Schneider Shorts 26.1.2024 – Personal humiliation, mental anguish and suffering
Schneider Shorts 26.01.2024 - Harvard story explodes in US media, a cheater sues former student, with rat torturers in Italy, publishers being naughty, a special editorial achievement, Nigerian scams, an elusive Greek behind retractions, and why all Germans must publish in Frontiers now.
Schneider Shorts of 26 January 2024 – Harvard story explodes in US media, a cheater sues former student, with rat torturers in Italy, publishers being naughty, a special editorial achievement, Nigerian scams, an elusive Greek behind retractions, and why all Germans must publish in Frontiers now.
The Philadelphia Inquirerwrote on 18 January 2024 about what happened soon after my article above was published:
“The next month, a group of Praticò’s Temple colleagues wrote the university’s board of trustees to urge an investigation into the allegations, which had been posted on a public peer-review site called PubPeer. In their October 2020 letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Inquirer, the faculty members wrote that Praticò’s research contained “numerous instances of data incongruity.”
Since then, scientific journals have retracted four of Praticò’s studies. Critics on PubPeer, some of them anonymous, have raised questions about more of his studies, bringing a total of 36 under scrutiny. […]
After some of the concerns on PubPeer were highlighted by a blog called For Better Science, a group of Praticò’s Temple colleagues wrote the October 2020 letter urging the school to investigate.
One of the letter’s authors was John W. Elrod, who has collaborated with Praticò on two studies, neither of which was among those flagged on PubPeer.”
Less than half of those 36 papers on PubPeer are co-authored by Pratico’s former PhD student, Phillip Giannopoulos, now Assistant Medical Director at a healthcare marketing agency. 14 out of 36, to be precise, and only 2 of the two retracted ones.
Turned out, Pratico is suing Giannopoulos now! Yes, Pratico is that stupid:
“In a lawsuit he filed Jan. 9, Praticò acknowledged flaws with two of the 36 studies and blamed them on a former graduate student, whom he accused in the suit of defamation and fraud. Citing the litigation, Praticò‘s lawyer said the scientist would not answer questions about specific criticisms.”
These are the two points of Pratico’s idiotic lawsuit, in the nutshell:
“Dr. Giannopoulos’ made a false statement of fact when his attorney represented to Springer Nature Journal that Dr. Giannopoulos was unaware that he was named as an author of the Article and when he claimed that he did not consent to being in the authorship for the Article. Dr. Giannopoulos’ statement to Springer Nature that he did not consent to the publication of the Article is a statement of defamatory character, which blackened Dr. Praticò’s reputation, exposed him to public contempt, and injured his business or profession.”
“Dr. Praticò relied on the Giannopoulos Data when he submitted Articles containing the Giannopoulos Data to various journals for publication. […] Dr. Praticò has been damaged by this fraudulent conduct. Dr. Giannopoulos’ reckless behavior profoundly polluted several manuscripts prepared by Dr. Praticò’s lab, and thereby undermining Dr. Praticò’s scientific reputation. Dr. Praticò has suffered actual injury as a result of the defamatory statement including an impairment to his reputation and standing in the academic community, personal humiliation, and mental anguish and suffering.”
Again, what about the other 21 papers, of them 2 retracted (Vagnozzi et al 2022 and Li et al 2020), where Giannopoulos is NOT a co-author? Will Pratico sue all his lab members, past and present? Did Giannopolous smuggle his fake data into Pratico papers years after he left that lab in 2015?
One liar is suing another. Pratico demands from his PhD student $50k plus legal expenses.
There is also this, by Inquirer:
“Among the first to raise questions about Praticò’s research was Mu Yang, the director of a center for testing the behavior oflaboratory mice at Columbia University Medical Center.
Yang’s concerns began when a graduate student asked for help replicating one of Praticò’s experiments, she said in a phone interview. The Temple scientist had found that mice swam faster through a water-filled maze after they were given an experimental drug, an indication of improvement in the animals’ cognitive ability.
But upon reviewing Praticò’s published results, Yang thought they looked too good to be true. The animals’ progress over a four-day period yielded a graph with an unnaturally straight line. There was little to none of the variability that would be expected in how quickly various animals navigated the maze.
“This is not real data,” she recalled saying. “It was impossible.”
Yang had similar misgivings upon looking at the graphs in three additional water maze studies from Praticò’s lab. She consulted two other behavioral neuroscientists and found that they shared her concerns. In February 2020, the trio wrote letters to the journals that had published the studies and to the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In June 2020, agency officials told Yang and her coauthors that the matter had been referred to Temple for review.”
I shall refrain from revealing anything, but invite you to read this guest post by an Anonymous:
Elisabeth Bik, who posted most of the image-related concerns about Pratico’s papers, is quoted at length in the Inquirer article. But also Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch is briefly quoted, suddenly he became interested in the Pratico case. Let me just say – this was not always the case 😉
Our commitment to decisive action
Sholto David’s story about cheating bigwigs of Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in Harvard reached STAT News and Boston Globe (the latter is a shorter version of the former). Among the main accused are DFCI CEO Laurie Glimcher and COO William Hahn.
The article from 19 January 2024 announced one retraction and several corrections:
“Dana-Farber officials disclosed that the review process began for some studies more than a year ago. The institute’s research integrity officer, Barrett Rollins, told STAT this week that while Dana-Farber has not completed reviewing all of the claims, several are serious enough that researchers are talking with journals about retracting one paper and correcting others. None of the allegations reviewed thus far was dismissed for lack of scientific merit.
“They were all credible,” Rollins said. “So far.”
He added that “credible” does not mean an allegation is true, simply that it is specific and plausible enough to warrant a closer look.”
Now, because I am not a professional journalist like the experts of STAT News, but an internet troll, I shall point out that Rollins is actually investigating himself. here is Rollins with the DFCI bigwigs he is supposed to investigate, Kenneth Anderson and Irene Ghobrial:
Mycosphaerella arachidis: “Figure 4B: I am concerned that most of these images do not show different mice being imaged, or even the same mice on different days. I’ve added the coloured rectangles to show where I mean. The bioluminescence signals are not the same, but the positions of the mice, their legs, ears, tails, and the patterns on the fur are far too similar for these to be mice belonging to different groups, or even the same mouse being imaged days apart. Noise in the rest of the image is also repetitive.”
I happened to obtain the full statement which Rollins provides to journalists:
“The presence of image discrepancies in a paper is not evidence of an author’s intent to deceive. That conclusion can only be drawn after a careful, fact-based examination which is an integral part of our response. Our experience is that errors are often unintentional and do not rise to the level of misconduct. […]
While software advancements can reveal anomalies not previously detected, AI programs are not foolproof. In fact, some of the allegations recently raised by a blogger against Dana-Farber researchers are wrong.
Our commitment to decisive action is reflected in the fact that Dana-Farber authors and Dana-Farber were already reviewing potential data errors in a number of the cases listed in the blog, and the institution and its scientists already have taken action in 97% of those cases (37 of 38 manuscripts cited by blogger Sholto David for which Dana-Farber has primary responsibility).
As for the rest of the allegations, 16 contained data generated in laboratories other than those of the four Dana-Farber authors named in the blog. This is important because the primary data underlying the figures being questioned — access to which is essential to determine if they can and must be corrected—reside in other laboratories. Where possible, the heads of all of the other laboratories have been contacted and we will work with them to see that they correct the literature as warranted. Three of the manuscripts required no further action because the allegations of data anomalies were not supported by our analysis.”
Rollins of course never says which allegations he considers to be wrong. Unlike Sholto with his detective tool ImageTwin, Barrett “Foolproof” Rollins is the real expert in data integrity issues, simply because his own science contains data anomalies:
This almost reminds me of the situation at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, whose research integrity officer played an active part in the fraud he then covered up.
“The graduate school at University of Texas MD Anderson does not care and keep sending students to his lab, Sood is a member of faculty there. RIO at MDACC doesn’t care because witnesses either left the country or are too afraid to speak.”
But while no major news outlet covered the MD Anderson fraud scandal, it’s different with DFCI. Here is the student newspaper Harvard Crimson again (the first one to pick up Sholto’s investigation), writing on 24 January 2024:
“In the emailed statement to The Crimson, DFCI Research Integrity Officer Barrett J. Rollins wrote that six manuscripts have retractions underway and 31 are being corrected.”
In one day, we went from one to six retractions for data forgery, but there is still no misconduct. Then, reporting by The Wall Street Journal arrived:
“Additionally, Dana-Farber is reviewing an undisclosed number of other papers that it became aware of more than a year ago. “We knew about many of these papers and their allegations before the blog post,” Rollins said.
He isn’t even lying. They knew. 3 papers by Kenneth Anderson were retracted already in 2010-2011 (Gatt et al 2010, Tai et al 2009 and Okawa et al 2008). They knew of the old PubPeer threads Clare Francis posted 9 to 10 years ago. Like this:
“The findings also highlighted the conflicts of interest that can complicate internal reviews of data irregularities. Dr. Rollins, Dana-Farber’s research integrity officer, is himself an author on a few of the papers flagged by Dr. David. The institute said he would be recused from any investigation touching on his research.”
But Rollins can investigate all other papers by his collaborators - Clare Francis counted 5 common publications by Rollins with Ghobrial, 4 with Anderson, and 3 with Hahn. No conflict of interests there!
Then, Washington Post chimed in. This paper got mentioned, where one flow cytometry measurement was gated differently to be passed off as two different experiments:
“Hidde Ploegh, an immunologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and the senior author of a 2005 paper flagged on PubPeer as having an image discrepancy, said in an email that he was not aware of any problem with the paper.
“It is more than a little unfortunate that it is easy to lob these types of accusations anonymously without checking with the authors first,” Ploegh said in an email. “It creates an undeserved suggestion of malfeasance.”
Boaz Tirosh, a biochemist at Case Western Reserve University and the paper’s lead author, […] added that the paper’s main finding “has been confirmed by multiple studies in the community.” Glimcher is a co-author on that paper.”
A less stupid person would have admitted the problem and blamed a student who left many years ago. It gets even more embarrassing in Tirosh’s PubPeer comments.
I would like to introduce Min Tang, who were the editor for 418 papers in Hindawi journals, and 417 of them were retracted. Tang is an associate professor in Jiangsu University, where he has published in a wide range of fields, but has not previously held an editorial position elsewhere. However, he led five special issues in Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine and BioMed Research International as guest editor. All 417 articles published in these five special issues, edited by him, were retracted – the largest number of editors of Hindawi journals, with a lead of more than 100 retractions.
Many articles in these five special issues are out of scope. The guest editorial team includes Jialiang Yang, the deputy general manager and head of the science department of Geneis Beijing Co. Ltd.Yang’s field is bioinformatics. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the United States. He is a distinguished professor at China Ocean University and Anhui Medical University, and was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences (Aha!). Although the editors of those papers are usually Tang, with only six edited by Yang, there is reason to think that Yang is important to the guest editorial team because he is the one who is competent in editing these medical papers and knows many Chinese doctors (potential authors).
Wiley, Hindawi’s parent company, announced in December 2023 that they were stopping the Hindawi brand and released a white paper about the massive manipulation of the publishing process that took place at Hindawi journals and was conducted by the paper mills. Wiley seems to assert that they were duped by evil guest editors. At the end of 2023, Wiley disclosed that they had identified at least three hundred editors at fault. Apparently, Tang was one of them.
Parashorea tomentella continues their investigation of Hindawi’s uneasy collaboration with Chinese papermills. Can it be solved with the promised 511 retractions?
The duo also appeared together in at least six special issues in Frontiers, Yang must have joined Tang, but not vice versa. These six special issues, one in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, two in Frontiers in Bioinformatics (here and here), and three in Frontiers in Genetics (here, here, and here). These are a similar to the special issues of Hindawi journals, the difference is that most fall within the scope of the special issue, except Xin et al 2023, Shen et al 2023 (edited by Tang) and Zhang et al 2023 (edited by Yang).
The authors of the 417 retracted articles were from 30 Chinese provinces, Germany, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The authors of the 417 retracted papers came from 30 provinces in China, Germany, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The only paper in Hindawi journals edited by Tang that was not retracted was published in regular issue of Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine (Hu & Zhu 2022). It does not mention any mathematical methods.
Note by LS: this Short was corrected on 20.02.2024 to fix a case of mistaken identity regarding Min Tang.
Flat-fee deal
Excellent news for all scientists in Germany. From now on, you are allowed to publish in Frontiers only.
The emails published here prove that EU Special Envoy for OA, Robert Jan Smits, received constant counselling from Frontiers CEO Kamila Markram when designing Plan S. It seems, Frontiers and Smits share exactly same vision for the future of scholarly publishing.
This is Frontiers press release from 14 December 2023:
“Frontiers and the German National Library of Medicine (ZB MED) have announced the launch of the first transformed framework agreement – a national, fully open access flat-fee deal – for Germany. This landmark agreement is an innovative initiative designed to champion open access to scientific research, and to provide long term budget security for institutions.
Under this agreement, and through a single annual payment from each participating institution, more than 900 German research centers and libraries will be enabled to support their affiliated researchers to publish an unlimited number of peer-reviewed articles across all Frontiers journals and Frontiers’ partner journals. The agreement is Frontiers’ first flat-fee agreement in Europe and will run for three years starting in January 2024. […]
Full details of the German national agreement can be found here.”
This means, that all German research institutions are now instructing their employees to publish in Frontiers only, so the university doesn’t have to pay extra. Those who wish to publish outside of Frontiers, will have to pay the publication costs for mandatory Open Access from their own lab research budget. Also, German researchers will become worldwide the prime address for Asian papermillers seeking to recruit coauthors to cover the publication costs. A win-win for all sides, thanks to Frontiers and ZB MED!
And it is not limited to Germany, as Frontiers mentions with greedy Schadenfreude:
“The agreement is part of an ongoing flat-fee pilot project which in recent months has yielded new agreements in North America, with the University of California and the University of Kansas. ”
Yet on the other end, Frontiers is saving money. They just sacked 600 people, almost a third of their staff. A Frontiers announcement from 10 January 2024:
“By the end of the pandemic, the publishing market saw a downturn. This reinforced the importance for resilience and agility amidst market shifts.
These insights prompted a major reorganization in Frontiers throughout 2023 to form multi-expert teams empowered with AI technology to provide the full spectrum of publishing services tailored to our more than 2,000 academic communities. We also optimized our operational model and management framework to easily adapt to changes in the market.
In the current market conditions, we are increasing efficiency further by proposing to significantly resize our workforce of about 2,000 employees across 23 countries to about 1,400 employees. Together with the management and operational changes made in 2023, this makes Frontiers a leaner and more agile organization, with enhanced financial resilience amidst market shifts. “
Basically, Frontiers eliminates the faulty human decency factor, and intends to run its business on papermills and AI, which will automatically attribute random papermill-provided editors and reviewers to papermill submissions.
Another chapter in the bizarre story of MD Anderson cheaters, who all remain untouchable and about all rules. This time it is about the hematopathology professor Roberto N Miranda, Read about him in earlier Friday Shorts, Miranda’s fabrications were originally flagged by Elisabeth Bik in her blog.
Figure 4 fragments, look closer to see the highlighted duplications:
On 16 January 2024, this Correction was published by Wiley;
“Duplications were detected in the lower left corner of Figure 4A–C. The areas of concern were not present in the original file and probably appeared due to the incorrect processing of the images, while relocating the image labels to the upper left corner during production stage. The authors were not aware of this error and confirm that all the experimental results and corresponding conclusions mentioned in the paper remain unaffected. The publisher sincerely apologises for this oversight.”
Such small intra-image duplications happen when authors steal the images published papers or grant proposals of others and edit out the original labellings. In fact, in a very similar case, Miranda even admitted to have manipulated the images!
In May 2023, he wrote on PubPeer (highlight mine):
“As this article is a review and we are not presenting new data, we thought it acceptable to make minor improvements of images in Figure 2 as long as the content of the image is not altered. “
Roberto N. Miranda, MD
But Wiley went on all fours, licked the boots of MD Anderson cheaters and took the blame for their image forgeries. Probably sacked some utterly innocent people at the copy-editing department just to appease MD Anderson.
The MD Anderson Cancer Center, part of the University of Texas and located in Houston, is a giant hub of huge cancer research money, even for US standards. They also do a lot of science there, which only purpose seems to be publishing in big journals in order to generate even more money. If there…
The Editor-in-Chief is Professor Dan Berney MA MB B Chir, FRCPath, who previously issued an insane Expression of Concern for similar issues for Miranda’s MD Anderson colleagues Mario Marques-Piubelli and Francisco Vega (read here). This is what else this team published in Elsevier, flagged by Bik:
We can safely expect a correction, like this was corrected by Elsevier, also by Miranda, Vega and Marques-Piubelli:
L. Jeffrey Medeiros , Mario L. Marques-Piubelli , Valentina F.I. Sangiorgio , Roberto Ruiz-Cordero , Francisco Vega , Andrew L. Feldman , Jennifer R. Chapman , Mark W. Clemens , Kelly K. Hunt , Mark G. Evans , Christine Khoo , Stephen Lade , Mark Silberman , Jerzy Morkowski , Edward M. Pina , Daniel C. Mills , Christopher M. Bates , Winston B. Magno , Aliyah R. Sohani , Beth A. Sieling , Joseph M. O’Donoghue, Chris M. Bacon, Neill Patani, Despina Televantou, Suzanne D. Turner, Laura Johnson, Fiona MacNeill, Andrew C. Wotherspoon, Swaminathan P. Iyer, Luis E. Malpica, Keyur P. Patel Jie Xu, Roberto N. Miranda Epstein–Barr-virus-positive large B-cell lymphoma associated with breast implants: an analysis of eight patients suggesting a possible pathogenetic relationship Modern Pathology (2021) doi: 10.1038/s41379-021-00863-1
“In the original published version of this article, the authors included a version of figure 6F that was altered to improve its aesthetic appearance.”
Wiley and Elsevier are worse than predatory publishers. But they now set up a campaign to fight Asian papermills: United2Act. Because only white people are allowed to fraud.
Another publisher went on its knees to lick a cheater’s boots. This time, EMBO Press, who have a clear unwritten policies that publications by EMBO members are infallible and must never be acted upon. This time, it is about Miguel Beato, emeritus professor at CRG Barcelona in Spain and University of Marburg in Germany, and EMBO member since 1984. Read about Beato here:
“Is Beato aware of the countless tons of single-use plastic waste that his institute (and all the others) produce every year for churning out yet more garbage in the form of fake research papers?” – Aneurus Inconstans
This is the paper, last author is Beato’s dishonest mentee Guillermo Vicent (who also trained under the mega-cheater Mario Galigniana in Argentina, mentioned in the article above):
Aneurus inconstans: “Figure 1E, the background is composed by repetitive, pixel-by-pixel identical portions (boxes of same color).“
The background fragments are clearly duplicated. But EMBO sees it differently!
In January 2024, The EMBO Journal posted this comment on PubPeer:
“The Editors of the EMBO Journal have re-assessed the original source data provided in the paper as well as the original captured image provided by the authors. We conclude that the images show no signs of image aberrations. No further action will be taken.
Two scans of the whole gel including the ER and PR blots at different exposition times (provided by the authors) are attached to this message.”
The attached “original source data” has a very low resolution, much lower than the published blot which has clear signs of image aberrations. This is technically impossible, unless the “original source data” is a forgery and the low resolution serves to obscure the traces of digital manipulation. The authors were also a bit sloppy, as Aneurus inconstans noted:
“why the 55 kDa tag is at the bands’ height in Figure 1E, while it is lower in the raw data (see below)? And last but not least, don’t the authors and the EMBO editors know that the abbreviation for kilodalton is not Kda, but rather kDa?”
Bernd Pulverer, head of EMBO Publications, replied on PubPeer with words but without a meaning (and even addressing the wrong sleuth):
“Thank you for the comment, A. biskrensis. We posted two more source data images, but note that a source data image without the apparent digital image processing artefacts was also published as part of the paper. We think the published data speaks for itself and encourage readers to always view source data if they have concerns about figure panels. More information on our policies can be found at https://www.embopress.org/image-integrity“
I am not sure the EMBO editors are gullible, or just take all outsiders (i.e., non-EMBO members) to be idiots. Probably both.
An instrumental failure
At Elsevier, a correction explained the impossible.
Raphael Levy on Fig 1: “The original data (before correction, see below) shows two spectra where the noisy baseline is identical but the relative intensity of the peaks vary.”Overlay by Orchestes quercus after reformatting
On 1 November 2023, Elsevier published this Erratum:
“The publisher regrets that in Fig. 1 on p. 3, some spectra appeared incorrectly due to system malfunction, as explained below:
‘Noise is a stochastic process’; however, each random variable of the stochastic process is uniquely associated with an element in the set, and hence with the specific parameters or settings in the X-ray diffractometer, in this case. The ideal data-collecting conditions depend on step size, time per step, detector type, slit sizes, generator settings, and tube power rating. So, a similar error signal may be an instrumental failure, the problem may appear due to insufficient data collection, leading to a low signal-to-background ratio.
After rigorous data revision through re-measurement, the corrected Fig. 1 is as follows:
These corrections will neither affect the objective of this work nor affect the conclusion made in the paper. Nevertheless, the authors highly regret and humbly apologize for any inconvenience that may have been caused.
The publisher would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
Raphael Levy criticised this insane Erratum on PubPeer:
“The explanation is absurd. Stochastic noise cannot be repeated in two independent measurements whatever the signal-to-background ratio.”
Orchestes quercus added:
“The whole argument very much reminds me of discussions on the work of Magnus Willander and Omer Nur. Take e.g. a look at the arguments in this PubPeer post. Also see that the paper has by now been retracted.”
“The Board assesses that there are no scientifically acceptable explanations for why the notified researchers have fabricated research results in the manner that has occurred in the notified articles. Raw data also does not support the reported results. [..] In summary, the Board finds therefore that the notified researchers have been guilty of misconduct in…
Yet another sleuth found more fraud in that Applied Surface Science paper:
Carex atrofusca: “In Figure 2a […] red and blue data is the same (same noise patterns in the whole range) except at the position marked by the arrow.”
Fig 6 “Although there is a crossover of blue and red data (i.e. one data is not simply rescaled or plotted with an offset) red and blue data display the same noise features right and left of the crossover, see magnified regions. Black data also displays the same noise features. Black data appears as a slightly rescaled and shifted copy of blue data (or vice versa).”
Best to retract both the Erratum and the paper. Maarten van Kampen wrote to the Editor-in-Chief Henrik Rudolph, Dean of the the Faculty of Military Sciences at the Netherlands Defence Academy, in Dutch even (translated)
“There is simply no way these two XRD curves can be exactly the same except for some peaks due to “an instrumental failure, the problem may appear due to insufficient data collection, leading to a low signal-to-background ratio”. “Insufficient data collection” or a “low signal-to- noise ratio” produces at most… a lot of different noise. Figure 1 simply contains an obvious fabrication and therefore fraud by the authors.”
But this army professor doesn’t talk to civilians. Maarten’s emails went unanswered.
Could in principle to be applied to embryos
Elsevier tidies up its papermill mess. Maarten van Kampen wrote an update to his story about idiotic zoophilia algorithms:
“BatDolphin-based sparse fuzzy algorithm, cat swarm optimization, honey bees optimization, moth amalgamated elephant herding optimization, fitness sorted moth search algorithm, improved tunicate swarm optimization, lion algorithm, deer hunting optimization, various rider optimization schemes, grey wolf optimization, cuckoo search, and finally a bat algorithm. Such a zoo of names immediately raises suspicion, and for a good…
“I just found that the journal of Gene Expression Patterns has issued an Editorial Note (paywalled) to the special issue that started this post. And no, it is not a recognition of the issues. The editor has removed the three papers that are about gene expression. And writes that the other ones are fine because it is all about ‘widening the scope’ (typo his):
“Thus, although it seems that some of the papers of this special issue have nothing to do with gene expression patterns or biology in general, they are about fundamental tools forimagining analysis that could in principle to be applied to embryos. The aim of this special issue is to widen the field of gene expression during development by opening the possibility of applying techniques from other fields of research;Roberto Mayor, Editor-in-Chief of Gene Expression Patterns. Valerie Teng-Broug, Publisher”
So think how one can use a paper on the recognition of Kurdish handwriting to further the field of gene expression research. Or this paper that seeks to develop a product recommendation system for web shops. Or this paper authored by one of the special editors on how one can hide a secret image in other images. All surely of great benefit in ‘imagining‘ embryos.”
Yes, a real Nigerian scam. Papermilled trash published in Elsevier, in the trash journal Toxicology Reports once led by antivaxxer Aristidis Tsatsakis, now again led by its founder Lawrence Lash.
The specialty of this Nigerian scam is that they fraudsters stole the identities of US scientists. Why? Probably to impress racist editors who wanted to see a white face with an Aryan name before accepting utterly fake trash. And this is how Ralph Muehl Albrecht, emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin, who retired almost two decades ago, became the last author of this study on cancer healing magic of African basil:
Mycosphaerella arachidis: “Figure 4: Unexpected overlap in the green rectangles: 4g and 4k are different experimental conditions.”
The scammers used Albrecht’s identity before, in Frontiers. Then, another elderly white male professor in USA, Peter Crooks of University of Arkansas Little Rock, was attached to the paper:
The Frontiers editor and one of the two reviewers were Nigerian. Fittingly, a copy of that paper was published in parallel in Nigerian Journal of Physiological Sciences. Albrecht also had the bad luck to be appointed author on other scams by the same Nigerians. In Hindawi Albrecht was joined by a fellow emeritus professor at his University of Wisconsin, Hasan Mukhtar:
Actinopolyspora biskrensis: “Could the authors please check Figure 3c and Figure 4a? It appears the same band has been used in both figures”
I contacted Albrecht, Mukhtar and Crooks, but didn’t receive an immediate answer.
Retraction Watchdogging
Efforts to contact researcher failed
Three retractions for the Greek researcher Chrysovalantou Mihailidou, once affiliated with the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.
“The retraction has been agreed due to irregularities in Figures 1A and 2B that cannot be explained because efforts to contact Chrysovalantou Mihailidou, the researcher who conducted the experiments, have failed. As a result, the conclusions reported in the article are not considered reliable.”
Presumably, Mahailidou’s former PI asked for retraction? Nr 2, very fresh:
The retraction was published on 18 January 2024, with typos:
“Concerns were raised to the journal regarding image manipulation of bands in Figs. 1 and 6. After a thorough review and evaluation, the authors were made aware of these concerns and failed to provide replacement figures from a reconducted experiment as requested by the journal.
The evidence of image manipulation present in this article brings its conclusions into question.”
Also here, the retraction was published on 18 January 2024, with typos:
“Concerns were raised to the journal regarding image manipulation of bands in Figs. 8 and 9. After a thorough review and evaluation the authors were made aware of these concerns and failed to provide replacement figures from a reconducted experiement as requested by the journal.
The evidence of image manipulation present in this article brings its conclusions into question.”
Interesting. The journal offered to fix the paper with “replacement figures from a reconducted experiement” but Mihailidou’s co-authors opted for retractions. Gosh, what a mess she must have left behind.
This merely got an Expression of Concern because Wonkotarget has the paper “currently under investigation“:
“Circles highlight copy/pasted elements, which can include rotations and some stretching. Only examples were highlighted here in the top row. There is plenty more to be discovered in here.”
“It seems very likely that mice in this study had actually already died before, with the data partially having been lifted from Endocr Relat Cancer. 2015 Apr;22(2):229-38. doi: 10.1530/ERC-15-0019”
Since Mihailidou disappeared, I contacted her senior co-authors Athanasios Papavassiliou, Hippokratis Kiaris and Paraskevi Moutsatsou, but received no reply.
Another Mihailidou paper (recycling some of Oncotarget‘s data) has nothing on it, not even an expression of concern:
Here a possible clue as to why this journal, Antioxidants & Redox Signaling, hasn’t acted yet. Its Editor-in-Chief, Chanda K Sen, associate vice chancellor at the University of Pittsburgh and self-proclaimed “world-renowned regenerative medicine expert and pioneer of novel wound care technologies“, himself published dodgy science, as evidenced on PubPeer. For example:
Congratulations to Christoph Thiemermann, professor at Queen Mary University of London, UK, and his former mentee Salvatore Cuzzocrea (former rector of the University of Messina, Italy), on their first retraction. Expect many more.
“These unscrupulous charlatans in Messina should be fired on the spot tomorrow morning, forced to return twenty years of undeserved wages and sent to work the land” – Aneurus Inconstans
“Figures 6b and 8a. Much more similar after 180 degree rotation than expected.”“Figure 7: micrographs (a) and (c) overlap (red boxes), and the brightness differs between the two images. These two pictures supposedly show “no apoptotic cells were observed in ileum from sham-operated rats (a)”, and “tissues obtained from SAO-shock treated rats treated with 1 mg/kg TDZD-8 demonstrated no apoptotic cells or fragments (c)“”
The ice-breaking retraction for Cuzzo the Magnificent and Porsche Chris arrived on 18 January 2024 (highlight mine):
“The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article. After the publication of the article, concerns were raised about image overlaps (see below). The authors were unable to provide raw images and documental proof of ethical approval.
[1]. Partial image overlap between ß-actin controls of Figures 6b and 8a, and 6b and 8b.
[2]. Partial image overlap between ß-actin controls of Figures 8a and 8b.
[3]. Partial image overlap between Figures 7a and 7c.
Therefore, the Editor-in-Chief has no longer confidence in the data of this article.
None of the authors have responded to any correspondence from the editor/publisher about this retraction. The co-author, Carmelo Muià is deceased.”
Welcome to the the William Harvey Research Institute in London. Meet two proteges of its founder, the late Nobelist Sir John Vane: Chris Thiemermann and Mauro Perretti. Then meet their own rotten mentees, especially Salvatore Cuzzocrea and Jesmond Dalli.
Now consider this sentence again: “The authors were unable to provide […] documental proof of ethical approval.” The surgical experiments on live rats were done in Italy, as the manuscript stated:
“Animal care was in compliance with Italian regulations on protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purpose (D.M. 116192) and with EEC regulations (O.J. of E.C.L 358/1, 18 December 1986).”
The authors lied. They broke laws. There never was an ethics approval, as they now admit. Obviously they tortured the rats for fun, because the results were forged anyway.
Bimler’s descriptive study
A retraction notice references Smut Clyde! It is about papermilled nonsense on MOFs in medicine, read here for background:
“The Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher have retracted this article. Following the preprint deposition of Bimler’s descriptive study [1], an investigation by the Publisher found evidence of systematic manipulation of the publication process. Recurring problems include, but are not limited to, citations which do not support claims made in the text, non-standard phrasing, anomalies in the figures and discrepancies in ethics approval statements. Based on the investigation’s findings, the Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions of this article.
The authors agree to this retraction.
References
David Bimler. Better Living through Coordination Chemistry: A descriptive study of a prolific papermill that combines crystallography and medicine, 15 April 2022, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1537438/v1
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Great shorts, thanks Leonid. The first for porsche Chris 😂 But how many more can we expect? By rights it could be something like 50, no? And then that would QMUL research integrity do? Start a new engagement panel? Create another stupid process which is impossible to satisfy?
Retractions per se are not trouble. Trouble is when money stops coming in. But Porsche Chris and QMUL can rely on the corruption of the British research funding system, where even the lying trachea transplanters of Videregen keep getting money from UKRI.
“Barrett “Bulletproof” Rollins fire-fighting for Dana Farber”
Love this one. There does not seem to be any primary data, but it is Harvard and the editor-in-chief of Blood (which hardly ever corrects, or retracts papers) is at Harvard.
Editor-in-Chief
Nancy Berliner, MD
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA
Blood. 2005 Jun 1; 105(11): 4308–4313.
Prepublished online 2005 Feb 10. doi: 10.1182/blood-2004-09-3578
PMCID: PMC1895025
PMID: 15705791
Constitutive homing of mast cell progenitors to the intestine depends on autologous expression of the chemokine receptor CXCR2
J. Pablo Abonia, K. Frank Austen, Barrett J. Rollins, Sunil K. Joshi, Richard A. Flavell, William A. Kuziel, Pandelakis A. Koni, and Michael F. Gurish
Author information
From the Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH; the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; the Molecular Immunology Program, Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; and Autoimmune and Inflammatory Diseases, Protein Design Labs, Fremont, CA.
Reprints: Michael F. Gurish, Smith Research Bldg, Room 616D, One Jimmy Fund Way, Boston, MA 02115-6085; e-mail: mgurish@rics.bwh.harvard.edu
Yale does seem to be less riddled with problematic data than Harvard, but there are exceptions.
Richard A Flavell, one of the authors of this paper for example.
Rollins quoted in this STAT news Profile of Sholto. https://www.statnews.com/2024/01/27/sholto-david-profile-dana-farber-retractions/ “”The way that post was written – it’s puerile, it’s snaky, it’s misogynistic,” Barrett Rollins, Dana-Farber’s research integrity officer, told STAT this week about David’s blog. “I don’t want to go too deeply into this, but that was really upsetting,” adding that “to Photoshop [Ghobrial’s] picture onto Barbie’s body is inexcusable.’ “
Let me assist RIO Rollins. What’s “really upsetting” is the idea that falsified dodgy data might support animal and *od forbid, human research. Inviting people dying of cancer to enroll in a phase 1 trial based on unreliable data is inexcusable. So is the attempt to deflect the import of David’s allegations of misconduct by implying misogyny.
If this is the person responsible for fostering a culture of compliance and respect for science, you wonder what else is going on at DF.
Min Tang (唐敏), with a lead of 87 after January 24. The second place goes to Zhihan Lv (Zhihan Lyu, 吕智涵), whose edited papers are still being retracted, but he can’t be first place because he only edited 365 papers in Hindawi journals since 2021.
These 417 papers should generate $1,025,100 ((417-5 special issues×3 waived APC for the guest editor team) ×2550) in APCs for Wiley. Many of the Chinese authors who paid fees are now facing investigations by China’s Ministry of Education (https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_25897368 ), but no authors have yet been seen making claims against Tang, Lv, or other guest editors.
Why would authors even make allegations against the editors? It is likely they even do not know their names, all communication with editors having been delegated to service providers (or what is the name for the papermill intermediaries?)
Meanwhile, Zhihan Lv is happy with his professorship in Uppsala. I have notified them about suspected research misconduct, and my notification was acknowledged on 20 October 2023, but pretty much nothing happened since.
one issue missing from the dfci coverage so far is the fact that the ORI (The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) that oversees and directs U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) research, including NIH where the bulk of the farber’s public monies come from) is severely limited in their ability to compel (subpoena) individuals/institutions and must rely on strongly worded language instead (see https://ori.hhs.gov/frequently-asked-questions). unfortunately, the us congress must act to give ori any new persuasive powers to detect, enforce, and root out fraud from public funded research.
imagine if an ori investigation could subpoena raw data and cross check submitted nih grant applications for evidence of use of the fraudulent images that have subsequently lead to correction and/or retraction in a peer reviewed journal. the inclusion of such data within a nih grant could have severe enough consequences for individuals and institutions (see https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps/HTML5/section_2/2.3.10_fraud__waste_and_abuse_of_nih_grant_funds.htm) to abandon the practice (or dream up new ways to get around the policies). a large number of “Findings of Research Misconduct” notices (eg, https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-23-048.html) at particular institutions, like the dfci, would create a public record and possibly have the intended effect of raising the consequences for such data falsification practices. also, all research funds should be frozen and reclaimed to pay for the new powers the uc congress gives ori.
Trump can run for president despite being clearly barred by US Constitution. Even russia has laws which actually forbid most of the things putin’s regime does.
Laws become meaningless when those in charge don’t care about them.
in politics, in war, and in research
Authorea informed me yesterday that they had published on 30 January 2024 a preprint of a manuscript which I had submitted to a Wiley journal in the beginning of April 2021. The manuscript was soon rejected and it is not yet published. Others with similar experiences?
Min Tang (https://smkx.ujs.edu.cn/info/1128/5177.htm) is a associate professor in Jiangsu University, where he has published in a wide range of fields, but has not previously held an editorial position elsewhere. I mistakenly thought the name was Tang of Zhejiang University, and I need to apologize to him.
For Better Science 
Great shorts, thanks Leonid. The first for porsche Chris 😂 But how many more can we expect? By rights it could be something like 50, no? And then that would QMUL research integrity do? Start a new engagement panel? Create another stupid process which is impossible to satisfy?
LikeLike
Retractions per se are not trouble. Trouble is when money stops coming in. But Porsche Chris and QMUL can rely on the corruption of the British research funding system, where even the lying trachea transplanters of Videregen keep getting money from UKRI.
LikeLike
“Barrett “Bulletproof” Rollins fire-fighting for Dana Farber”
Love this one. There does not seem to be any primary data, but it is Harvard and the editor-in-chief of Blood (which hardly ever corrects, or retracts papers) is at Harvard.
https://ashpublications.org/blood/pages/editorial_board_and_staff
Editor-in-Chief
Nancy Berliner, MD
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA
Blood. 2005 Jun 1; 105(11): 4308–4313.
Prepublished online 2005 Feb 10. doi: 10.1182/blood-2004-09-3578
PMCID: PMC1895025
PMID: 15705791
Constitutive homing of mast cell progenitors to the intestine depends on autologous expression of the chemokine receptor CXCR2
J. Pablo Abonia, K. Frank Austen, Barrett J. Rollins, Sunil K. Joshi, Richard A. Flavell, William A. Kuziel, Pandelakis A. Koni, and Michael F. Gurish
Author information
From the Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH; the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; the Molecular Immunology Program, Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; and Autoimmune and Inflammatory Diseases, Protein Design Labs, Fremont, CA.
Reprints: Michael F. Gurish, Smith Research Bldg, Room 616D, One Jimmy Fund Way, Boston, MA 02115-6085; e-mail: mgurish@rics.bwh.harvard.edu
Yale does seem to be less riddled with problematic data than Harvard, but there are exceptions.
Richard A Flavell, one of the authors of this paper for example.
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=flavell
LikeLike
Rollins quoted in this STAT news Profile of Sholto.
https://www.statnews.com/2024/01/27/sholto-david-profile-dana-farber-retractions/
“”The way that post was written – it’s puerile, it’s snaky, it’s misogynistic,” Barrett Rollins, Dana-Farber’s research integrity officer, told STAT this week about David’s blog. “I don’t want to go too deeply into this, but that was really upsetting,” adding that “to Photoshop [Ghobrial’s] picture onto Barbie’s body is inexcusable.’ “
LikeLike
Let me assist RIO Rollins. What’s “really upsetting” is the idea that falsified dodgy data might support animal and *od forbid, human research. Inviting people dying of cancer to enroll in a phase 1 trial based on unreliable data is inexcusable. So is the attempt to deflect the import of David’s allegations of misconduct by implying misogyny.
If this is the person responsible for fostering a culture of compliance and respect for science, you wonder what else is going on at DF.
LikeLike
Barrett Rollins’ wife died of cancer. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/11/12/metro/she-was-celebrated-oncologist-why-did-she-hide-her-breast-cancer-until-it-was-too-late/
LikeLike
Min Tang (唐敏), with a lead of 87 after January 24. The second place goes to Zhihan Lv (Zhihan Lyu, 吕智涵), whose edited papers are still being retracted, but he can’t be first place because he only edited 365 papers in Hindawi journals since 2021.
These 417 papers should generate $1,025,100 ((417-5 special issues×3 waived APC for the guest editor team) ×2550) in APCs for Wiley. Many of the Chinese authors who paid fees are now facing investigations by China’s Ministry of Education (https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_25897368 ), but no authors have yet been seen making claims against Tang, Lv, or other guest editors.
LikeLike
Why would authors even make allegations against the editors? It is likely they even do not know their names, all communication with editors having been delegated to service providers (or what is the name for the papermill intermediaries?)
Meanwhile, Zhihan Lv is happy with his professorship in Uppsala. I have notified them about suspected research misconduct, and my notification was acknowledged on 20 October 2023, but pretty much nothing happened since.
LikeLike
one issue missing from the dfci coverage so far is the fact that the ORI (The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) that oversees and directs U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) research, including NIH where the bulk of the farber’s public monies come from) is severely limited in their ability to compel (subpoena) individuals/institutions and must rely on strongly worded language instead (see https://ori.hhs.gov/frequently-asked-questions). unfortunately, the us congress must act to give ori any new persuasive powers to detect, enforce, and root out fraud from public funded research.
LikeLike
imagine if an ori investigation could subpoena raw data and cross check submitted nih grant applications for evidence of use of the fraudulent images that have subsequently lead to correction and/or retraction in a peer reviewed journal. the inclusion of such data within a nih grant could have severe enough consequences for individuals and institutions (see https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps/HTML5/section_2/2.3.10_fraud__waste_and_abuse_of_nih_grant_funds.htm) to abandon the practice (or dream up new ways to get around the policies). a large number of “Findings of Research Misconduct” notices (eg, https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-23-048.html) at particular institutions, like the dfci, would create a public record and possibly have the intended effect of raising the consequences for such data falsification practices. also, all research funds should be frozen and reclaimed to pay for the new powers the uc congress gives ori.
LikeLike
Trump can run for president despite being clearly barred by US Constitution. Even russia has laws which actually forbid most of the things putin’s regime does.
Laws become meaningless when those in charge don’t care about them.
in politics, in war, and in research
LikeLike
ORI is toothless on purpose. Read here:
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Perhaps Dr. Praticò should sue himself….
LikeLiked by 1 person
See https://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/4801646/voortbestaan-medische-faculteit-lumc-kan-in-gevaar-komen-ziekenhuis-ziet-ernst-niet-in [in Dutch]. How about papers of Ferry Ossendorp? Anyone any idea?
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See https://immunology.lumc.nl/education/team/ferry-ossendorp-292
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Authorea informed me yesterday that they had published on 30 January 2024 a preprint of a manuscript which I had submitted to a Wiley journal in the beginning of April 2021. The manuscript was soon rejected and it is not yet published. Others with similar experiences?
https://www.authorea.com/users/365914/articles/709569-a-fraudulent-study-on-the-breeding-biology-of-the-endangered-basra-reed-warbler-acrocephalus-griseldis
LikeLike
Min Tang (https://smkx.ujs.edu.cn/info/1128/5177.htm) is a associate professor in Jiangsu University, where he has published in a wide range of fields, but has not previously held an editorial position elsewhere. I mistakenly thought the name was Tang of Zhejiang University, and I need to apologize to him.
LikeLike