"The Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity of University of Liège investigated the overlap between the aforementioned panels and recommended the article be corrected"
Liège is a medieval city in the Wallonic part of Belgium. It said to have a huge bishop’s palace, a statue of Charlemagne, an old tradition of wooden puppets dating to Charlemagne period, and a younger university, founded 200 years ago.
If only the University of Liège had those Tchantchès puppets for its professors, but no. Instead, there is a tradition of academic inbreeding and bad science, from one academic generation to the next. Sabine Wislet and Bernard Rogister are the crassest cases, but there are also Jacques Piette, Agnès Noël, Vincent Castronovo and the rest.
Those are not small pawns – they are or used to be this university’s leadership. And the wooden puppets of the Ethics and Scientific Integrity Board have medieval tools at their disposal to discourage journal editors from retracting fraudulent papers from Liège.
Sabine Wislet-Gendebien is a Belgian zombie. Unlike others in this story, she is not a full professor of the University of Liege, and she might never become. The reason why she remains associate professor for biomedical science are Wislet’s 5 retractions. The papers were outrageously fraudulent, but you will have to click on the PubPeer links to see.
As a side note, the directorial boss of Wilset’s former postdoctoral advisor Anurag Tandon at the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases in Toronto, Canada, the British-Canadian neurologist Peter St George-Hyslop, has a huge Pubpeer record (thanks to Clare Francis), but because St George-Hyslop is English upper class he is untouchable. Here a common paper:
Fusheng Chen , Gang Yu , Shigeki Arawaka , Masaki Nishimura , Toshitaka Kawarai , Haung Yu , Anurag Tandon , Agnes Supala , You Qiang Song , Ekaterina Rogaeva , Paul Milman , Christine Sato , Cong Yu , Christopher Janus , Julie Lee , Lixin Song , Lili Zhang , Paul E. Fraser , P. H. St George-Hyslop Nicastrin binds to membrane-tethered NotchNature Cell Biology (2001) doi: 10.1038/35087069
Fig 4BFig 3
Fig 2
So you see, Wislet grew up scientifically in a very, uhm , conductive environment. In 2017, St George-Hyslop was investigated by his former English employer. This was the result, announced to Clare Francis by the Wellcome Trust Policies & Governance Officer Lucy Douch:
“we raised your concerns about Professor Peter St George-Hyslop with the University of Cambridge, the employing institution. The University conducted an investigation under its Misconduct in Research policy. The investigation concluded that the allegations made are entirely unfounded.“
As another side note: bone marrow cells used to be pluripotent thanks to another Belgian cheater, Catherine Verfaillie. After unknown number of patients died (also because of Paolo Macchiarini), scientists had to accept that one cannot make cartilage or neurons from bone marrow cells, unless one applies fraud. Which explains why Wilset had to resort to creativity while developing“cell replacement therapy in neurological disorders, using adult bone marrow stromal cells.“
Catherine Verfaillie is a zombie scientist: her past stem cell research long discredited, but she still is an influential and very well funded star of Belgian science. Now Elisabeth Bik had a fresh new look at Verfaillie’s papers
Wislet disagreed with the retractions, and so did the last author on two of the retracted papers, Bernard Rogister, who just happens to be her former PhD mentor. Rogister also happens to be Vice-Dean for Research (Medicine) in Liege, i.e. in charge of all research misconduct investigations in his faculty.
Together they postulated already 20 years ago that neurons can be derived from bone marrow cells, so you see that Rogister’s credibility (or rather the lack thereof) is tightly bound to that of his zombie mentee. Here is proof how exactly neurons can be derived from bone marrow cells:
This Photoshop method is very simple and cheap, anyone undisturbed by reality or basic ethics can learn it. And if anything: it is always good to be in charge of investigating yourself, as this Vice-Dean does:
In total, Wislet has 15 papers on PubPeer. All very disastrous, but how else does one prove that Belgian crap about neurons from bone marrow? Look at this one, flagged by Elisabeth Bik:
“Figure S1b (supplemental). In orange: The MPTP mice / 14 days panel appears to contain a region that is highly similar to a region in the Control mice / 70 days. Of note, other areas in the photos are very different. The MPTP mice/14 days panel has an unexpected square, around a green pixel in the bottom left.”
“Concerns about Figures 2 and 5. Marked in blue: Two midbrain panels representing different time points appear to look similar, i.e. Figure 2A Control (14 days post MPTP) and Figure 5A Control (PBS/PBS) (28 days post MPTP) Marked in lime green: Two striatum panels representing different time points and different mice appear to look similar, i.e. Figure 2A MPTP (14 days post MPTP) and Figure 5A MPTP-NCSCmix (70 days post MPTP) Marked in red: Two midbrain panels representing different mice appear to look similar, i.e. Figure 5A MPTP-PBS mice and Figure 5A MPTP mice -MSCmix graft. The photos are not direct duplicates, because they differ in the presence of a “hole” and the darkness of the staining in the highly relevant Substancia Nigra pars compacta region. These 2 different features are highlighted with thin red ellipses.”
And then, in January 2020, Bik also found this (I added hyperlinks and annotations):
“Panels in Figure 1 of this paper look similar to panels in other papers. This paper is part of a set of 5 papers that all appear to contain similar panels. Similar looking panels are shown in red (SOX10), yellow (Nestin) and aqua (p75NTR). The panels might represent the same experiments, but it is strange that they are reused over a period of 6 years.
In May 2021, the member of theBoard of Ethics and Scientific Integrity of University of Liege, Rudi Cloots (former Vice-Rector for Research, former Vice-Rector for Infrastructure and since October 2022 Advisor to the Rector on Infrastructure) wrote to me:
“The “Wislet” case has been processed from a long time ago. Several recommendations were issued and are followed in practice (retraction, corrections, …). It is in progress”
This is the outcome. In October 2021, PLOS One issued a massive Expression of Concern. We learn from it that the University of Liege demanded a correction:
“The Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity of the University of Liège investigated the overlap between the aforementioned panels and recommended the article be corrected. In addition, a member of PLOS ONE’s Editorial Board advised that the updated figures support the results and conclusions reported in the original article. However, the PLOS ONE Editors issue this Expression of Concern to due to the number of panels affected and the unavailability of the original MSCmix transplanted brains Control Mice 70 days results.”
Under normal circumstances, PLOS One would have retracted such a fraudulent paper, regardless of how much the authors protest. But quite possibly University of Liege threatened to sue.
One paper in Bik’s list of five was retracted (Wislet-Gendebien et al 2012), regarding Gleizer et al 2011 Bik wrote in 2021 that Springer Nature decided “that no action was deemed necessary for this concern“. The other two were corrected by PLOS One, with same reference “The Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity of University of Liège investigated the overlap between the aforementioned panels and recommended the article be corrected“. All have Vice-Dean Rogister as key author. All had other issues.
“Figure S1. Green boxes: In the top panels, the Iba1/DMEM panel looks unexpectedly similar to the Iba1/NCSC-CM panel Orange boxes: In the bottom panels, the CD68/NCSC-CM panel appears to overlap with the CD206/NCSC-CM panel, albeit at a different zoom factor”
To follow into Rogister’s and Wislet’s footsteps, Virginie Neirinck was made associate professor at the University of Liege. Three academic generations of cheaters under one roof in Liege, and the fourth is surely growing!
Chapter II: Agnès Noël
The cancer researcher and Liege professor Agnès Noëlused to be director of the GIGA-Institute, an Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Center by the University of Liege (Rogister has a lab there). Noel studied and did PhD in Liege, and after a brief postdoc In Strasbourg she returned and made a big career, as Permanent Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium and President of the Council of Research and Valorization in Health Sciences at the University of Liège. Meaning, she very likely has a voice in research integrity investigations, and she certainly decides who performs and who doesn’t at her university.
Relevant fun fact: Noel gives courses to students together with Wislet. So yes, Wislet is the good one, the one who performs. Now you will see why Noel has so much understanding, from her own attempts to cure cancer as recorded on PubPeer.
Some collaborations include none other but Spain’s most obnoxious cheater – Carlos Lopez-Otin! Their joint co-author is Noel’s GIGA colleague and fellow Liege professor, Didier Cataldo:
St Carlos of Oviedo almost was canonised as Spain’s first living martyr, but now Nature revoked his mentoring award. Spanish media and science elites are desperate, even the Queen is not amused. The Royal Academy of Sciences insists Lopez-Otin is a victim of journal’s failure.
And here is Noel with another questionable collaborator, this time with a Belgian Baron – the KU Leuven professor Peter Carmeliet:
Xuri Li , Marc Tjwa , Lieve Moons , Pierre Fons , Agnes Noel , Annelii Ny , Jian Min Zhou , Johan Lennartsson , Hong Li , Aernout Luttun , Annica Pontén , Laetitia Devy , Ann Bouché , Hideyasu Oh , Ann Manderveld , Silvia Blacher , David Communi , Pierre Savi , Françoise Bono , Mieke Dewerchin , Jean-Michel Foidart, Monica Autiero, Jean-Marc Herbert, Désiré Collen, Carl-Henrik Heldin, Ulf Eriksson, Peter Carmeliet Revascularization of ischemic tissues by PDGF-CC via effects on endothelial cells and their progenitorsJournal of Clinical Investigation (2005) doi: 10.1172/jci19189
As a young Wunderkind, Josef Penninger discovered the ACE2 receptor. Now he invented the cure for the coronavirus which will work in his hands where Big Pharma failed. He was never found guilty of research misconduct and never retracted a paper. Dr Penninger is a Genius making a COVID-19 vaccine.
Irina Primac , Erik Maquoi , Silvia Blacher , Ritva Heljasvaara , Jan Van Deun , Hilde Yh Smeland , Annalisa Canale , Thomas Louis , Linda Stuhr , Nor Eddine Sounni , Didier Cataldo , Taina Pihlajaniemi , Christel Pequeux , Olivier De Wever , Donald Gullberg , Agnès Noel Stromal integrin α11 regulates PDGFR-β signaling and promotes breast cancer progressionJournal of Clinical Investigation (2019) doi: 10.1172/jci125890
No correction was issued because someone on PubPeer explained it was supposed to be the same cancer sample anyway, and presumably scientists by law are not allowed to take more than one representative microscopy image in order to save on electricity and computer storage space. Hence applying different scan settings and rotating the image before reuse is actually the correct scientific method.
Totally fake, those gels. But this is how Noel’s protege Nor Eddine Sounni became associate professor in Liege and GIGA Center group leader, and he also teaches good scientific practice to students with Noel and Wislet. So much for students to learn:
“In Fig. 2, the actin loading control bands for cyclin D1 and cyclin D2 are identical–the authors clarified that the Western blots for cyclin D1 and cyclin D2 were performed on the same samples, however, this was not indicated in the figure legend. Additionally, in Fig. 6C, the p-EGFR bands in MDA-MB-231 cells showing stimulation by TGFα treatment are identical to the p-EGFR bands showing stimulation by EGF treatment. In the original submission of this manuscript, a correct version of this figure was used […] but these panels were mistakenly duplicated in the revised and final versions of the manuscript.”
In May 2021, I sent all that to Noel, and she replied to me:
“We take it seriously on our side and will address this with the local ethical committee.”
On 22 February 2024, Rudi Cloots, the above mentioned research integrity chair at Liege, informed me:
“the “Noel” case has been processed and corrective measures on certain elements of the instruction file have been implemented.“
Chapter III: Vincent Castronovo
Here is another local collaboration by Noel, with Liege professor and obstetric surgeon Vincent Castronovo, who used to be director of the GIGA Center before Noel:
“Figure 3A and figure 3B use the same western-blot images with horizontal shift and in different conditions for one of them.”Fig 6A
Castronovo owns a consulting company called “NutriHealth by Vincent Castronovo” which teaches how to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s and other diseases with the right “micronutrition” of minerals and vitamins.
The enterprising surgeon also has a PubPeer record, often shared with yet another Liege professor and GIGA Center group leader, Akeila Bellahcène. For example this, you will surely recall their co-author, Wislet’s mentor and Vice-Dean for Research Rogister:
Aurélie Henry , Marie-Julie Nokin , Natacha Leroi , François Lallemand, Jérémy Lambert , Nicolas Goffart , Patrick Roncarati , Elettra Bianchi , Paul Peixoto , Arnaud Blomme , Andrei Turtoi , Olivier Peulen , Yvette Habraken , Félix Scholtes , Philippe Martinive , Philippe Delvenne , Bernard Rogister, Vincent Castronovo , Akeila Bellahcène New role of osteopontin in DNA repair and impact on human glioblastoma radiosensitivityOncotarget (2016) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.11483
Actinopolyspora biskrensis: “Figure 5F appears to have two images which overlap”
In May 2021, Cheshire received from the authors a replacement figure and announcement of an impeding correction. Which almost 3 years on did not materialise. Because Rogister investigated himself again.
Another shifty duplication was corrected 3 years after it was posted on PubPeer:
Corrected in December 2023: “The Fig. 3a of this article originally contained an incorrect picture showing “HDAC7/AKAP12 siRNA” condition at t = 0 h. Indeed this picture was duplicated by mistake from the same image, showing “AKAP12/GL3 siRNA” condition at t = 0 h.”
“Figures 4A, 4B and 5A. Much more similar and different than expected.”
The last author and fellow Liege professor/GIGA Center group leader Olivier Peulen explained on PubPeer in May 2022: “We used the same samples to illustrate our purpose” but in March 2023 he published a Correction:
“It has been noted that the western blot duplication can be misleading. Consequently, the duplicated myoferlin western blots have been removed from figures 4 and 5.”
Peulen also admitted that this paper needed correction also, but then he and his Liege colleagues Bellahcène and Castronovo decided they couldn’t be arsed:
Peulen announced to correct Fig 8 in December 2023: “You were right ! Indeed, the LC3-II western blots from panel C was reused in panel A. It’s probably a mistake during image composition. We have several replicates of these blots.”
Why should Castronovo care, he is selling vitamins now.
Chapter IV: Jacques Piette
Jacques Piette is professor of virology at Liege. Like the other characters in this Liege story, he did his PhD in Liege and after a brief postdoc abroad returned to Liege and grew big. Piette also used to be director of the GIGA Center and is currently its permanent board member.
Piette is also Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal Biochemical Pharmacology. He took over from the founding editor Sam Enna, who finally died in 2023, aged almost 80, and lamented by Nature and other fans of old white male bullies in academia. Aneurus Incostans and myself had the displeasure to communicate with Enna in 2022, you can read about that here:
There can hardly be a worse academic editor than Enna. But Piette is trying his best!
In this role, Piette accepted in February 2024 an outrageous Corrigendum from the Argentinian mega-cheater by Mario Galigniana. The fake miscroscopy figure in Daneri-Becerra et al 2020 was declared “an involuntary error“, read Friday Shorts for details (as it happens, the same article contains a story about another Belgian cheater, Ghanem E Ghanem in Brussels).
Now, to Piette’s own trash papers. This one can be seen as his application to take over Enna’s editorial chair. The Editor-in-Chief is dead, long live the Editor-in-Chief!
Piette’s collaborator Alain Chariot, another Liege professor with a lab at GIGA Center, explained on PubPeer that it is fraud when the gel bands are NOT identical:
“this is the reason why these western blots look similar as they represent the same extracts. It would actually be scientifically wrong if amounts of proteins had been different!“
I put this intellectual deficiency to academic inbreeding. Chariot studied and spent his entire career in Liege, according to his LinkedIn he didn’t even briefly leave to do a symbolic postdoc stay abroad.
These two papers by Piette and Chariot, received a near-identical reply on PubPeer form both men:
Which one copied from whom? Does any of the boys even speak any English? They just admitted to be uncapable of doing experiments properly, which “does not have any influence on the conclusions“.
In Oncogene‘s case, all the publisher Springer Nature eventually achieved three years later was an unresolvable Expression of Concern, published in April 2023 – “The authors were contacted regarding these concerns, however, due to the age of the article the raw data was no longer available“. Journal of Biological Chemistry did nothing because it is now run by Elsevier.
To be clear – Piette is not stupid. For example, he knows one must delineate spliced gel lanes, but he does it only where peer reviewers would accept splicing. And hides it where such splicing would lead to rejection:
More spliced and recycled gels by Piette are on PubPeer. But now, a total shit-show of fake gels, which earned Piette’s mentee Lionel Habran you can guess what – an associate professorship in Liege:
Van Lint already has a joint retraction with a French collaborator, Olivier Rohr. She really attracts bad naughty men: the University of Franche-Comté professor Georges Herbein, and even the curcumin fraudster and former MD Anderson professor Bharat Aggarwal. Read about all this in Friday Shorts. Van Lint also has dodgy papers with the Big Pharma top executive John Reed:
Or, maybe it is Piette who attracts naughty women? Here he is with another Belgian colleague, the KU Leuven professor Patrizia Agostinis, who also has a troubling PubPeer record of her own:
“I am taking this step with a heavy heart and a sense of responsibility for the university since a sufficient foundation of mutual trust no longer remained with some parts of the university to ensure successful cooperation”, – Simone Fulda
On 22 February 2024, Rudi Cloots, the research integrity piss-taker at Liege, informed me:
“As regards the allegations made against Prof. Piette, we have taken careful note of them and an investigation in line with our operating rules will be initiated very soon.”
We all saw how they solved the Wislet case, right?
In fact, Piette is so unafraid of Cloots and his silly Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity, he just issued yet another outrageous correction for an utterly fraudulent paper by Chris Thiemermann, Queen Mary University of London professor and William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI) bigwig. The ridiculously fake blots in Collino et al 2013 were “judged satisfactory by the editor“, read last week’s Friday Shorts. Piette even declared his and the fraudsters’ “commitment to upholding the integrity and accuracy of the research findings” in the correction from 2 March 2024.
Possibly, in Liege they do honestly think that scientific research is supposed to be fake. You see, when one’s entire social circle consists of illiterate inbred dimwits who use cramped book pages to wipe their arses, they will all firmly believe that this is truly what books are printed for, and teach their progeny in this tradition.
Update 15.05.2024
The Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity (CEIS) of the University of Liege investigated me. Yes me, Leonid Schneider, why should they investigate their own professors. I was found guilty of of misconduct for “accusing a researcher of misconduct or other violations in a malicious way” and breaching the “Munich Declaration of the duties and rights of the journalists“. As for the Liege scientists: the investigation won’t happen, all PubPeer evidence has been dismissed – the Belgian university announced to “always ignore disrespectful and/or unfounded allegations”.
“The reason why she remains associate professor for biomedical science are Wislet’s 5 retractions.”
Despite 5 retractions and several more papers tagged on Pubpeer, Belgian taxpayers keep paying this person (and many others) a fat salary. This can happen only in that amusement park called academia.
surprisingly it’s only in Academia there is such incentive for bullshit. If you are in a big company and fake your results, as soon as they are passed to the next lab for, for example to assess the safety, big chance they notice something doesn’t work. Only exception is when corruption comes from the top. But as a lone scientist cheating in a big pharma lab doesn’t reward you nearly as much as in Academia. Probably explains why Academia has consistently failed to cure chronic diseases despite years of promises, while as a sufferer, I beneficiated immensely from pharma new drugs. But nothing from the “very important fundamental research we do here”. Nada. Not even a pain killer
Look at the stuff that Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman did at the University of Pennsylvania for your covid vaccine that may have saved your life.
I would argue that the fraction of irreproducible crap being published is much greater than ever before, but there are still labs where good work is done. Its just now scientific research is now a grossly inefficient enterprise due to careerism/greed/incompetence/DEI/etc.
“Probably explains why Academia has consistently failed to cure chronic diseases despite years of promises, while as a sufferer, I beneficiated immensely from pharma new drugs. But nothing from the “very important fundamental research we do here”. Nada. Not even a pain killer”
That’s a load of rubbish. Pharmaceutical development builds, and is dependent, upon the volume of fundamental academic research that is required before anything even gets to begin trials. Every pain killer, to use your example, only appeared after the fundamental academic research required to synthesize/extract/characterize the compound, followed by the research required to begin to understand it’s mode of action, how to formulate it, measure it’s stability etc etc etc.
The hyperbole that Citrus formulated, however, must be understood. Surely the efforts to cure COVID were successful, after all the scientists had the metaphorical gun pointed at their heads by the whole world and were financed with a mountain of extra public money. Yet, you must educate me on what the extraordinary recent results have been on Alzheimer’s, cancer, muscular dystrophy, malaria, HIV, Dengue, diabetes, etc. Where have the promises about stem cells, gene therapy, etc. gone? In the endless expanse of dung produced by academia, some flowers really do grow here and there, right, but at an enormous cost of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in public funding thrown out the window. Personally, the smell of dung makes my guts turn.
I would like to add that whatever tender flowers of good science manage to sprout, they get immediately covered by dung. Who knows how much knowledge and discoveries we actually had and lost.
For every disease you have mentioned, there has been some research in academia that has helped characterize it to lead to some powerful treatments. For example:
HIV – protease inhibitors have turned it into a chronic, manageable disease instead of a death sentence. Protease inhibitor research started in the late 1960’s in academia, I collaborated with a guy that was tops in the field. He, and others, paved the way for the protease inhibitors that are used clinically today.
Diabetes–I guess its pretty easy to forget that insulin turned a horrible death sentence to a manageable disease. Insulin was purified and characterized at the University of Toronto around 1920, and the results were given to Eli Lilly (for free) to produce insulin for the masses. Read: https://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Insulin-Twenty-fifth-Anniversary/dp/0226058999/
Again, academic research has been helpful in the past, and will likely continue to do so here and there. But now the irreproducible crap level is extreme, due to bad behavior of too many careerists, who want to be rich and famous. A good example of this is Robert Gallo in HIV, read: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fictions-Scientific-Mystery-Cover-up/dp/0316090042/
Science is a great enterprise made grossly inefficient by human ego.
@NMH, I think we’re saying the same thing. I know about the great medical advances of the past, but I used the adjective “recent” in my comment above. There are still advancements here and there, but quite little respect to the enormously increased amount of public funds bestowed. Too little results for an enterprise that has seen its global turnover grow dramatically without producing satisfactory results.
1Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158.
2Department of Cell Physiology and Metabolism, University Medical Center, University of Geneva, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland.
3Metastasis Research Laboratory, University of Liege, B-4000 Liege, Belgium.
4Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158. Electronic address: everdin@gladstone.ucsf.edu.
Liege was also home to late Pierre Lutgen, co-author of the (in)famous fraudulous trials on Artemisia against malaria and schistosomiasis, among other unethical publications.
The University of Liege apparently completed their investigation and found that Leonid Schneider is guilty of slander and blasphemy.
I received this message from Rudi Cloots:
“Dear Mr Schneider,
The Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity of the University of Liege, which I chair, is an advisory board. For the investigations carried out by the Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity, we call on the services of international experts who do not belong to the University of Liege. It is always made sure that the experts have no conflict of interest with the authors of the papers investigated and never worked with them. The experts give a personal and independent opinion, shed light on certain practices and recommend corrective actions, if needed. From this analysis, the anomalies found on pubpeer and the associated research practices are classified according to a terminology recommended in the document “Best Practices for Ensuring Scientific Integrity and Preventing Misconduct” from the OCDE and the guide “European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity” from the ALLEA. The terminology ranges from “unintentional” to “fabrication of data” and may include “self-plagiarism” or “bad data management”. This analysis, together with recommendations, are detailed in an investigation report that is transmitted to the Rectoral authority. Based on these recommendations, the Rectoral Authority decides to impose the necessary sanctions and/or corrective measures (e.g. submission of a corrigendum, retraction) if needed. The Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity monitors the implementation of these corrective measures (if such measures were necessary). The whole process is confidential.
In your blog, the post “My Liege is not so vile a sin” contains serious allegations and aggressive vocabulary against the researchers (“three academic generations of cheaters”), their results (“totally fake, those gels”), the Board itself “[…] his silly Board of ethics and scientific integrity”) and the university (“Possibly in Liege they do honestly think that scientific research is supposed to be fake”). You mention things that are wrong regarding how investigations are conducted in our university (“[…] the Vice-Dean for Research (medecine) is in charge of all research misconduct investigations in his faculty”, “Rogister investigated himself again”, “she very likely has a voice in research integrity investigations”). The claim “quite possibly University of Liege threatened to sue” is also wrong and entirely unfounded. All these allegations in which you criticize without really knowing the major elements of the investigation of cases and mention erroneous statements in your blog demonstrate a lack of objective analysis.
May I suggest you to consider some points described in the guide “European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity” from ALLEA. The guide mentions several violations of research integrity including “accusing a researcher of misconduct or other violations in a malicious way”. For dealing with allegations of misconduct it is also recommended that “procedures are conducted confidentially”, “investigations are carried out with due process and in fairness to all parties” and “anyone accused of research misconduct is presumed innocent until proven otherwise”. These are obviously not the recommendations and best practices that appear to anyone reading your blog. We do honestly appreciate when papers containing possible image problems are reported to us, and the Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity always investigates the reported problems. We will always ignore disrespectful and/or unfounded allegations. As you present your blog as dedicated to independent science journalism, may I ask you to consider your post related to the University of Liège in the light of the Munich Declaration of the duties and rights of the journalists (particularly, § 8 related to “calumny” and “unfounded accusations”) and adapt it accordingly.
May I also ask you to publish this rebuttal in your blog.
Yours Sincerely,
Rudi Cloots, in the name of all the members of the Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity (CEIS).”
Some, perhaps a large proportion, prefer corruption. They learn who the players are and know whose arses to lick, whose palms to grease. It makes life predictable and manageable. Some like having the Pope, you only have to learn what the Pope thinks.
” Tchantchès puppets”. Nice to see For Better Science branching out into local folklore!
I remember passing through Liège on the train, even going to a large outdoor marker one Sunday morning. That was so many years ago. Who would have guessed what the future would bring?
My previous attempt at a reply hasn’t appeared, perhaps I pressed the wrong button. Nevertheless I shall try to recapture what I wrote.
“The hyperbole that Citrus formulated, however, must be understood.”
Hyperbole is an understatement. Unless you all keep tree bark in your medicine cabinets to deal with headaches? Or rub a toad over an open wound to rebalance the humors?
“Yet, you must educate me on what the extraordinary recent results have been on Alzheimer’s, cancer, muscular dystrophy, malaria, HIV, Dengue, diabetes, etc. Where have the promises about stem cells, gene therapy, etc. gone?”
Ah, where’s your floating hoverboard? Where are the underwater cities you were told we’d have by now? Scientists in movies promised the future by the year 2000, 2020 , 20… and they haven’t delivered so it must be the fault of … who exactly are you blaming Aneurus? You have clearly been gypped by scientists, or fraudulent scientists, or big pharma, or somebody, so who are you blaming for this outrageous lack of cures for everything? Do you think that the mere improvement of life expectancy and quality that modern medicine has generated is clearly insufficient when disease still exists?
As someone who steers clear of growing cultures of uncooperative cells I still have observed a few things. One of those is that controlling sacks of thousands of compounds that interact and react together across an N-dimensional probability space under a wide regime of kinetic parameters and feedback loops, in a system that is tuned to be transient even when it works properly, aka your average cell, is tricky. Sticking in some extra compounds in a way that you hope is targeted and predictable, aka medicine, but having to happen in the universe of chemical and physical properties, aka reality, increases the challenge somewhat don’t you think?? Thinking as a scientist for a few minutes, it shouldn’t be surprising that biology doesn’t respond as we command to every click of our fingers.
“In the endless expanse of dung produced by academia, some flowers really do grow here and there,”
My, my, isn’t hyperbole the fashion on this forum? I enjoy a poetic turn of phrase as much as the next frustrated person with a chip on their shoulder, but in a discussion about how bad scientific fraud is why are half of the discussion points here based on the same intellectual standard as Jersey #@&!ing Shore? Scientific fraud is a major problem, it needs to be fixed or at least confronted, it deserves more serious thought than some of the brainless statements being parroted.
Ah, I know well that a cell is a mess. That’s why I’m saying that a large number of those to whom I currently pay a salary with my taxes don’t understand enough or are even plain dishonest to deserve my money. Academia became hypertrophic. Universities, professors, doctoral students, journals, awards, etc. have multiplied, but those who know how to do science are the minority of those currently employed. What has been created is a speculative bubble. I wish this bubble would deflate. I want my money to be used by responsible and talented people with ethics, and not used to fatten the curricula of cats and dogs, and to make them travel like loose cannons around the globe to give seminars and have fun while they never stick their noses in their students’ lab-book. Before you authoritatively say that “pharmaceutical development builds, and is dependent, upon the volume of fundamental academic research that is required before anything even gets to begin trials”, you might first re-read most of the 942 articles published here at FBS as of today. I’m afraid you have to do some homework. Hundreds of cases are reported here about start-ups, biotech companies, patented drugs and techniques created just to milk money from gullible people like our governors and idiotic greedy investors, but unfortunately also from desperate patients. As I told you already, more than half of what is published is irreproducible, and this is a fact, either you like it or not. Regarding the serious thoughts to confront fraud, here my two cents. First, the problem must be recognized as such, and I’m afraid several academics are unaware that >50% of what is published is rubbish. Second, publishers cannot be for-profit organizations. Third, all countries must set up a central office for research misconduct. Forth, any given figure of any given paper must be linked to the people who performed the experiment. Fifth, data are stored forever, no time limit. Sixth, all raw data have to be submitted within the manuscript, everything everytime from now onwards. Seventh, whoever is proven being a serial cheater is out forever AND must return all the money earned in their fraudulent career. It’s a start, no?
“Second, publishers cannot be for-profit organizations.”
How to get Springer Nature, Elsevier, Wiley, and other for-profit organizations out of scientific publishing? How to stop their highly profitable, Mother Theresa, virtue-signalling drag act, which adds little and takes a lot from science.
There are laws and regulations about most things, even in democratic countries. Perhaps only scientific societies, or associations with wide ownership, should be licenced to publish scientific works. You need a medical licence to practise medicine, you need a legal licence to practise law.
Why this idea that to stop people from doing just what they like, including harming others and harming science, in the form of being allowed to publish nonsense, is taking away their freedom and their human rights? Why do people object to governmental intervention when governmental intervention in the form of laws to keep big business out of scientific publishing may be needed as the publishers cannot put their own houses in order? The big publishers laugh at persuasion all the way to the bank.
There’s no point in engaging in a discussion with him. He behaves like a typical KGB propagandon:
Ignores unsuitable words.
For others wants impossible proofs in a blog’s forum.
Others distorts them and replies based on this distortion.
Insults you and claims that you have insulted him.
Writes long rants to look erudite.
And finally with all these (this list is by no means full) shifts the topic of the problem, on purpose of course. I can think of only 2 reasons for such a behavior: either doesn’t want to accept that the problem is so serious, or he is a small part of the problem. The former is perfectly understandable since anyone who have put in years of proper scientific effort would be grossly disappointed by this enormous injustice, while the latter is absolutely logical.
Actually, I think everyone who’s commenting should do some more homework, including yourself. I’m familiar with the FBS website, I think I mentioned that before. You’re using stats in a similar way to which the fraudsters do, with a cavernous gulf between the the number of cases proven or reported (and yes, as I have already said several times, I know that there are even more cases of fraud than those) and the grand sweeping but unsupported statements that flow on from there. With little substance to link the two. Does that represent the quality of work or thinking that you think will really make science better? It will identify some of the fraudsters, and trigger some OMG sniggers, but do you think it’s going to make real change?
“As I told you already, more than half of what is published is irreproducible,”
You’ve claimed it but not come close to proving that at all. Again, you use the same hand-waviness that the fraudsters do in trying to defend themselves. You think that over half of the 7 or 8 million papers now published each year are irreproducible? Can you provide evidence of that scale? Imagine that a student has made that claim in an essay or exam and hopefully you have been telling your students that they need to provide some evidence for any conclusions they make – what is they evidence here for “more than half of what is published is irreproducible”? If your answer doesn’t have the word “million” in it then it’s certainly not making your case.
For the sake of my not rambling on, at least too much re: your suggested improvements:
1st – Yes the problem must be raised but you have not provided any evidence for your claim that “>50% of what is published is rubbish”. So what’s the evidence that 3.5 – 4M publications in 2023 were rubbish?
2nd – That will require an international agreement to make publishing a non-profit activity by law, everywhere. Since no law in existence has completely stopped crime ever, I am not sure how you think that will work?
3rd – They should but are you, or some self-appointed group, now telling foreign governments and their peoples what they must do? I forsee some truck sized ethical issues hurtling down that road. Could be that some of those foreign governments might just object to being told “must”.
4th – That’s actually a more sensible and achievable idea.
5th – “forever”? Any scientist with any brains will know that’s a ridiculous proscription because it’s impractical and from a nitpicky legal perspective is meaningless. Tell me how you will personally ensure the preservation of all of your work and writings for beyond the lifetime of this planet, solar system and universe? I know that is extreme nit picking but it shows why you should put some thought into your statements because your suggestion is so obviously unenforceable. More than 3 years? Absolutely. More than 7 years, the time limit I need to keep my financial records to avoid the Tax Office getting cranky with me (as proscribed by law with legally enforceable punishment possible if I don’t)? Happy to, but it would require legal definition otherwise anyone can challenge that in court. So it requires some work to make it practical. Just waving your hands with big statements won’t make this possible, it will require significant planning and investment.
6th – In principle there is merit to providing all data, but without a much more detailed plan as to how that works and gets policed you will just have a massive data dump. As well as the obvious question as to how you even know if someone has or hasn’t provided ALL data for ALL experiments/calculations/simulations (you won’t) you will also start meeting the technological problem of data storage, particularly if you want all data to be stored for all time. I am not sure that humanity currently has that data storage capacity, without even knowing yet how many redundant copies of each byte of data you expect; is it one each for the lead author, the institution, the journal, the funding agency, the independent auditor? That’s a lot of data storage if it is. Since no technology that we have is able to physically survive ‘forever’, exactly what would be all storing all of this data on or in?
7th – what does “out” even mean here? Do you know of a way that you can stop a fraudster from moving from one employer to another, or from one country to another? That’s not possible by any legal means. Do you mean they should be banned from publishing in any way ever again? That’s not legally enforceable anywhere – any lawyer or advocate would shoot that down on human rights grounds. Do you mean they should be banned from future funding? I understand the sentiment, I really do, but that would also be illegal wouldn’t it? To put your suggestion in context – our legal and ethical systems consider that a criminal (NOTE THE WORD – someone who has been convicted in a legally defined and regulated court of law of having committed a crime) who has served their sentence is not supposed to be further punished and has the legally protected right to get on with their life. So consider how you would enforce these restrictions by means that wouldn’t be thrown out in 10 minutes of the court case challenge starting? Partial restrictions would be enforceable, but your grand pronouncements as is wouldn’t be.
You have some useful ideas but most of them are based on impractical, legally unenforceable and in some cases even unethical concepts. Or is it a case of screw all of that in the name of the cause and let’s all be vigilantes? Because that approach has always worked so well throughout history!
To reiterate, yet again, wild hand-wavey claims and storm-the-Bastille thinking won’t fix the problem of scientific fraud.
” Perhaps only scientific societies, or associations with wide ownership, should be licenced to publish scientific works. You need a medical licence to practise medicine, you need a legal licence to practise law.”
Who’s doing the licencing? And in which countries would this be happening or is the UN in charge of the planet all of a sudden? Doctors get licenced to practice medicine in a given country but can of course choose to move to a different country and apply to get a licence there. The same for lawyers.
All of this discussion ignores some basic facts. For a start, many countries have laws that define what people can or cannot do. Aggrieved scientists passionately combating fraudsters don’t just get to write their own laws. Most of the ideas being postulated are complete non-starters without changes to the law. You/we can demand whatever punishments you/we like but unless they can be legally enforced if challenged then those demands are worth nothing.
Secondly, science and publishing are international. Even if some countries brought in the legal changes for the above to become a reality, the parasite journals and fraudsters can just move somewhere else. As long as there are countries that have significant resources but operate by standards outside of your ethical vision then there isn’t anything to stop them from continuing.
The Law may well be an ass, but it’s still the Law. You need to change or make laws for a number of these proposals to be possible.
“Doctors get licenced to practice medicine in a given country but can of course choose to move to a different country and apply to get a licence there. The same for lawyers.”
That’s easier said than done.
You would have to pass exams, and now there is revalidation every few years.
It’s not particularly easy to work as a doctor in the U.S. if you trained abroad.
The point is that these systems do have attempts at checking quality.
“Who’s doing the licencing?”
In many countries national medical authorities would do that.
Once again, it’s not just do what you like, somehow bad business practices will always win.
As a last resort the criminal justice system will get involved. Rare, but does happen.
The Department of Justice and Harvard did come to agreement where Harvard repaid USD 10 million because of Piero Anversa’s fraud.
“There’s no point in engaging in a discussion with him.”
You didn’t engage in conversation Albert. You weren’t even able to explain your own words in your waffling rant, made a snide accusation and when challenged to back it up with evidence you disappeared. And now you reappear to make some more snide comments, it’s pathetic.
Aneurus, and anyone else for that matter, it’s your choice if you would like to keep the discussion going. Albert’s shown he’s got nothing of value to add to any serious discussion, but if anyone else wants to discuss/debate/chat about any of my posts or is unclear on my opinion of the seriousness of fraud in science, then all you need to do is ask. Unlike Albert though, try reading what I write.
I have said A, it’s polite to say B. Moreover, the fact that you spend a lot of time commenting here shows that you are a decent guy.
Have very well expressed the reasons above for my reluctance to discuss anything with you. This is a comment section in a blog and nobody is obliged to give you or me an explanation or anything. Your replies are in the boring (for me) style of the contemporary peer-review process of detailed point-to-point replies. Despite that, I read what you write but refuse to take part in it.
This blog is for the public and therefore scientists should interact understandably for the public (personal view). The content itself is complex and hard to follow, know that from experience with friends and sometimes even with me. So, when you ease up a lot, will gladly have a normal argumented discussion with you.
Last but not least, science is not only evidence and proof. It is also order estimates, hypotheses built on insufficient (sometimes even unreliable) data and facts.
From the latter: “In a 2012 paper, C. Glenn Begley, a biotech consultant working at Amgen, and Lee Ellis, a medical researcher at the University of Texas, found that only 11% of 53 pre-clinical cancer studies had replications that could confirm conclusions from the original studies.[79] In late 2021, The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology examined 53 top papers about cancer published between 2010 and 2012 and showed that among studies that provided sufficient information to be redone, the effect sizes were 85% smaller on average than the original findings.[80][81] A survey of cancer researchers found that half of them had been unable to reproduce a published result.[82] Another report estimated that almost half of randomized controlled trials contained flawed data (based on the analysis of anonymized individual participant data (IPD) from more than 150 trials).[83]“
In the biological-related papers that are published in what I call “career making” high-citation journals (Science, Nature, Cell, etc), a 50% irreproducibility rate may be generous. This paragraph suggests its higher.
It’s good that now at least some people are thinking evidence might be helpful in this discussion. I will point out though an obvious flaw in blindly extrapolating from a limited dataset – the stats mentioned all pertain to cancer research. While that is a significant field of research and resources (with big rewards in the offing hence the problems of fraud intensify over the standard issues from working with uncooperative organisms), most scientists around the world don’t work on cancer. So while those figures obviously show there are serious problems in cancer research, and reproducibility problems occur in all fields, probably, unless Nature and Science drop every other field of scientific endeavour from their august pages then we are all still guessing about scale.
Does anyone reading this forum work on cancer research? If so, I’d be interested in hearing from them about the challenge of working with cells and animals in getting reproducible results, compared to the possible level of outright fraud?
I used to work in cancer and stem cell research, esp cell biology. Biological systems are actually not that unpredictable. The problem is that the predictions made by the experimenter most often never fulfill. Back then I thought it was because I wasn’t as smart as those who publish in Nature.
Hence the need for stochastic tricks of “It kinda worked once, because the system is unpredictable but I’ll publish it anyway”.
Or, one just fakes the stuff to make it fit.
This may not directly answer you question, but Ill comment anyway: I’ve been in a lot of different fields: started in chemistry (protein crystallography), moved into cancer and other molecular/cell biological fields.
It would not surprise me if the level of fraud was different in different fields, the reason being in some fields its easier to commit, er, “effective” fraud that will allow you to get a good job in academia or industry, in others may be more difficult. In protein crystallography, it used to be extremely difficult/impossible to commit fraud at the level needed to get a paper in a career-making journal, because that would require you to completely make up everything in the project; make up a massive data set for a protein, etc. And someone in the lab you are working in would certainly catch you.
In molecular/cell biology (like cancer) its very easy to create “effective” career-making fraud, and very unlikely someone in the lab will catch you. The reason is this: your on a project to get data for a molecular/cellular-based hypothesis that requires you to build a narrative—a story—with figures that supports this hypothesis. However, you see many possible narratives are possible. Some narratives are somewhat interesting (paper gets International Journal of Cell Research, Impact factor of 2.0, you remain a post-doc)), some narratives are sexy job-openers (Cell, impact factor of 40, and offers at R1 Amercian research universities.). You see that all you have to do is change the data a little here and there to get the data to fit into the sexy narrative. It only takes a little bit of change here and you get a huge payoff.
Evidence to suggest that is going on may be this: in cancer research, it seems its pretty rare to find an entire paper that is completely made up. Instead, its usually a few or more figures that are–just enough for the compelling narrative to get the work into a high impact journal. So its not so much that 50% of the cancer papers have 100% fake figures, but more that almost all (100% ) cancer papers in high impact journals have 50% of flawed data. This is extreme but I think you get my point.
I remember the last major publishable project I was on I made what I thought was a hot discovery in my field of cell biology, and for a day was fantasizing what the high impact journal it would get into! But then Iearned that the observation had already been made in cancer cells, and inevitably my work was published in a low impact journal. No faculty position for me, and I appear to be a permanent member of the precariat class (post-docs/research associate/adjunct faculty).
For Better Science 
“The reason why she remains associate professor for biomedical science are Wislet’s 5 retractions.”
Despite 5 retractions and several more papers tagged on Pubpeer, Belgian taxpayers keep paying this person (and many others) a fat salary. This can happen only in that amusement park called academia.
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I suggest you write a strongly worded complaint to the Vice Dean of Research.
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I’m sure you already did, and I couldn’t do any better. Great work.
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surprisingly it’s only in Academia there is such incentive for bullshit. If you are in a big company and fake your results, as soon as they are passed to the next lab for, for example to assess the safety, big chance they notice something doesn’t work. Only exception is when corruption comes from the top. But as a lone scientist cheating in a big pharma lab doesn’t reward you nearly as much as in Academia. Probably explains why Academia has consistently failed to cure chronic diseases despite years of promises, while as a sufferer, I beneficiated immensely from pharma new drugs. But nothing from the “very important fundamental research we do here”. Nada. Not even a pain killer
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Your statement is not correct; to understand the large amount of good science that academia has produced for pharma’s benefit/profit, read: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/0375760946/
Look at the stuff that Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman did at the University of Pennsylvania for your covid vaccine that may have saved your life.
I would argue that the fraction of irreproducible crap being published is much greater than ever before, but there are still labs where good work is done. Its just now scientific research is now a grossly inefficient enterprise due to careerism/greed/incompetence/DEI/etc.
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“Probably explains why Academia has consistently failed to cure chronic diseases despite years of promises, while as a sufferer, I beneficiated immensely from pharma new drugs. But nothing from the “very important fundamental research we do here”. Nada. Not even a pain killer”
That’s a load of rubbish. Pharmaceutical development builds, and is dependent, upon the volume of fundamental academic research that is required before anything even gets to begin trials. Every pain killer, to use your example, only appeared after the fundamental academic research required to synthesize/extract/characterize the compound, followed by the research required to begin to understand it’s mode of action, how to formulate it, measure it’s stability etc etc etc.
Have you ever done any research at all?
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The hyperbole that Citrus formulated, however, must be understood. Surely the efforts to cure COVID were successful, after all the scientists had the metaphorical gun pointed at their heads by the whole world and were financed with a mountain of extra public money. Yet, you must educate me on what the extraordinary recent results have been on Alzheimer’s, cancer, muscular dystrophy, malaria, HIV, Dengue, diabetes, etc. Where have the promises about stem cells, gene therapy, etc. gone? In the endless expanse of dung produced by academia, some flowers really do grow here and there, right, but at an enormous cost of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in public funding thrown out the window. Personally, the smell of dung makes my guts turn.
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I would like to add that whatever tender flowers of good science manage to sprout, they get immediately covered by dung. Who knows how much knowledge and discoveries we actually had and lost.
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For every disease you have mentioned, there has been some research in academia that has helped characterize it to lead to some powerful treatments. For example:
HIV – protease inhibitors have turned it into a chronic, manageable disease instead of a death sentence. Protease inhibitor research started in the late 1960’s in academia, I collaborated with a guy that was tops in the field. He, and others, paved the way for the protease inhibitors that are used clinically today.
Diabetes–I guess its pretty easy to forget that insulin turned a horrible death sentence to a manageable disease. Insulin was purified and characterized at the University of Toronto around 1920, and the results were given to Eli Lilly (for free) to produce insulin for the masses. Read: https://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Insulin-Twenty-fifth-Anniversary/dp/0226058999/
Again, academic research has been helpful in the past, and will likely continue to do so here and there. But now the irreproducible crap level is extreme, due to bad behavior of too many careerists, who want to be rich and famous. A good example of this is Robert Gallo in HIV, read: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fictions-Scientific-Mystery-Cover-up/dp/0316090042/
Science is a great enterprise made grossly inefficient by human ego.
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@NMH, I think we’re saying the same thing. I know about the great medical advances of the past, but I used the adjective “recent” in my comment above. There are still advancements here and there, but quite little respect to the enormously increased amount of public funds bestowed. Too little results for an enterprise that has seen its global turnover grow dramatically without producing satisfactory results.
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Eric Verdin paper, see the fine workmanship, see the quality!
PubPeer – Regulation of insulin secretion by SIRT4, a mitochondrial AD…
J Biol Chem
. 2007 Nov 16;282(46):33583-33592.
doi: 10.1074/jbc.M705488200. Epub 2007 Aug 22.Regulation of insulin secretion by SIRT4, a mitochondrial ADP-ribosyltransferase
Nidhi Ahuja 1, Bjoern Schwer 1, Stefania Carobbio 2, David Waltregny 3, Brian J North 1, Vincenzo Castronovo 3, Pierre Maechler 2, Eric Verdin 4
Affiliations collapseAffiliations
DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M705488200
Present job. Leadership (buckinstitute.org)
President and Chief Executive Officer
Famous enough for his own Wikipedia page
Eric Verdin – Wikipedia
Eric M. Verdin was born in Belgium.[4] He has a BS in Medical Sciences and doctorate of medicine from the University of Liege.[4]
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Oh, how did I miss that indeed! With Castronovo!
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PubPeer – Regulation of insulin secretion by SIRT4, a mitochondrial AD…
The above paper is safe as houses. It’s in J Biol Chem.
How JBC sold its Soul to the Devil – For Better Science
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All water off a duck’s back.
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Liege was also home to late Pierre Lutgen, co-author of the (in)famous fraudulous trials on Artemisia against malaria and schistosomiasis, among other unethical publications.
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WordPress put your comment in spam where I now found it!
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The University of Liege apparently completed their investigation and found that Leonid Schneider is guilty of slander and blasphemy.
I received this message from Rudi Cloots:
“Dear Mr Schneider,
The Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity of the University of Liege, which I chair, is an advisory board. For the investigations carried out by the Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity, we call on the services of international experts who do not belong to the University of Liege. It is always made sure that the experts have no conflict of interest with the authors of the papers investigated and never worked with them. The experts give a personal and independent opinion, shed light on certain practices and recommend corrective actions, if needed. From this analysis, the anomalies found on pubpeer and the associated research practices are classified according to a terminology recommended in the document “Best Practices for Ensuring Scientific Integrity and Preventing Misconduct” from the OCDE and the guide “European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity” from the ALLEA. The terminology ranges from “unintentional” to “fabrication of data” and may include “self-plagiarism” or “bad data management”. This analysis, together with recommendations, are detailed in an investigation report that is transmitted to the Rectoral authority. Based on these recommendations, the Rectoral Authority decides to impose the necessary sanctions and/or corrective measures (e.g. submission of a corrigendum, retraction) if needed. The Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity monitors the implementation of these corrective measures (if such measures were necessary). The whole process is confidential.
In your blog, the post “My Liege is not so vile a sin” contains serious allegations and aggressive vocabulary against the researchers (“three academic generations of cheaters”), their results (“totally fake, those gels”), the Board itself “[…] his silly Board of ethics and scientific integrity”) and the university (“Possibly in Liege they do honestly think that scientific research is supposed to be fake”). You mention things that are wrong regarding how investigations are conducted in our university (“[…] the Vice-Dean for Research (medecine) is in charge of all research misconduct investigations in his faculty”, “Rogister investigated himself again”, “she very likely has a voice in research integrity investigations”). The claim “quite possibly University of Liege threatened to sue” is also wrong and entirely unfounded. All these allegations in which you criticize without really knowing the major elements of the investigation of cases and mention erroneous statements in your blog demonstrate a lack of objective analysis.
May I suggest you to consider some points described in the guide “European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity” from ALLEA. The guide mentions several violations of research integrity including “accusing a researcher of misconduct or other violations in a malicious way”. For dealing with allegations of misconduct it is also recommended that “procedures are conducted confidentially”, “investigations are carried out with due process and in fairness to all parties” and “anyone accused of research misconduct is presumed innocent until proven otherwise”. These are obviously not the recommendations and best practices that appear to anyone reading your blog. We do honestly appreciate when papers containing possible image problems are reported to us, and the Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity always investigates the reported problems. We will always ignore disrespectful and/or unfounded allegations. As you present your blog as dedicated to independent science journalism, may I ask you to consider your post related to the University of Liège in the light of the Munich Declaration of the duties and rights of the journalists (particularly, § 8 related to “calumny” and “unfounded accusations”) and adapt it accordingly.
May I also ask you to publish this rebuttal in your blog.
Yours Sincerely,
Rudi Cloots, in the name of all the members of the Board of Ethics and Scientific Integrity (CEIS).”
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DearLeonid, I suggest you send your article to the RTBF media, and also Le Soir. They might be interested.
Rtbf.be
Lesoir.be
There kis a chance they might be interested
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Always better when a native speaker sends it.
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not surprised, they also kill students
https://www.lesoir.be/542198/article/2023-10-09/mort-dun-etudiant-liege-il-ete-retrouve-inanime-apres-avoir-trop-bu#:~:text=Selon%20le%20m%C3%A9decin%20l%C3%A9giste%20mandat%C3%A9,%C3%A9t%C3%A9%20annul%C3%A9es%2C%20en%20son%20honneur.
Probably the worse university in the country. At least for life sciences every one knows they are a bunch of clowns.
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What a way to go, I wonder if alcohol was somehow involved? Maybe he choked on someone else’s vomit- you can’t dust for vomit…
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Some, perhaps a large proportion, prefer corruption. They learn who the players are and know whose arses to lick, whose palms to grease. It makes life predictable and manageable. Some like having the Pope, you only have to learn what the Pope thinks.
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Special mention for Professor Olivier Feron.
Olivier Feron, Principal Investigator | UCLouvain
“Back in belgium, he established his own laboratory progressively shifting the focus of his research from cardiovascular diseases to oncology. “
Cardiovascular diseases.
PubPeer – Liposomal Hsp90 cDNA induces neovascularization via nitric o…
Retraction.
PubPeer – RhoA activation and interaction with Caveolin-1 are critical…
Oncology.
PubPeer – Regulation of monocarboxylate transporter MCT1 expression by…
PubPeer – The transcription factor GATA-1 is overexpressed in breast c…
Co-author Sarab Lizard-Nacol
PubPeer – Search publications and join the conversation.
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” Tchantchès puppets”. Nice to see For Better Science branching out into local folklore!
I remember passing through Liège on the train, even going to a large outdoor marker one Sunday morning. That was so many years ago. Who would have guessed what the future would bring?
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My previous attempt at a reply hasn’t appeared, perhaps I pressed the wrong button. Nevertheless I shall try to recapture what I wrote.
“The hyperbole that Citrus formulated, however, must be understood.”
Hyperbole is an understatement. Unless you all keep tree bark in your medicine cabinets to deal with headaches? Or rub a toad over an open wound to rebalance the humors?
“Yet, you must educate me on what the extraordinary recent results have been on Alzheimer’s, cancer, muscular dystrophy, malaria, HIV, Dengue, diabetes, etc. Where have the promises about stem cells, gene therapy, etc. gone?”
Ah, where’s your floating hoverboard? Where are the underwater cities you were told we’d have by now? Scientists in movies promised the future by the year 2000, 2020 , 20… and they haven’t delivered so it must be the fault of … who exactly are you blaming Aneurus? You have clearly been gypped by scientists, or fraudulent scientists, or big pharma, or somebody, so who are you blaming for this outrageous lack of cures for everything? Do you think that the mere improvement of life expectancy and quality that modern medicine has generated is clearly insufficient when disease still exists?
As someone who steers clear of growing cultures of uncooperative cells I still have observed a few things. One of those is that controlling sacks of thousands of compounds that interact and react together across an N-dimensional probability space under a wide regime of kinetic parameters and feedback loops, in a system that is tuned to be transient even when it works properly, aka your average cell, is tricky. Sticking in some extra compounds in a way that you hope is targeted and predictable, aka medicine, but having to happen in the universe of chemical and physical properties, aka reality, increases the challenge somewhat don’t you think?? Thinking as a scientist for a few minutes, it shouldn’t be surprising that biology doesn’t respond as we command to every click of our fingers.
“In the endless expanse of dung produced by academia, some flowers really do grow here and there,”
My, my, isn’t hyperbole the fashion on this forum? I enjoy a poetic turn of phrase as much as the next frustrated person with a chip on their shoulder, but in a discussion about how bad scientific fraud is why are half of the discussion points here based on the same intellectual standard as Jersey #@&!ing Shore? Scientific fraud is a major problem, it needs to be fixed or at least confronted, it deserves more serious thought than some of the brainless statements being parroted.
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Ah, I know well that a cell is a mess. That’s why I’m saying that a large number of those to whom I currently pay a salary with my taxes don’t understand enough or are even plain dishonest to deserve my money. Academia became hypertrophic. Universities, professors, doctoral students, journals, awards, etc. have multiplied, but those who know how to do science are the minority of those currently employed. What has been created is a speculative bubble. I wish this bubble would deflate. I want my money to be used by responsible and talented people with ethics, and not used to fatten the curricula of cats and dogs, and to make them travel like loose cannons around the globe to give seminars and have fun while they never stick their noses in their students’ lab-book. Before you authoritatively say that “pharmaceutical development builds, and is dependent, upon the volume of fundamental academic research that is required before anything even gets to begin trials”, you might first re-read most of the 942 articles published here at FBS as of today. I’m afraid you have to do some homework. Hundreds of cases are reported here about start-ups, biotech companies, patented drugs and techniques created just to milk money from gullible people like our governors and idiotic greedy investors, but unfortunately also from desperate patients. As I told you already, more than half of what is published is irreproducible, and this is a fact, either you like it or not. Regarding the serious thoughts to confront fraud, here my two cents. First, the problem must be recognized as such, and I’m afraid several academics are unaware that >50% of what is published is rubbish. Second, publishers cannot be for-profit organizations. Third, all countries must set up a central office for research misconduct. Forth, any given figure of any given paper must be linked to the people who performed the experiment. Fifth, data are stored forever, no time limit. Sixth, all raw data have to be submitted within the manuscript, everything everytime from now onwards. Seventh, whoever is proven being a serial cheater is out forever AND must return all the money earned in their fraudulent career. It’s a start, no?
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“Second, publishers cannot be for-profit organizations.”
How to get Springer Nature, Elsevier, Wiley, and other for-profit organizations out of scientific publishing? How to stop their highly profitable, Mother Theresa, virtue-signalling drag act, which adds little and takes a lot from science.
There are laws and regulations about most things, even in democratic countries. Perhaps only scientific societies, or associations with wide ownership, should be licenced to publish scientific works. You need a medical licence to practise medicine, you need a legal licence to practise law.
Why this idea that to stop people from doing just what they like, including harming others and harming science, in the form of being allowed to publish nonsense, is taking away their freedom and their human rights? Why do people object to governmental intervention when governmental intervention in the form of laws to keep big business out of scientific publishing may be needed as the publishers cannot put their own houses in order? The big publishers laugh at persuasion all the way to the bank.
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There’s no point in engaging in a discussion with him. He behaves like a typical KGB propagandon:
And finally with all these (this list is by no means full) shifts the topic of the problem, on purpose of course. I can think of only 2 reasons for such a behavior: either doesn’t want to accept that the problem is so serious, or he is a small part of the problem. The former is perfectly understandable since anyone who have put in years of proper scientific effort would be grossly disappointed by this enormous injustice, while the latter is absolutely logical.
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“I’m afraid you have to do some homework.”
Actually, I think everyone who’s commenting should do some more homework, including yourself. I’m familiar with the FBS website, I think I mentioned that before. You’re using stats in a similar way to which the fraudsters do, with a cavernous gulf between the the number of cases proven or reported (and yes, as I have already said several times, I know that there are even more cases of fraud than those) and the grand sweeping but unsupported statements that flow on from there. With little substance to link the two. Does that represent the quality of work or thinking that you think will really make science better? It will identify some of the fraudsters, and trigger some OMG sniggers, but do you think it’s going to make real change?
“As I told you already, more than half of what is published is irreproducible,”
You’ve claimed it but not come close to proving that at all. Again, you use the same hand-waviness that the fraudsters do in trying to defend themselves. You think that over half of the 7 or 8 million papers now published each year are irreproducible? Can you provide evidence of that scale? Imagine that a student has made that claim in an essay or exam and hopefully you have been telling your students that they need to provide some evidence for any conclusions they make – what is they evidence here for “more than half of what is published is irreproducible”? If your answer doesn’t have the word “million” in it then it’s certainly not making your case.
For the sake of my not rambling on, at least too much re: your suggested improvements:
1st – Yes the problem must be raised but you have not provided any evidence for your claim that “>50% of what is published is rubbish”. So what’s the evidence that 3.5 – 4M publications in 2023 were rubbish?
2nd – That will require an international agreement to make publishing a non-profit activity by law, everywhere. Since no law in existence has completely stopped crime ever, I am not sure how you think that will work?
3rd – They should but are you, or some self-appointed group, now telling foreign governments and their peoples what they must do? I forsee some truck sized ethical issues hurtling down that road. Could be that some of those foreign governments might just object to being told “must”.
4th – That’s actually a more sensible and achievable idea.
5th – “forever”? Any scientist with any brains will know that’s a ridiculous proscription because it’s impractical and from a nitpicky legal perspective is meaningless. Tell me how you will personally ensure the preservation of all of your work and writings for beyond the lifetime of this planet, solar system and universe? I know that is extreme nit picking but it shows why you should put some thought into your statements because your suggestion is so obviously unenforceable. More than 3 years? Absolutely. More than 7 years, the time limit I need to keep my financial records to avoid the Tax Office getting cranky with me (as proscribed by law with legally enforceable punishment possible if I don’t)? Happy to, but it would require legal definition otherwise anyone can challenge that in court. So it requires some work to make it practical. Just waving your hands with big statements won’t make this possible, it will require significant planning and investment.
6th – In principle there is merit to providing all data, but without a much more detailed plan as to how that works and gets policed you will just have a massive data dump. As well as the obvious question as to how you even know if someone has or hasn’t provided ALL data for ALL experiments/calculations/simulations (you won’t) you will also start meeting the technological problem of data storage, particularly if you want all data to be stored for all time. I am not sure that humanity currently has that data storage capacity, without even knowing yet how many redundant copies of each byte of data you expect; is it one each for the lead author, the institution, the journal, the funding agency, the independent auditor? That’s a lot of data storage if it is. Since no technology that we have is able to physically survive ‘forever’, exactly what would be all storing all of this data on or in?
7th – what does “out” even mean here? Do you know of a way that you can stop a fraudster from moving from one employer to another, or from one country to another? That’s not possible by any legal means. Do you mean they should be banned from publishing in any way ever again? That’s not legally enforceable anywhere – any lawyer or advocate would shoot that down on human rights grounds. Do you mean they should be banned from future funding? I understand the sentiment, I really do, but that would also be illegal wouldn’t it? To put your suggestion in context – our legal and ethical systems consider that a criminal (NOTE THE WORD – someone who has been convicted in a legally defined and regulated court of law of having committed a crime) who has served their sentence is not supposed to be further punished and has the legally protected right to get on with their life. So consider how you would enforce these restrictions by means that wouldn’t be thrown out in 10 minutes of the court case challenge starting? Partial restrictions would be enforceable, but your grand pronouncements as is wouldn’t be.
You have some useful ideas but most of them are based on impractical, legally unenforceable and in some cases even unethical concepts. Or is it a case of screw all of that in the name of the cause and let’s all be vigilantes? Because that approach has always worked so well throughout history!
To reiterate, yet again, wild hand-wavey claims and storm-the-Bastille thinking won’t fix the problem of scientific fraud.
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” Perhaps only scientific societies, or associations with wide ownership, should be licenced to publish scientific works. You need a medical licence to practise medicine, you need a legal licence to practise law.”
Who’s doing the licencing? And in which countries would this be happening or is the UN in charge of the planet all of a sudden? Doctors get licenced to practice medicine in a given country but can of course choose to move to a different country and apply to get a licence there. The same for lawyers.
All of this discussion ignores some basic facts. For a start, many countries have laws that define what people can or cannot do. Aggrieved scientists passionately combating fraudsters don’t just get to write their own laws. Most of the ideas being postulated are complete non-starters without changes to the law. You/we can demand whatever punishments you/we like but unless they can be legally enforced if challenged then those demands are worth nothing.
Secondly, science and publishing are international. Even if some countries brought in the legal changes for the above to become a reality, the parasite journals and fraudsters can just move somewhere else. As long as there are countries that have significant resources but operate by standards outside of your ethical vision then there isn’t anything to stop them from continuing.
The Law may well be an ass, but it’s still the Law. You need to change or make laws for a number of these proposals to be possible.
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“Doctors get licenced to practice medicine in a given country but can of course choose to move to a different country and apply to get a licence there. The same for lawyers.”
That’s easier said than done.
You would have to pass exams, and now there is revalidation every few years.
It’s not particularly easy to work as a doctor in the U.S. if you trained abroad.
The point is that these systems do have attempts at checking quality.
“Who’s doing the licencing?”
In many countries national medical authorities would do that.
Once again, it’s not just do what you like, somehow bad business practices will always win.
As a last resort the criminal justice system will get involved. Rare, but does happen.
The Department of Justice and Harvard did come to agreement where Harvard repaid USD 10 million because of Piero Anversa’s fraud.
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“There’s no point in engaging in a discussion with him.”
You didn’t engage in conversation Albert. You weren’t even able to explain your own words in your waffling rant, made a snide accusation and when challenged to back it up with evidence you disappeared. And now you reappear to make some more snide comments, it’s pathetic.
Aneurus, and anyone else for that matter, it’s your choice if you would like to keep the discussion going. Albert’s shown he’s got nothing of value to add to any serious discussion, but if anyone else wants to discuss/debate/chat about any of my posts or is unclear on my opinion of the seriousness of fraud in science, then all you need to do is ask. Unlike Albert though, try reading what I write.
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I have said A, it’s polite to say B. Moreover, the fact that you spend a lot of time commenting here shows that you are a decent guy.
Have very well expressed the reasons above for my reluctance to discuss anything with you. This is a comment section in a blog and nobody is obliged to give you or me an explanation or anything. Your replies are in the boring (for me) style of the contemporary peer-review process of detailed point-to-point replies. Despite that, I read what you write but refuse to take part in it.
This blog is for the public and therefore scientists should interact understandably for the public (personal view). The content itself is complex and hard to follow, know that from experience with friends and sometimes even with me. So, when you ease up a lot, will gladly have a normal argumented discussion with you.
Last but not least, science is not only evidence and proof. It is also order estimates, hypotheses built on insufficient (sometimes even unreliable) data and facts.
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If anyone has not seen this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
In particular, read “History” and “in medicine”.
From the latter: “In a 2012 paper, C. Glenn Begley, a biotech consultant working at Amgen, and Lee Ellis, a medical researcher at the University of Texas, found that only 11% of 53 pre-clinical cancer studies had replications that could confirm conclusions from the original studies.[79] In late 2021, The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology examined 53 top papers about cancer published between 2010 and 2012 and showed that among studies that provided sufficient information to be redone, the effect sizes were 85% smaller on average than the original findings.[80][81] A survey of cancer researchers found that half of them had been unable to reproduce a published result.[82] Another report estimated that almost half of randomized controlled trials contained flawed data (based on the analysis of anonymized individual participant data (IPD) from more than 150 trials).[83]“
In the biological-related papers that are published in what I call “career making” high-citation journals (Science, Nature, Cell, etc), a 50% irreproducibility rate may be generous. This paragraph suggests its higher.
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It’s good that now at least some people are thinking evidence might be helpful in this discussion. I will point out though an obvious flaw in blindly extrapolating from a limited dataset – the stats mentioned all pertain to cancer research. While that is a significant field of research and resources (with big rewards in the offing hence the problems of fraud intensify over the standard issues from working with uncooperative organisms), most scientists around the world don’t work on cancer. So while those figures obviously show there are serious problems in cancer research, and reproducibility problems occur in all fields, probably, unless Nature and Science drop every other field of scientific endeavour from their august pages then we are all still guessing about scale.
Does anyone reading this forum work on cancer research? If so, I’d be interested in hearing from them about the challenge of working with cells and animals in getting reproducible results, compared to the possible level of outright fraud?
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I used to work in cancer and stem cell research, esp cell biology. Biological systems are actually not that unpredictable. The problem is that the predictions made by the experimenter most often never fulfill. Back then I thought it was because I wasn’t as smart as those who publish in Nature.
Hence the need for stochastic tricks of “It kinda worked once, because the system is unpredictable but I’ll publish it anyway”.
Or, one just fakes the stuff to make it fit.
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This may not directly answer you question, but Ill comment anyway: I’ve been in a lot of different fields: started in chemistry (protein crystallography), moved into cancer and other molecular/cell biological fields.
It would not surprise me if the level of fraud was different in different fields, the reason being in some fields its easier to commit, er, “effective” fraud that will allow you to get a good job in academia or industry, in others may be more difficult. In protein crystallography, it used to be extremely difficult/impossible to commit fraud at the level needed to get a paper in a career-making journal, because that would require you to completely make up everything in the project; make up a massive data set for a protein, etc. And someone in the lab you are working in would certainly catch you.
In molecular/cell biology (like cancer) its very easy to create “effective” career-making fraud, and very unlikely someone in the lab will catch you. The reason is this: your on a project to get data for a molecular/cellular-based hypothesis that requires you to build a narrative—a story—with figures that supports this hypothesis. However, you see many possible narratives are possible. Some narratives are somewhat interesting (paper gets International Journal of Cell Research, Impact factor of 2.0, you remain a post-doc)), some narratives are sexy job-openers (Cell, impact factor of 40, and offers at R1 Amercian research universities.). You see that all you have to do is change the data a little here and there to get the data to fit into the sexy narrative. It only takes a little bit of change here and you get a huge payoff.
Evidence to suggest that is going on may be this: in cancer research, it seems its pretty rare to find an entire paper that is completely made up. Instead, its usually a few or more figures that are–just enough for the compelling narrative to get the work into a high impact journal. So its not so much that 50% of the cancer papers have 100% fake figures, but more that almost all (100% ) cancer papers in high impact journals have 50% of flawed data. This is extreme but I think you get my point.
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Watch this, particularly at 1:23 on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl4L4M8m4d0
I remember the last major publishable project I was on I made what I thought was a hot discovery in my field of cell biology, and for a day was fantasizing what the high impact journal it would get into! But then Iearned that the observation had already been made in cancer cells, and inevitably my work was published in a low impact journal. No faculty position for me, and I appear to be a permanent member of the precariat class (post-docs/research associate/adjunct faculty).
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University of Liège again! It’s O.K. because Anne E Willis, O.B.E., is on board.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/294AF1A5C70DD08F15F692E992B71D
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One more for the University of Liège!
PubPeer – HDAC5 is required for maintenance of pericentric heterochrom…
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And wouldn’t you know it, another one for the University of Liège!
PubPeer – Methylglyoxal, a glycolysis side-product, induces Hsp90 glyc…
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