using culturomics and next-generation sequencing BMC Microbiology (2018) DOI: 10.1186/s12866-018-1304-7

The Retraction was published on 3 January 2024:

“The Editor has retracted this article because the authors could not provide evidence of approval from an appropriate ethics committee. Grégory Dubourg, Jean-Christophe Lagier, and Didier Raoult disagree with this retraction. The remaining authors did not respond to correspondence from the publisher about this retraction.”

Retraction Watch reported on 8 January 2023 about 6 more retractions for Raoult. There are however around 2000 more of his papers to go, for lack of ethics approvals and research fraud.

Meanwhile, Raoult’s chloroquine cure for COVID-19, which he illegally implemented on thousands of patients at his IHU Marseille, continues being scrutinised. The national newspaper L’Express reported on 3 January 2024 (Google-translated):

“…a team of researchers led by Jean-Christophe Lega, professor of therapy at the Hospices Civils de Lyon, has just published a study in which they indicate that the prescriptions of hydroxychloroquine, in the first wave of COVID-19, have caused thousands of deaths. […] Their work, preliminary to the time, had first been presented in June 2022 and then in June 2023.”

This is the referenced paper, be aware its methodology is being criticised on PubPeer:

Alexiane PRADELLE, Sabine MAINBOURG , Steeve PROVENCHER , Emmanuel MASSY , Guillaume GRENET , Jean-Christophe LEGA Deaths induced by compassionate use of hydroxychloroquine during the first COVID-19 wave: an estimate Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.biopha.2023.116055 

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Suspicious changes in authorship

Chinese papermill fraudsters invented a white male American author to submit papers to an Elsevier journal. After this fictional character’s papers were accepted, the Chinese papermillers disguised as a white American male wrote to the journal asking to added their Chinese customers’ names as co-authors. Nobody minded back then, nobody laughed at those stupid “Emperor Penguin” and “Developed Owl” algorithms – apparently a white American name sufficed to instil full trust and to prevent any attempts at questioning anything, or actually reading the submitted manuscripts.

Here are the three retracted studies:

Xiaohui Lu , Yang Yang , Peifang Wang , Yiming Fan , Fangzhong Yu , Nicholas Zafetti A new converged Emperor Penguin Optimizer for biding strategy in a day-ahead deregulated market clearing price: A case study in China Energy (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.120386 

Xiaojun Ren , Yongtang Wu , Dongmin Hao , Guoxu Liu , Nicholas Zafetti Analysis of the performance of the multi-objective hybrid hydropower-photovoltaic-wind system to reduce variance and maximum power generation by developed owl search algorithm Energy (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.120910 

Huan Li , Kun Li , Nicholas Zafetti , Jianfeng Gu Improvement of energy supply configuration for telecommunication system in remote area s based on improved chaotic world cup optimization algorithm Energy (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2019.116614

The retraction notices are all undated and very similar, just the names of Chinese co-authors vary. Here is one notice:

“This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

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

Post-publication, the editor discovered suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper. In summary, the author names Huan Li (New First Author), Kun Li (New Corresponding Author) and Jianfeng Gu were added to the revised paper without explanation and without exceptional approval by the editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.

In addition, it appears that Nicholas Zafetti was claiming an affiliation with Clemson University. The records of the university do not support a relationship between Clemson University and Nicholas Zafetti as a student, faculty, or visiting scholar.

The editor reached out to the authors for an explanation on the above points, but they failed to reply. The editor therefore feels that the findings of the manuscript cannot be relied upon and that the article needs to be retracted.”

If only the papermillers wouldn’t have used throw-away email addresses, they could’ve replied, explained to the Editor-in-Chief Henrik Lund, Professor at the Aalborg University in Denmark, that “Nicolas Zafetti” is a real white American male, with photos of him playing baseball, barbecuing burgers or rodeo riding, and there would be no retractions maybe.

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Science Breakthroughs

A New Dawn of an Old Age

Cold Fusion is back!

Sylvie Coyaud blogged about the recent breakthrough in Scientific Reports (translated):

“The hero is Bob Greenyer, the founder, owner and researcher of the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project , which for a decade, tries with the funds of believers and in vain to reproduce the FuF [fusione fredda, cold fusion -LS] of Andrea Rossi, Cardone-Carpinteri, Francesco Piantelli, Francesco Celani, and other Neo-Galileos, italian and not, alive and not anymore.

Instead of losing heart, he led a patrol of the Thai myrmidons in the assault on mainstream physics. Helped in the back by a faithful Patroclus: the Neo-Galileo Russian Alexander Parkhomov, known for falsifying data in the replication of the miraculous “Lugano experiment” by Rossi the Sheikh of Brianza and his faithful Patroclus, Giuseppe Levi of the university of Bologna.”

This is the paper:

Bin-Juine Huang, Yu-Hsiang Pan , Po-Hsien Wu , Jong-Fu Yeh , Ming-Li Tso , Ying-Hung Liu , Litu Wu , Ching-Kang Huang , I-Fee Chen , Che-Hao Lin , T. R. Tseng , Fang-Wei Kang , Tan-Feng Tsai , Kuan-Che Lan , Yi-Tung Chen , Mou-Yung Liao , Li Xu , Sih-Li Chen , Robert William Greenyer Water can trigger nuclear reaction to produce energy and isotope gases Scientific Reports (2024) doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-50824-8 

The authors claimed to have achieved cold fusion in warm water. Also their references are hilarious. Here is one, in a a Russian pseudoscience magazine:

“And, in two years of laborious work, a gravity plane shown on Fig. 3 appeared: an aircraft with amazing characteristics. It is invisible, need no traditional engine as we imagine it, and has no wings or a propeller. It is noiseless; easily reach a safe flight speed of 1500 km/h, which is not felt by a pilot: there are no either inertia properties of a moving body or heat influence of the environmental air to the aircraft, or dynamic pressure or other effects. It also has a very simple design: a post with two handles placed on an opened platform.” [page 62]

7 Geller, S. Vortex liquid heaters. New Energy Technol. 3(22), 29–39 (2005).

But it passed peer review, so you see, the Fleischmann Memorial Project has delivered yet another working cold fusion reactor. The journal however issued this note now:

05 January 2024 Editor’s Note: Readers are alerted that the conclusions presented in this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the Editors. A further editorial response will follow the resolution of these issues.

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Frontiers in Racism

Look what Frontiers just published. Fresh from Canada, by 3 white people, the corresponding author is Bob Uttl, professor at the Mount Royal University in Calgary:

Bob Uttl, Victoria Violo, Lacey Gibson Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average Frontiers in Psychology (2024) doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1309142

So far, only an abstract was published:

“According to a widespread belief, the average IQ of university students is 115 to 130 IQ points, that is, substantially higher than the average IQ of the general population (M = 100, SD =15). We traced the origin of this belief to obsolete intelligence data collected in 1940s and 1950s when university education was the privilege of a few. Examination of more recent IQ data indicate that IQ of university students and university graduates dropped to the average of the general population. The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s. Method. We conducted a meta-analysis of the mean IQ scores of college and university students samples tested with Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale between 1939 and 2022. Results. The results show that the average IQ of undergraduate students today is a mere 102 IQ points and declined by approximately 0.2 IQ points per year. The students’ IQ also varies substantially across universities and is correlated with the selectivity of universities (measured by average SAT scores of admitted students). Discussion. These findings have wide-ranging implications. First, universities and professors need to realize that students are no longer extraordinary but merely average, and have to adjust curricula and academic standards. Second, employers can no longer rely on applicants with university degrees to be more capable or smarter than those without degrees. Third, students need to realize that acceptance into university is no longer an invitation to join an elite group. Fourth, the myth of brilliant undergraduate students in scientific and popular literature needs to be dispelled. Fifth, estimating premorbid IQ based on educational attainment is vastly inaccurate, obsolete, not evidence based, and mere speculations. Sixth, obsolete IQ data or tests ought not to be used to make high-stakes decisions about individuals, for example, by clinical psychologists to opine about intelligence and cognitive abilities of their clients.”

What the authors say almost openly: after American universities started to admit Blacks, women and working class people, the average IQ of the American students dropped.

And to prove that the correct audience was reached: the article was triumphantly picked up by the Nazis of InfoWars.

To be fair, Bob Uttl (who is originally Czech) may be not really consciously a racist, but he sure has a beef with students. Years ago, he was denied tenure in USA over student evaluations, and also now he has abysmally bad ratings on Rate My Professor, and this is why he constantly complains, especially in peer-reviewed studies, about why student ratings of him are wrong (e.g., Uttl & Smibert 2017, Uttl et al 2017, Uttl 2021).

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