Schneider Shorts 19.1.2024 – Erroneous and should be ignored

Schneider Shorts of 19 January 2024 – a guest Short by Robert Cockburn, Belgian research ethics, Joe gives Joe a million, a million and a quarter to find the leak, papermillers big and small, and finally, with COPE retractions guidelines biting back.

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Guest Shorts

Australian journalist Robert Cockburn, victim of a botched and unethical clinical trial, previously published a guest post on For Better Science:

His story later featured in Sydney Daily Telegraph (free version here), and Cockburn now provides an update:

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Confidential Leaked Australian Government Report to Exonerate Human Research Abusers

By Robert Cockburn, Sydney 28/12/23

A leaked confidential Australian government draft report is set to exonerate leading medical figures who violated clinical trial safety and ethics regulations in a scam that caused serious injury.

It will give a green light to human research abuse. One architect of Australia’s clinical trial regulations now says,

‘The whole (CT) system is not fit for purpose.’

For over two years, the National Health Medical Research Council’s Australian Research Integrity Committee [NHMRC-ARIC] has had the job of reviewing, and a deeply flawed 2019 clinical trial investigation by Sydney Local Health District [SLHD]. SLHD covered up proven abuses by senior Sydney doctors and scientists who conned unwitting severe asthma patients into testing undisclosed experimental lung devices for Italy’s Restech Respiratory company and Politecnico di Milano. The scam – run by staff at Sydney University, its Woolcock Institute, and SLHD – used a falsified clinical trial approval letter and invalid fake participant consent forms to con severe asthma patients recruited from Sydney public hospitals into testing Restech’s new Resmon FOT device and another unregistered device, the US Spiro PD spirometer [First reported in FBS].

The 2019 SLHD investigation was led by SLHD head Dr Teresa Anderson who proved multiple violations of the National Statement on the Ethical Conduct in Human Research but then let off all those responsible and buried the case. How? Laughably, Anderson claimed they had all simultaneously and unintentionally forgotten to tell trial volunteers, some their own patients, they were on an experimental clinical trial. Defending them, Anderson told me:

‘I think sometimes people think that they have communicated well’.

[Dr Teresa Anderson, FBS]

Those given immunity [see ARIC draft report Pt 1.1] include some of Australia’s most eminent doctors and scientists, including Woolcock Institute research manager Prof Helen Reddel.

Like the fairy tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes – by another Anderson, Hans Christian – Teresa Anderson’s administrative see-through ‘mass amnesia’ lie was widely grasped at, including the then Sydney University vice-chancellor Prof Stephen Garton, to avoid public scandal.

As the injured Woolcock trial participant who secured the two failed investigations, I am now leaking my copy of the confidential draft ARIC report to publicise the dire state of Australian human research. If the appalling ARIC draft report is finalised, clinical trial participants will, officially, be left to the mercy of unscrupulous companies and universities who will assume they are immune from accountability when violating research regulations.

Evidence of that growing sense of immunity has come from Sydney’s Macquarie University which acquired the troubled Woolcock Institute from Sydney University. Asked if it will retain Woolcock staff proven to have violated human research regulations and caused injury, Macquarie University Director and Chief of Staff, Heather Mackinnon, clung to the flawed SLHD investigation report. Mackinnon wrote to me:

‘In light of this, the University does not propose to take any further action. I understand that you may be disappointed by this, however this decision has been taken after consideration of the available information.’

[13/9/23 Mackinnon email]

This is untrue. Ms Mackinnon ignored a lot of available information provided to her, and the ARIC review.

Macquarie University’s Ethics Professor Wendy Rogers – who led the 2018 revision of the National Statement on the Ethical Conduct in Human Research, and has read the leaked ARIC draft report- says of Australian human research:

‘The whole system is not fit for purpose.’

[Professor Wendy Rogers, Breathtaking film]

Now the Federal Government’s ARIC is set to accept ARIC rubber-stamping of Anderson’s 2019 investigation protection of complicit institutions and their staff.

ARIC’s Review chair Patricia Kelly, using the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, confirms the violations of ethics and patients’ rights, yet somehow writes in her draft Conclusion:

‘Having considered all of the documents provided, it is ARIC’s view that SLHD appropriately managed the review of the applicant’s complaint which included a thorough investigation.’

[ARIC draft report, Pt 5.47]

But Kelly ignored vital evidence, including the role of Anderson’s SLHD Human Research Ethics Committee chair, Sydney University’s head of pharmacy Prof Andrew MacLachlan, who signed off on the trial’s falsified approval letter and approved its invalid fake participant consent forms to benefit his Sydney University medical mates [Freedom of Information documents, available]

The draft ARIC report is now with NHMRC head Prof Steve Wesselingh who I have asked to explain its contents and delays. [emails available].

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Science Elites

Aware of the allegations

The student newspaper The Harvard Crimson has covered Sholto David‘s investigation of cheaters at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, in an article from 12 January 2024.

Harvard Crimson writers succeeded where Sholto failed: getting a reply from some of these mighty professors (he tried many times, and got only silence back). Quote:

“In a post on research integrity blog For Better Science, data sleuth Sholto David alleged DFCI President and CEO Laurie H. Glimcher ’72, Executive Vice President and COO William C. Hahn ’87, Senior Vice President for Experimental Medicine Irene M. Ghobrial, and Harvard Medical School professor Kenneth C. Anderson committed research misconduct across dozens of papers. […]

In an emailed statement to The Crimson Wednesday, Ghobrial wrote that she was “aware” of the allegations and had submitted corrections to the journals Clinical Cancer Research and Blood — in which most of her disputed papers were published — but chose not to respond to David. She wrote that editors of the journals to which she had submitted corrections had not yet responded as of Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the Journal of Clinical Oncology wrote that Hahn had already submitted a corrected version of an image from a 2011 paper and that the journal was in the process of publishing an erratum.

Glimcher, Hahn, and Anderson did not respond to requests for comment.”

A representative fabrication by Anderson and a bunch of fellow Dana Farber professors, flagged on PubPeer by Sholto:

At some point it matters less who faked the data than who covers it up. And these people certainly are keen to fix things as fast as possible with silence, or when absolutely unavoidable, with some corrections about unaffected conclusions. Duplications like these are not honest mistakes though:

H Jiang , C Acharya , G An , M Zhong , X Feng , L Wang , N Dasilva , Z Song , G Yang , F Adrian , L Qiu , P Richardson , N C Munshi , Y-T Tai , K C Anderson SAR650984 directly induces multiple myeloma cell death via lysosomal-associated and apoptotic pathways, which is further enhanced by pomalidomide Leukemia (2016) doi: 10.1038/leu.2015.240 

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Exceptional scientists with established track records of success

Money success for the Harvard cardiology professor Joseph Loscalzo! After having made millions with fictional heart stem cells which he jointly fabricated with Piero Anversa, Loscalzo now makes millions with superfood bullshit.

The American Heart Association (AHA, for those uninformed: a cardio-mafia which embezzles public money while bribed by pharma and food industry) issued on 9 January 2024 this announcement to celebrate its “2024 Merit Award winners”:

“The American Heart Association’s Merit Award is one of the highest honors given by the Association. The Merit Award supports highly promising, novel research that has the potential to move cardiovascular science forward quickly, with high impact. The recipient of the 2024 award are:

• Joseph Loscalzo, M.D., Ph.D., FAHA, the Distinguished Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and the Samuel A. Levine Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, former chair of the department of medicine and physician-in-chief emeritus at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; […]

“This award supports exceptional scientists with established track records of success. These are true innovators who propose novel approaches to major research challenges in the areas of heart disease, stroke and brain health. Specifically, their research has the potential to produce unusually high impact toward the American Heart Association’s mission to be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives,” said, Joseph C. Wu, M.D. Ph.D., FAHA, American Heart Association volunteer president […]

Loscalzo’s research will focus on the link between heart disease and certain foods, or chemicals naturally contained in foods. Using high-speed computers and model systems, he plans to explore many of the 135,000 ‘natural’ chemicals that have been identified in the world’s food supply. His research will focus on how these food chemicals interact with proteins in cells to affect how the cell works and, ultimately, which chemicals may protect the heart. Using this information, his team will then investigate ways to use these compounds to create diets that specifically protect against heart disease and lay the groundwork for developing new drugs that can be used for heart disease treatment.

“One might ask what makes this project exciting and worth funding? Many scientists and doctors have worked hard to create diets that are good for your heart in the past. Their work has been based on only a small amount of information about the composition of food, less than 1%. Our approach is much larger in scope,” Loscalzo said. “We will use modern technologies to explore the great number of chemicals in the food supply. We will then be able to identify among them new ‘natural’ therapies for heart disease for the health of all people.”

Indeed, the real money is in superfoods and supplements, not in fictional stem cells. By the way, here is a stem cell paper from Joe Wu‘s lab in Stanford:

Shuan Lin, Xiaoyan Xie , Manishkumar R Patel , Yao-Hung Yang , Zongjin Li , Feng Cao , Oliver Gheysens , Yan Zhang , Sanjiv S Gambhir , Jiang Hong Rao , Joseph C Wu Quantum dot imaging for embryonic stem cells BMC Biotechnology (2007) doi: 10.1186/1472-6750-7-67 

Honest mistake, right? There is more on PubPeer for the AHA president. This one, flagged by Elisabeth Bik, was already corrected:

Mary Prunicki, Nicholas Cauwenberghs , Jennifer Arthur Ataam, Hesam Movassagh , Juyong Brian Kim , Tatiana Kuznetsova , Joseph C. Wu , Holden Maecker, Francois Haddad, Kari Nadeau Immune biomarkers link air pollution exposure to blood pressure in adolescents Environmental Health (2020) doi: 10.1186/s12940-020-00662-2 

The Correction from November 2022 replaced 11 panels in 3 figures. As Bik noted: “That is one-third of the 33 microscopy images shown in the paper + supplemental materials.” This looks almost innocent in comparison:

Jayakumar Rajadas, Wenchao Sun , Hai Li , Mohammed Inayathullah , Damiano Cereghetti , Aaron Tan , Valeria De Mello Coelho , Francis J. Chrest , John W. Kusiak , Wanli Wei Smith , Dennis Taub , Joseph C. Wu , Joseph M. Rifkind Enhanced Aβ(1-40) production in endothelial cells stimulated with fibrillar Aβ(1-42) PLoS ONE (2013) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058194 

And now, the best bit. Joe Wu and AHA agree with Joe Loscalzo and Piero Anversa that heart stem calls can be willed into existence, because it is the money which talks and not some stupid biological reality. Remains 100% valid and trustworthy science in an AHA journal:

Feng Lan , Junwei Liu , Kazim H. Narsinh , Shijun Hu , Leng Han , Andrew S. Lee , Marisa Karow , Patricia K. Nguyen , Divya Nag , Michele P. Calos , Robert C. Robbins , Joseph C. Wu Safe genetic modification of cardiac stem cells using a site-specific integration technique Circulation (2012) doi: 10.1161/circulationaha.111.084913 

It is almost as if AHA conspired to steal your money, make you sick and then sell you dodgy cures based on fake science.

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A privileged internal investigation

You can trust that everything relating to the affair of Cassava Sciences, that utterly fraudulent US biotech, and their phony Alzheimer’s cure simufilam, will be stupid and ridiculous.

In October 2023, Science reported about a leaked draft investigative report by the City University of New York (CUNY) which found their neuroscience professor and Cassava associate Hoau-Yan Wang guilty of “scientific misconduct involving 20 research papers” (read earlier Friday Shorts).

Well, now a protocol of the meeting of CUNY Board of Trustees from 18 December 2023 was discussed on social media. There, the big men allocate $1.25 million to find the whistleblowers who leaked the draft report to Science:

“As the result of certain allegations of research misconduct made against a University faculty member [HY Wang, -LS], as described in a certain letter addressed to the University from the United State Department of Health & Human Services, Director of the Division of Investigation Oversight at the Office of Research Integrity (“ORI”), the University convened a committee to investigate and review such allegations in accordance with CUNY’s Policy Regarding the Disposition of Allegations of Research Misconduct; and

The University Research Misconduct Investigation Committee conducted an investigation and review of the aforementioned allegations and produced a confidential report regarding the same in Spring 2023; and

Prior to the resolution of the matter by the University, it came to the attention of the University that a breach may have occurred in connection with the confidentiality of the confidential report prepared by the Research Misconduct Investigation Committee; and […]

The implications of a breach of confidentiality of a report prepared by the University’s Research Misconduct Investigation Committee could undermine the
integrity of the investigation, as well as the findings and conclusions contained in such report; and

It is the obligation of the University to protect the integrity of such academic research investigations in accordance with law and policy; and

In order to protect the integrity of the University’s academic research investigations and to determine if any breach of CUNY’s Policy Regarding the Disposition of Allegations of Research Misconduct occurred, the University requires the services of a law firm […] to conduct a privileged internal investigation into the allegations of a potential breach of confidentiality of the University’s Research Misconduct Investigation Committee’s report; and […]

…the University’s Board of Trustees authorizes the Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs and General Counsel to enter into a contract, for an amount not to exceed $1,250,000, which shall have a term no longer than one year from the
date of the contract, with Foley Hoag, LLP….”

$1,250,000 to find the leak. But Hoang is still professor at CUNY, paid over $150k per year.

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Newfangled and Eloquent Therapeutic Perspective

Someone made a list of most prolific Indian researchers.

The papermilling fraudster Abhijit Dey (read earlier Friday Shorts) is indeed not on the list. But Tapan Behl is ranked 5th, with 141 papers per year. His emplyoer, the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies in Uttarakhand, informs us:

“Dr. Behl has been listed in the top 2% of scientists worldwide for three consecutive years, as per the list released by Stanford University and Elsevier BV.”

This pharmacology professor is an even worse papermiller than Dey. In fact, they work together, or buy from the same papermill. Here is a nonsense citation vehicle by Behl and Dey:

Shinjini Bandopadhyay , Uttpal Anand , Vijaykumar Shivaji Gadekar , Niraj Kumar Jha , Piyush Kumar Gupta , Tapan Behl , Manoj Kumar , Radha , Mahipal S. Shekhawat , Abhijit Dey Dioscin: A review on pharmacological properties and therapeutic values BioFactors (2022) doi: 10.1002/biof.1815

“Viruses are responsible for a wide range of diseases ^154–157“

All 4 references go to obscure COVID-19 papers by someone called U. Anand

Another one by Behl and Dey:

Sicon Mitra , Uttpal Anand , Mimosa Ghorai , Balachandar Vellingiri , Niraj Kumar Jha , Tapan Behl , Manoj Kumar , Radha , Mahipal S. Shekhawat , Jarosław Proćków, Abhijit Dey Unravelling the Therapeutic Potential of Botanicals Against Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): Molecular Insights and Future Perspectives Frontiers in Pharmacology (2022) doi: 10.3389/fphar.2022.824132 

The rest of references often make no sense either. Here a plagiarised, i.e. stolen review on nanoparticles, in a journal overtaken by papermills:

Syam Mohan , Pranay Wal , Kamla Pathak , Madhusmruti Khandai , Tapan Behl , Hassan A. Alhazmi , Gulrana Khuwaja , Asaad Khalid Nanosilver-functionalized polysaccharides as a platform for wound dressing Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2023) doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-26450-2

Nick Wise noticed that the title and the “Sentences in the abstract of this paper are rewritten versions of sentences in the 2022 paper“, namely the previously published Yuan et al 2022, with no common authors.

One Behl paper, co-authored with another nasty papermiller, Md. Sahab Uddin, was retracted in May 2022 “because a significant part of the content was paraphrased from another article by different authors (Foster et al. 2019)”:

Md. Sahab Uddin, Md. Tanvir Kabir , Mst. Marium Begum , Md. Siddiqul Islam , Tapan Behl , Md. Ghulam Md Ashraf Exploring the Role of CLU in the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease Neurotoxicity Research (2021) doi: 10.1007/s12640-020-00271-4 

Behl usually buys his papers and citations in team with another fellow pharmacologist and papermiller Simona Bungau. She is professor at the University of Oradea in Romania, where her husband Constantin Bungau is rector.

Behl and Bungau are professional plagiarists. They (or they papermills) run stolen texts through translations back and forth, which obscures the original wording from plagiarism detection software yet creates give-away “tortured phrases”. Like here:

Tapan Behl, Tanuj Upadhyay , Sukhbir Singh , Sridevi Chigurupati , Amal M. Alsubayiel , Vasudevan Mani , Celia Vargas-De-La-Cruz, Diana Uivarosan , Cristiana Bustea , Cristian Sava , Manuela Stoicescu , Andrei-Flavius Radu , Simona Gabriela Bungau Polyphenols Targeting MAPK Mediated Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Rheumatoid Arthritis Molecules (2021) doi: 10.3390/molecules26216570

“Tortured phrases are present in this paper:

• chain response (chain reaction)
• redox flagging (redox signaling)
• hyaluronic corrosive (hyaluronic acid)”

Here, phrases got tortured in the title already – “Newfangled and Eloquent Therapeutic Perspective“:

Tapan Behl, Piyush Madaan, Aayush Sehgal , Sukhbir Singh, Hafiz A. Makeen, Mohammed Albratty, Hassan A. Alhazmi, Abdulkarim M. Meraya, Simona Bungau Demystifying the Neuroprotective Role of Neuropeptides in Parkinson’s Disease: A Newfangled and Eloquent Therapeutic Perspective International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2022) doi: 10.3390/ijms23094565 

Here are Behl, Bungau and Dey together, in the same papermill-run chemical society journal published by Springer:

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

You can read about this journal and its crooked French editor here:

Here is a nice one by Behl, Bungau, and the German professor Magali Cucchiarini–Madry (see article above), a massive citation plantation for “a certain M Barani and a certain A Rahdar”, as Alexander Magazinov noted:

Fakhara Sabir , Mahmood Barani , Mahwash Mukhtar , Abbas Rahdar , Magali Cucchiarini , Muhammad Nadeem Zafar , Tapan Behl , Simona Bungau Nanodiagnosis and Nanotreatment of Cardiovascular Diseases: An Overview Chemosensors (2021) doi: 10.3390/chemosensors9040067 

Of course Behl and Bungau fell prey to The Vickers Curse, because of their papermill’s sloppiness:

Tapan Behl , Aditi Sharma , Lalit Sharma , Aayush Sehgal , Sukhbir Singh , Neelam Sharma , Gokhan Zengin , Simona Bungau, Mirela Marioara Toma , Daniela Gitea , Elena Emilia Babes , Claudia Teodora Judea Pusta , Adrian Gheorghe Bumbu Current Perspective on the Natural Compounds and Drug Delivery Techniques in Glioblastoma Multiforme Cancers (2021) doi: 10.3390/cancers13112765 

Indeed, p53 leads to both antioxidant and oxidant gene expression, thereby its role in regulating ROS is controversial. Moderately increased levels of ROS block p53, while elevated levels induce its expression. The p53 targets are sestrins that promote the peroxiredoxins activity, upregulating the cellular levels of antioxidants [98,99].

[99] Vickers, N.J. Animal communication: When i’m calling you, will you answer too? Curr. Biol. 2017, 27, R713–R715.

More papermilled trash by Behl, Bungau, Dey and friends is on PubPeer.

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The Tributes of Ghanem

A small-time cheater in Belgium, and it turned out that his research institution was perfectly aware for years. Meet Ghanem E Ghanem, researcher at the Institut Jules Bordet in Brussels, which is part of Hôpital Universitaire de Bruxelles (H.U.B), the academic hospital of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), and self-describes as

“A pioneering centre in Belgium’s fight against cancer”

Ghanem is the former director of the Laboratory of Oncology and Experimental Surgery (LOCE), and he presently leads it together with the current director Ahmad Awada and associate director Fabrice Journe. Here is a nice common paper, flagged by Clare Francis (like the rest on PubPeer):

Mohammad Krayem, Ahmad Najem, Fabrice Journe, Renato Morandini, François Sales, Ahmad Awada, Ghanem E. Ghanem Acquired resistance to BRAFi reverses senescence-like phenotype in mutant BRAF melanoma Oncotarget (2018) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.25879 

The first author Mohamad Krayem did his PhD at Institut Bordet under Ghanem and then worked as postdoc of another questionable cancer researcher: François Fuks (read about him in earlier Friday Shorts). Krayem is since 2018 Head of Radiotherapy Research Unit at Ghanem’s LOCE lab at Institut Bordet, which he runs (according to his LinkedIn profile) “in collaboration with Prof. Dirk Van Gestel and Prof. Ahmad Awada”.

This is very recent, meaning someone felt very secure in their cheating:

Ahmad Najem , Mohammad Krayem , Serena Sabbah , Matilde Pesetti , Fabrice Journe, Ahmad Awada , Laurent Désaubry , Ghanem E Ghanem Targeting Prohibitins to Inhibit Melanoma Growth and Overcome Resistance to Targeted Therapies Cells (2023) doi: 10.3390/cells12141855 

You cna trust MDPI with fraud anytime. Here is more Ghanem stuff, with Krayem and without:

In 2020, an Erratum was published by this MDPI journal, but not for the falsified data:

Mohamad Krayem , Philippe Aftimos , Ahmad Najem , Tim Van Den Hooven , Adriënne Van Den Berg , Liesbeth Hovestad-Bijl , Rik De Wijn , Riet Hilhorst , Rob Ruijtenbeek , Malak Sabbah , Joseph Kerger , Ahmad Awada , Fabrice Journe, Ghanem E Ghanem Kinome Profiling to Predict Sensitivity to MAPK Inhibition in Melanoma and to Provide New Insights into Intrinsic and Acquired Mechanism of Resistance Cancers (2020) doi: 10.3390/cancers12020512 

“The authors would like to change the title from “Kinome Profiling to Predict Sensitivity to MAPK Inhibition in Melanoma and to Provide New Insights into Intrinsic and Acquired Mechanism of Resistance Short Title: Sensitivity Prediction to MAPK Inhibitors in Melanoma” to “Kinome Profiling to Predict Sensitivity to MAPK Inhibition in Melanoma and to Provide New Insights into Intrinsic and Acquired Mechanism of Resistance” We stress that this correction does not change the written portion of the figure legend, interpretation of results, or final conclusion of this manuscript.”.

Erratum October 2020

They might need another Erratum now. And this is where it gets interesting. Clare Francis notified the academic authorities in Brussels, in French even. On 8 January 2024, the sleuth got this reply from Patrick Miqueu, Member of the Ethics Committee and Coordinator for Research Promotion at Institut Bordet, and Member of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics. Basically, one of the nation’s top research ethics professionals. This was Miqueu’s reply to a notification of suspected research misconduct, translated:

“Miss or Mister,

As you send me a copy of your emails, allow me to ask you 3 questions:

• Could you clarify your identity?
• What methods/software lead you to believe that the published results would be problematic?
• Have you informed the authors of your doubts?”

Yes, he did instruct Clare Francis that data forgery does not necessarily affect the results, and it is the authors who are reponsible for investigating themselves, and for suing their accusers.

Clare Francis then asked if Institut Bordet intends to investigate Ghanem’s papers. On 10 January 2024, the sleuth received a reply from Christos Sotiriou, Director of Bordet Research Laboratories (translated):

“Could you please identify yourself?
Could we have a meeting to better understand?
THANKS !“

I wrote to Sotiriou, wondering why he and Miqueu are so keen on knowing the sleuth’s real identity. Sotirou replied:

“We had some suspicions regarding scientific misconduct of this lab in the past. I will initiate an investigation at the university as a director of the Jules Bordet Research laboratories.“

Indeed, they knew of Ghanem’s bad science. But instead of opening an investigation, they issued some corrections. Like for this paper:

Mohammad Krayem , Fabrice Journe, Murielle Wiedig , Renato Morandini , Ahmad Najem , François Salès , Leon C. Van Kempen , Catherine Sibille , Ahmad Awada , Jean-Christophe Marine, Ghanem Ghanem p53 Reactivation by PRIMA-1(Met) (APR-246) sensitises (V600E/K)BRAF melanoma to vemurafenib European Journal of Cancer (2016) doi: 10.1016/j.ejca.2015.12.002 

In April 2019, the authors replied on Pubpeer with: “this mistakes does not change or alter the content and conclusions of our paper.” In March 2022, more duplicated gels was posted on PubPeer, the authors were notified:

The Corrigendum was published in November 2017 and ignored the more recent findings:

“The authors regret that an unintentional mistake occurred when mounting the final figures, It concerns control experiments (Fig. 5B-MM074-ERK, Fig. 5B-AKT, and Fig. 5E-AKT), this mistake does not change or alter the content and conclusions of the paper.”

Ghanem’s Belgian collaborator above, KU Leuven professor Jean-Christophe Marine, also coauthored problematic papers with other cheaters, like Kristian Helin and Pier Giuseppe Pelicci. Bad scientists are attracted to each other!

The most recent correction for Ghanem et al was this:

Mohammad Krayem, Malak Sabbah , Ahmad Najem , An Wouters , Filip Lardon , Stephane Simon , François Sales , Fabrice Journe, Ahmad Awada , Ghanem E. Ghanem , Dirk Van Gestel The Benefit of Reactivating p53 under MAPK Inhibition on the Efficacy of Radiotherapy in Melanoma Cancers (2019) doi: 10.3390/cancers11081093 

The Correction was published by MDPI on 15 December 2023:

“In the original article [1], there was a mistake in Figure 2A as published. The actin blot in our publication in Cancers (Figure 2A) had already been used in our published paper in Oncotarget in 2018. This is probably due to an error in our image saving. Note that this mistake does not change or alter the content and conclusions of our paper. The mistake indeed concerns control experiments, which were very easily reproduced. The corrected Figure 2A appears below.

In Figure 2B’s P53 panel, there are vertical splices between lanes 4/5 and 12/13. There are no apparent splices between these lanes in the other panels. This is because samples for every group (i.e., four conditions) were conducted on different membranes.

The authors state that the scientific conclusions are unaffected. This correction was approved by the Academic Editor. The original publication has also been updated.”

Sotiriou did not answer my question if they sacked any whistleblowers while covering up the Ghanem affair. But he asked for this:

“How did you find this fraud? Are you using specific tools? I need to know in order to prepare the file. Thanks for your help.”

I think they want tools to avoid getting caught again.

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Scholarly Publishing

Consider retracting a publication

Some of you may have heard of a publisher discussion forum called Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). They issue guidelines and advice, and people often mistake COPE for some kind of police, and complain to them about bad papers and naughty editors.

COPE is financed entirely by the publishers it is meant to supervise, as the result COPE guidelines are full of loopholes and anything goes, including ignoring outright fraud and instituional requests for retractions because the final decision is with the editor anyway. What COPE execs really can’t stand is trouble-making. Peter Wilmshurst, one of original COPE founding memners, was kicked out for pestering COPE with demands of retraction for a Lancet paper by Paolo Machiarini (it was eventually retracted, no thanks to COPE). People also got threatened with COPE sanctions for associating with me.

COPE is a strange club. Among its most senior officials used to be a Frontiers exec responsible for the annihilation of Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers (and sacking of Jeffrey Beall himself). So much for publication ethics.

COPE board members and officers came and went, but one expert is with COPE since 2012: Iratxe Puebla, Facilitation and Integrity Officer. Your complaints are usually processed be her.

So I decided to contact the COPE Facilitation and Integrity Officer with this newly posted PubPeer thread concerning a 20 year old paper in an Elsevier journal:

Iratxe Puebla, Selma Esseghir , Alison Mortlock , Anthony Brown , Andrea Crisanti , Walter Low A recombinant H1 histone-based system for efficient delivery of nucleic acids Journal of Biotechnology (2003) doi: 10.1016/j.jbiotec.2003.07.006 

As I understand, this is Ms Puebla’s only research paper, she completed her BSc studies in 1999 and went into publishing in 2003. The COPE Retraction Guidelines she co-wrote state:

“Editors should consider retracting a publication if:
– They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (eg, miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (eg, of data) or falsification (eg, image manipulation)”

And the gel you saw above is fake. Unfortunately, the COPE Facilitation and Integrity Officer did not reply to my email, maybe she has too many cases of fake science on her desk. But I got a reply from Mihail Grecea, Expert in Publishing Ethics at Elsevier:

“Thank you for copying me into this. The complaints will be assessed by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal with the support from the ethics team of Elsevier.
You will be informed of the outcome of this case.”

The Editor-in-Chief is Christoph Sensen, who achieved a retraction for Heike Walles (Schanz et al 2010) because of one fake image and some plagiarism, and against a massive opposition from her current employer, the University of Magdeburg.

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Erroneous and should be ignored

Elsevier issued an amazing correction for a ridiculously papermilled fabrication.

The “authors” hail from Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India and Spain. The editor Hassan Karimi-Maleh is a collaborator (or rather, fellow papermill customer) of the last author Mehdi Baghayeri.

Fahadul Islam , Md Mohaimenul Islam , Atkia Farzana Khan Meem , Mohamed H. Nafady , Md Rezaul Islam , Aklima Akter , Saikat Mitra , Fahad A. Alhumaydhi , Talha Bin Emran , Ameer Khusro , Jesus Simal-Gandara, Aziz Eftekhari, Fatemeh Karimi , Mehdi Baghayeri Multifaceted role of polyphenols in the treatment and management of neurodegenerative diseases Chemosphere (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.136020 

You see the usual papermilling fraudsters: Bokov, Turki Jalil, Sahab Uddin (you met him above), etc. In October 2023, a Corrigendum was published where a list of FORTY-FIVE such references was removed, with this short notice:

“The authors regret that the following references included in the published article are erroneous and should be ignored.”

The clowns who approved this trolling are Chemosphere‘s Editors-in-Chief Jacob de Boer of VU Amsterdam in Netherlands, Tamara Galloway of University of Exeter in UK, and Yeomin Yoon, of University of South Carolina in USA.

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An involuntary error occurred

Elsevier corrects another paper! This time a forgery by Mario Galigniana, the Argentinian mega-cheater. Read about Super Mario here:

Now, proof that the high forgery mediates only regenerative effect on the conclusions:

Cristina Daneri-Becerra , Michelle G. Patiño-Gaillez , Mario D. Galigniana Proof that the high molecular weight immunophilin FKBP52 mediates the in vivo neuroregenerative effect of the macrolide FK506 Biochemical Pharmacology (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.bcp.2020.114204 

A Correction was published on 9 January 2024:

The “involuntary error” aside, the newly provided untreated control cells look nothing like the DMSO treated ones (i.e., another control). Which at best proves that all conclusions of the paper are trash because it is the solvent which causes the effect.

The clown who accepted this correction is the Editor-in-Chief Jacques Piette of University of Liege in Belgium.

Update: Piette’s own PubPeer record is very worrisome. In his own journal:

Julie Crèvecoeur , Marie-Paule Merville , Jacques Piette, Geoffrey Gloire Geldanamycin inhibits tyrosine phosphorylation-dependent NF-κB activation Biochemical Pharmacology (2008) doi: 10.1016/j.bcp.2008.03.009 

Much worse elsewhere, so you see what kind of ethics Piette has:

Lionel Habran , Sébastien Bontems , Emmanuel Di Valentin , Catherine Sadzot-Delvaux , Jacques Piette Varicella-zoster virus IE63 protein phosphorylation by roscovitine-sensitive cyclin-dependent kinases modulates its cellular localization and activity Journal of Biological Chemistry (2005) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m503312200 

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The good reputation of the French research institute

A man once thought to be a victim of stolen identity re-appears with rascists in MDPI!

The French oceanographer Bertrand Chapron was previously mentioned in this article by Smut Clyde, allegedly his identity was stolen by the fraudster brothers Tim Chen and J. C.-Y. Chen:

Back in 2022, Chapron and his institution Ifremer protested, according to Retraction Watch:

“Chapron had nothing to do with the articles – a fact his institution has been pointing out to the journals involved, without satisfaction, while noting that two of his putative co-authors have highly suspect affiliations.”

An ethics & research integrity officer at Ifremer was quoted by Retraction Watch, assuring that Chapron never “took part in these works“, never get consent to be included as author, and even “did not even know the two authors“:

“In January 2021, Ifremer set up an inquiry into this matter, not only to defend the reputation of our senior scientist, whose identity has been usurped, but also to preserve the good reputation of the French research institute in marine science which had also been misrepresented.”

Well, Chapron’s identity was not certainly stolen this time, it is about oceanographics even. He coauthored a paper with colleagues from the russia-occupied Ukrainian peninsula Crimea:

Maria Yurovskaya , Vladimir Kudryavtsev , Bertrand Chapron Spatial Probability Characteristics of Waves Generated by Polar Lows in Nordic and Barents Seas Remote Sensing (2023) doi: 10.3390/rs15112729 

It was published by MDPI, and it failed peer review, as a PubPeer commenter observed:

“Readers should be aware that the only reviewer present at Round 2 (Reviewer 1) reject the manuscript :

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/11/2729/review_report

Reviewer Final Decision: Reject (Manuscript ID 2327496)

and states :

Therefore, the statements in the conclusion part may not hold scientific significance.“

Now, MDPI also declares Chapron’s colleagues’ affiliation “Sevastopol, Russia” (and Chapron obviously agrees). These days, MDPI insists that Crimea is russian. It was different between 2014 and 2022, most publishers eagerly switched to accepting the occupation, because russia was an important business partner. After the full-scale war began in February 2022 and business soured, publishers often write just “Crimea”, without naming the country. Some, like this Heliyon paper Volvach et al 2022 boldly state that Crimea is Ukrainian. But not MDPI, there Crimea is consequently russian, some other examples: Shirokova et al 2023, Lytkin et al 2022, Kapranov et al 2023.

Which is maybe because MDPI’s owner Shu-Kun Lin, who is a Trump fan, is also possibly a putin fan? In any case, maybe European research institutions like Ifremer should not endorse russian aggression in this way?

And maybe Chapron is not really a victim?

To be fair, I found an RSC paper with Austrian and Swedish coauthors (Gusev et al 2023), Elsevier papers in papermill-infested Chemosphere (Yanez et al 2022, Vladimir et al 2023) and even a PLOS One paper (Gladysheva-Azgari et al 2022) insisting that Crimea was russian.

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