Schneider Shorts 3.05.2024 – No data came from a “Paper Mill”!

Schneider Shorts of 3 May 2024 – Ajan the Pathological Liar steals identities for false DMCA claims, a citation scammer to become rector in Spain, patient abuse at Mount Sinai, with unhelpful corrections and retractions, one zombie suspended and another returning, and a tech bro eugenics institute shut down in Oxford.

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Science Elites

The seven lies of the AI expert

The Spanish journalist Manuel Ansede reported in the English-language edition of El Pais on 26 April 2024, in an article titled “The seven lies of the AI expert who cited himself thousands of times on scientific papers“:

“Only one person has presented his candidacy for rector of one of the oldest academic institutions in the world, the University of Salamanca. He is Professor Juan Manuel Corchado, who specializes in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. On March 15 EL PAÍS published a story revealing that for years this academic has been enhancing his resume with tricks, publishing odd documents such as a pseudo-study on Covid with four insubstantial paragraphs and citing a hundred references to his own work. “

The election is on 7 May 2024. Meanwhile, Corchado is hanging out with top politicians who bestowed him with €2.5 million for his private business.

The El Pais investigation follows Retraction Watch reporting from 2022. This is how Corchado used to make himself “one of the experts in artificial intelligence with the greatest impact in the world, without actually being one“.

• “Corchado told seven lies in his reply to the information published by this newspaper and which he posted on his website with the title Defending the truth. The professor claimed that the documents with thousands of self-citations were simply “class exercises posted on a university website.” That’s the first lie. The reality is that Corchado used the same trick in his presentations at conferences. In a two-page abstract for a conference in Chennai, India, he cited himself 200 times.”
• “The professor maintains that he deleted the documents with self-citations when he realized that they were boosting his resume, but that is the second lie. The mass deletion began in March, just when this newspaper began to ask around. He had 45,000 citations, more than the top luminaries in the United States.”
• “Corchado and his assistants have for years instructed workers in his research group — called BISITE — to include in their studies a ready-made list of references to papers written by the professor”
• “Corchado acknowledges that there were many false profiles of scientists on ResearchGate dedicated to compulsively citing his work, but assures that they were not created by him, but by a former colleague who wanted to “do harm.” This newspaper verified there are at least three apparently non-existent researchers — Juan Rodríguez, A. Pérez and Marcus Ress — whose profiles disappeared on March 13, the same day that Corchado had arranged a telephone interview with EL PAÍS. […] There are still suspicious profiles of alleged researchers who only cite Corchado.”
• “Corchado insists that he does not need to cheat on Google Scholar because his metrics are also very good in other more selective databases, such as Scopus. That is the seventh lie. The reality is that his ready-made lists of self-citations have artificially boosted him everywhere, although in recent weeks he has deleted the most scandalous papers. He has also resorted to other shortcuts, such as being editor of 31 special issues of journals published by MDPI”

On top, Corchado organises predatory conferences, where he sells proceedings slots to anyone willing to pay €585. He already had one retraction, in an Elsevier journal run by a certain Rubén González Crespo, vice-rector of the International University of La Rioja, who in turn is an associate of the Indian papermill owner Gunasekaran Manogaran (read in El Pais). Ah , and this: “The president of the ethics committee of the University of Salamanca, Bertha Gutiérrez, is Corchado’s running mate as his future vice-rector.”

Since Corchado is the only candidate, I congratulate the University of Salamanca on their new rector already.

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Desperate for effective treatment

Katherine Eban reports in STAT News about neuroscientists at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and their Living Brain Project (LBP). They are extracting brain tissue from living patients who are being treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). FDA knew and disapproved, for years, but failed to stop them.

“The FDA’s months-long internal examination of the LBP yielded a series of documents seen by STAT, including a lengthy review, completed in August 2019, of the Mount Sinai study. The review, which lists consultations with 16 different FDA officials, was scathing. It determined that the Mount Sinai doctors had been using a “false justification” to obtain patient consent to take the biopsies. One neurosurgeon consulted by the agency said any such biopsy “introduces serious risks to the human subjects.

The review found that “no neurosurgeon” consulted by FDA, either in 2013 or again in 2019, agreed with the claim that standard DBS, without a biopsy, resulted in up to 1 cubic centimeter of tissue loss, let alone 2 It stated that the doctors were using DBS surgery to take brain biopsies from “vulnerable subjects who are desperate,” and who “may not understand the consequences of losing 2 cubic cm of brain tissue.” The review concluded, “The investigator-physicians are abusing or exploiting the trust of their patients” and misleading them to obtain consent.”

The patients were lied to, DBS does not need to destroy any brain tissue. And even if it did, it is just wrong to remove additional 2 cm². Apparently the vulnerable patients only consented because they “were so desperate for effective treatment they would have agreed to almost anything.” The initial FDA approval was for 6 DBS patients, and it was about the electrodes, with no mention of any brain tissue extraction. The FDA report demanded: “THE TISSUE REMOVAL MUST STOP altogether.”

“But it does not appear that the FDA ever communicated its reviewers’ concerns to Mount Sinai, and the biopsies have not stopped. Today, with annual re-approval from Mount Sinai’s institutional review board (IRB), an internal committee that oversees medical research, the Living Brain Project has collected over 600 brain samples, and expanded the biopsies to a second medical center. […]

In response to a detailed set of questions, Mount Sinai vehemently defended its handling of the study and disputed that it is or ever was subject to FDA regulations… […]

In a slide presentation to the NIH, they described the biopsy procedure as “approved by the FDA and IRB.”

And this is why Mount Sinai has absolutely no issues with these unethical activities:

“The Living Brain Project is co-run by Mount Sinai neurosurgeon Brian Kopell and psychiatrist Alexander Charney, the son of the medical school’s longtime dean, Dennis Charney, who is also president for academic affairs of the Mount Sinai Health System. Dean Charney has served as a key adviser on the LBP and is listed as one of the study’s personnel. […]
Both Alexander Charney and Kopell are high-profile figures at Mount Sinai. At age 40, Charney has had a meteoric rise at Mount Sinai and its medical school…”

Kopell and Charney Jr already published their breakthrough results as preprint, in August 2023:

Lora E. Liharska , You Jeong Park , Kimia Ziafat , Lillian Wilkins , Hannah Silk , Lisa M. Linares , Ryan C. Thompson , Eric Vornholt , Brendan Sullivan , Vanessa Cohen , Prashant Kota , Claudia Feng , Esther Cheng , Jessica S. Johnson , Marysia-Kolbe Rieder , Jia Huang , Joseph Scarpa , Jairo Polanco , Emily Moya , Alice Hashemi , Jaroslav Bendl, Gabriel E. Hoffman, Panos Roussos, Matthew A. Levin, Girish N. Nadkarni, Robert Sebra, John Crary, Pamela Sklar, Eric E. Schadt, Noam D. Beckmann, Brian H. Kopell, Alexander W. Charney A study of gene expression in the living human brain bioRxiv (2023) doi: 10.1101/2023.04.21.23288916 

It never made it into a peer reviewed journal though. Because even though Charney Jr and Kopell had their fun abusing patients, the result was not only unethical but scientifically trash.

“In November, a team led by Daniel Weinberger, director and CEO of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development Maltz Research Laboratories, re-analyzed the LBP dataset and published a rebuttal preprint that “unexpectedly found that the living brain tissue samples were of much lower quality than the postmortem samples across multiple standard metrics.” They wrote that the authors’ conclusions were
“unjustified” and that evidence that living brain tissue “eclipses the value of postmortem analyses is not apparent.”

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A measure of precaution

In the previous Friday Shorts, I reported about the retraction of a Science paper by the Chilean zombie scientist Claudio Hetz.

Now, Hetz has been suspended by his employer, the Chilean research centre GERO in Santiago. This was posted by GERO on various social media channels on 22 April 2024:

Google- translated (highlights mine):

Santiago April 22, 2024

Public Statement

FONDAP Center for Geroscience, Mental Health and Metabolism (GERO)

At GERO, we are committed to scientific integrity and transparency in all our activities, including research and publications. It is with this commitment that we want to inform the scientific community and the general public about an important decision related to one of our research associates.

Recently, we have become aware of a situation that requires a review and evaluation, related to possible discrepancies in data published in the past by one of our associated researchers, Dr. Claudio Hetz, which led to the Retraction of an article in Science magazine, due to the impossibility of replicating the published data in this work.

We want to emphasize that, at this moment, the facts are not fully clarified, and we are not attributing responsibility. However, the seriousness of the allegations and the need to maintain trust in our work forces us to take action.

As members of the GERO board, we have decided to ask the authorities for an investigation in this regard. Along with this, we suspend the participation of Dr. Claudio Hetz in all research and administrative activities related to GERO until the facts are clarified.

This decision is made not as a verdict of fraud, but as a measure of precaution in order to protect the integrity and credibility of our work and all those involved, including students, researchers, clinical staff and staff as well as the reputation of the two sponsoring institutions, the University of Chile and the Universidad Mayor.

We appreciate the understanding and continued support of our community as we We work to resolve this matter in a responsible and ethical way.

Dr. Philip Court, Principal and Principal Investigator GERO
Dr. Christian Gonzalez, Alternate Director and Principal Investigator GERO
Dr. Andrea Slachevsky, GERO Principal Investigator
Dr. Cesar Cardenas, GERO Principal Investigator
Dr. Daniela Thumala, GERO Research Associate

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Beyond excited

Science cheater David Sabatini, who was sacked for sexual harassment at MIT, returns to Boston. He announced that on X:

Sabatini previously was recruited by the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB Prague) in Prague, Czechia, as I wrote in November 2023 Shorts. There were of course protests by Czech researchers, and it was quite clear that no European funder would give Sabatini any money. In any case, he quite possibly worked for IOCB “remote” so far, from his sofa in Boston.

Hence, the new move. As Sabatini openly admits, his new IOCB lab in Boston will be sponsored not by IOCB, but by billionaire bros like Bill Ackman who pitched together last year to collect $25 million. Because also in USA, no research funder is willing to give Sabatini any money.

There is reporting by STAT News, but it is paywalled. The Boston Globe quotes the IOCB leader:

“The Czech institute, known as IOCB Prague, is realizing a long-held ambition to expand into the Boston biotech hub, confirmed the institute’s director, Jan Konvalinka.

“I feel adventurous about it,” Konvalinka said in a telephone interview from Prague. “My experience is that it is very important to be present where the best brains are, and where the very best universities are. It’s important to be where the decisions are being made.

Sabatini, who will split time between Boston and Prague, will lead a research group of up to 15 people at IOCB Boston. The local branch of the Prague institute is scheduled to open late this summer, Konvalinka said. He imagines the Boston location eventually growing to two or three research groups.”

Hey, it costs Konvalinka nothing while removing a source of protests and conflicts. He seems unfazed by the criticism that a research institute in Boston unconnected to any university is just stupid.

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Homo philoprogenitus

As you may have heard in the news, on 16 April 2024 the Oxford University suddenly shut down the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), led by a certain Swede named Nick Bostrom. The Guardian has some background, which explains why Bostrom is so beloved by billionaire tech bros. In brief: it’s all about racism and eugenics.

Bostrom’s institute was sponsored by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and by Elon Musk. Guardian writes:

“Among the other ideas and movements that have emerged from the FHI are longtermism – the notion that humanity should prioritise the needs of the distant future because it theoretically contains hugely more lives than the present – and effective altruism (EA), a utilitarian approach to maximising global good.

These philosophies, which have intermarried, inspired something of a cult-like following, which may have alienated many in the wider philosophy community in Oxford, and indeed among the university’s administrators.”

Now, Effective Altruism or Longterminism is nothing but “eugenics on steroids” as one commented. The idea is same: you “altruistically” take responsibility for future generations by preventing “undesired” people from procreating, while genetically “enhancing” the progeny of the rich and mighty white elites.

Bostrom denies that he is a eugenicist or a racist, but there is this:

“Fifteen months ago Bostrom was forced to issue an apology for comments he’d made in a group email back in 1996, when he was a 23-year-old postgraduate student at the London School of Economics. In the retrieved message Bostrom used the N-word and argued that white people were more intelligent than black people.

The apology did little to placate Bostrom’s critics, not least because he conspicuously failed to withdraw his central contention regarding race and intelligence, and seemed to make a partial defence of eugenics. Although, after an investigation, Oxford University did accept that Bostrom was not a racist…”

This is the email, published by a former follower of Bostrom’s, Émile Torres in January 2023:

Now you know why Musk loves Bostrom. Torres also wrote:

“…consider that six years after using the N-word, Bostrom argued in one of the founding documents of longtermism that one type of “existential risk” is the possibility of “dysgenic pressures.” The word “dysgenic” — the opposite of “eugenic” —is all over the 20th-century eugenics literature, and worries about dysgenic trends motivated a wide range of illiberal policies, including restrictions on immigration, anti-miscegenation laws and forced sterilizations, the last of which resulted in some 20,000 people being sterilized against their will in California between 1909 and 1979.

For Bostrom, the primary “dysgenic”-related worry is that less “intellectually talented individuals” might outbreed their more “intellectually talented” peers. In his 2002 article on “existential risks,” which helped launch the longtermist movement, he writes:

“Currently it seems that there is a negative correlation in some places between intellectual achievement and fertility. If such selection were to operate over a long period of time, we might evolve into a less brainy but more fertile species, homo philoprogenitus (“lover of many offspring”).”

What surprises me is that Oxford eventually decided against tech bro money and for basic ethics.

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Scholarly Publishing

The unintentional mistake

We have first insights how the investigation of manipulated data in papers by the fallen German ex-rector Simone Fulda will turn out! As reminder, Fulda had to resign as president of the University of Kiel following my reporting:

This lovely paper was now corrected:

C Safferthal , K Rohde , S Fulda Therapeutic targeting of necroptosis by Smac mimetic bypasses apoptosis resistance in acute myeloid leukemia cells Oncogene (2017) doi: 10.1038/onc.2016.310 

In general, it is rather impossible to reuse gel bands in this way by mistake. But then again, think about who Fulda is, you can’t expect some pedestrian rules to apply to high-flying people of her calibre. Hence, a Correction was published on 29 April 2024:

““Since publication of this article, the authors noticed that Fig. 2d (MV4-11, Molm13) and 2e (MV4-11) do not show the correct blots for GAPDH. The corrected Fig. 2d and 2e are provided below. The sample containing the control siRNA-treated cells (siCtrl) is used as control in both Fig. 2d and 2e. Horizontal mirroring of the films for GAPDH was used to show the control on the left of each figure. The unintentional mistake does not alter the conclusions of the study. The authors apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Same drivel for Figure S5c. The study is merely 7 years old, and the rules of German Research Council (DFG) mandate raw data storage of 10 years. But for normal people! Not for elites! Which is exactly why it was decided against asking Fulda for raw data.

This, dear reader, is how the Fulda investigation by DFG and three German universities will conclude: with findings of unintentional mistakes which do not alter the conclusions.

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Warming as refrigerator

MDPI issued a correction for a ridiculously fraudulent, plagiarised papermill fabrication. The strange thing is that MDPI issued this correction, instead of just doing nothing, as they usually do.

Umar Nazir , Muhammad Sohail , Muhammad Bilal Hafeez , Marek Krawczuk , Sameh Askar , Sammar Wasif An inclination in Thermal Energy Using Nanoparticles with Casson Liquid Past an Expanding Porous Surface Energies (2021) doi: 10.3390/en14217328 

As Guillaume Cabanac noted, this paper contained “tortured phrases” like “slanted attractive field” and “warm conductivity“, which arise when stolen text is chased through machine translation to hide the plagiarism. The authors are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Poland. The polish author Marek Krawczuk replied on PubPeer:

“I agree that used phrases are inappropriate. All phrases should be change by the way as proposed Guillaume Cabanac. I am wondering that those phrases has not been improved before publication.”

Well, even if the papermilling authors so far had no influence on the content of their publication, now these phrases have been improved! A Correction from 19 April 2024 stated:

“Some phrases in the original publication were not appropriate [1]. The authors would like to change “limit layer” to “boundary layer”, “attractive field” to “magnetic field”, “stream” to “fluid flow”, “strand” to “extrusion”, “warmth transport” to “heat transport”, “warmth” to “heat transfer”, “prerequisite” to “researcher”, “warming as refrigerator” to “heating and cooling”, “warm” to thermal”, “transformation of heat” to “heat transfer”, “raised warmth stream” to “increase the heat flow”, “warm conductibility” to “thermal conductivity”, “trademark” to “significant”, “consistent” to “steady”, “soaked” to “saturated”, “volume portion” to “volume fraction”, “cloth” to “material”.

Corrections have been made to 1. Introduction, 2. Mathematical Formulation, 4. Outcomes and Discussion, and 5. Conclusions.

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

They haven’t corrected everything, as Nick Wise found more tortured phrases in need of update, including:

“There is also hydromantic which means ‘pertaining to hydromancy‘, divination by water or other liquid. I assume the authors (or their software) meant hydrodynamic.”

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No data came from a “Paper Mill”

On 30 March 2024, Cheshire reported a suspect papermill product to the journal’s editor:

Cheng Hu , Rilei Jiang , Ziyu Cheng , Yueyang Lu , Ling Gu , Hongxiao Li , Liqiu Li , Qian Gao , Meijuan Chen , Xu Zhang Ophiopogonin-B Suppresses Epithelial-mesenchymal Transition in Human Lung Adenocarcinoma Cells via the Linc00668/miR-432-5p/EMT Axis Journal of Cancer (2019) doi: 10.7150/jca.31338 

Now, the journal is published by Ivyspring, which is a rather dodgy publisher. But it has a real human as Editor-in-Chief – Yan-gao Man, who claims to be “Adjunct Distinguished Scientist” at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, USA (a search on institution’s website finds zero hits for him though).

Man replied right away:

“Dear My Anonymous Friend,
From the bottom of my heart, I am very grateful to you for providing the information!
Journal of Cancer has zero tolerance for any misconduct or violation of the scientific publishing integrity.    I will immediately forward the information to the authors and their affiliated institutions and demand a formal investigation and official explanation for this incident.   I will keep you informed regarding the progress.“

The author MJ Chen then replied to “My Editor-in-chief Dr. Man and My Anonymous Friend“, blamed an unnamed co-author, guaranteed that “no data comes from the paper production factory” while insisting: “The misuse of relevant images does not affect the conclusion of the paper.” Man replied asking “whether the figures mentioned in the previous emails are generated by your own laboratory or by a “Paper Mill”?” He also asked:

“I would like to encourage you and your co-authors to request the Scientific Integrity Office of your institute to conduct a comprehensive investigation on the above issues. Then, to inform us the outcomes of the investigation with a formal latter with the institute’s letter head and seal.”

Two weeks later, Chen wrote:

“Recently, the Science and Technology Department of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine has verified our original data and issued an official letter as shown in the attachment. We are very apology for any inconvenience caused by this incidence.”

This official letter was attached to Chen’s email:

“No data came from a “Paper Mill”“. Certified not by one, but by two fat red stamps with red stars.

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Retraction Watchdogging

Not aware of the submission

A papermill fabrication flagged by Smut Clyde got retracted by BMC and Springer Nature. That is the good bit, the bad bit is the notice they issued.

Erdong Shen , Xin Wang , Xin Liu , Mingyue Lv , Liang Zhang , Guolian Zhu , Zhe Sun MicroRNA-93-5p promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition in gastric cancer by repressing tumor suppressor AHNAK expression Cancer Cell International (2020) doi: 10.1186/s12935-019-1092-7 

Here is the embarrassing Retraction from 30 April 2024 (highlight mine):

“The Editors have retracted this article at the corresponding author’s request. After the publication of this article, concerns have been raised regarding image overlaps. The authors, Zhe Sun, Xin Wang, Mingyue Lv, Xin Liu, Liang Zheng, and Guolian Zhu stated that they were not aware of the submission of this article and they have not contributed to the study presented in this article.

The Editors therefore no longer have confidence in a study presented in this article.

• Image overlap between Fig. 3e, a and b from [1].
• Image overlap between Figs. 5d and 6G of [2].
• Irregularities in western blots presented in Figs. 3f and 4e/f, 5c/f and 6a.

Authors, Zhe Sun, Xin Wang, Mingyue Lv, Xin Liu, Liang Zheng, and Guolian Zhu agree with this retraction. Author, Erdong Shen did not respond to correspondence from the Publisher about this retraction.”

It is true that the 6 authors “have not contributed to the study ” and didn’t even submit it themselves, because obviously they bought it from a papermill. But one has to be a particularly dimwitted kind of BMC editor to believe that someone paid the papermill behind the authors’ back.

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No record of co-author Anette Theliander

A paper got retracted by Elsevier because Chinese papermillers invented a white European co-author to play on editorial racism.

Shenghui Liu , Jintuan Zhang , Anette Theliander , Weibin Chen , Junyong Wu , Leixin Wu Construction of self-repairing polyethersulfone membrane with high density hydrophilic microregions by two dimensional restricted channels for enhanced dyes/salts selective separation Environmental Research (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2024.118266

Data availability
No data was used for the research described in the article.

This was perfectly honest, the research study was indeed completely fabricated, but nobody took issue with it during peer review. Likely because of the coauthor Anette Theliander of Department of Energy Conversion and Storage, Technical University of Denmark! Who was of course a made-up character.

The Retraction notice, issued in or before April 2024 but dated ahead to 1 July 2024, revealed other outrageous activities:

“The Journal was made aware that there was no record of co-author Anette Theliander registered at the Technical University of Denmark. It is unclear as to whether or not this person actually exists, and the response from the corresponding author Shenghui Liu was not convincing. Upon further review, Shenghui Liu seems to be the only common author on the original and revised versions of the paper as three authors were removed from the original version and five different authors (Jintuan Zhang, Anette Theliander, Weibin Chen, Junyong Wu, Leixin Wu) were added at revision stage. Further irregularities include the exchange of various email addresses between members of the authorship, including the same email address being used by one of the removed authors, one of the added authors, and (on another publication) the corresponding author Shenghui Liu. The Editor has therefore decided to retract the paper as she has lost confidence in the scientific/ethical integrity of the article. Apologies are offered to readers.”

Nobody at Elsevier minded that email address sharing or that “three authors were removed from the original version and five different authors […] added at revision stage“! The was a white co-author on board after all!

This is of course not the first time white Europeans get invented. We already know of other fictional white coauthors: “Hilla Mills”, “Susanne Klenk” and “Ronald Glassen” (read here), or “Giorgos Jimenez” (read October 2023 Shorts) or “Dragan Rodriguez” (read Retraction Watch).

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In eigener Sache

Ajan’s many identities

Ajan Reginald, the British struck-off dentist, pathological liar, research fraudster and business associate of the Nobel laureate Sir Martin Evans, has enough of my reporting about his scams. He discovered that one can steal anyone’s identity to make fake DMCA Take-down claims, and Google always complies, while nobody at DMCA offices cares or checks anything. Obviously the takedown notices are issued by DMCA offices automatically, likely by AI unsupervised by anyone. And the best bit: there are exactly zero consequences for lies and identity theft.

Several of my websites were removed from Google search as a result. An appeal is theoretically possible, so I appealed in all cases. The mass attack took place years after Ajan tried this same DMCA trick in 2019.

That 2019 Lumen notice is deleted now, maybe my appeal worked? In any case, this article is back in Google search, who knows how long it took:

How do I know it’s Ajan who is behind that fake claims? All the articles he achieved to have purged from Google search are about him. Just to show you how insane the DMCA law is, this is the “website” which Ajan achieved in getting delisted:

https://forbetterscience.com/tag/ajan-reginald

This removes a hashtag which lists ALL my articles about Ajan which I wrote so far (including this one) and which I may write in the future. To get there, Ajan simply pretended to be Wales Online, a local newspaper which once exposed his crimes as a (now struck-off) dentist and which I quoted:

A similar claim by “walesonline.co.uk” was successfully made against a September 2023 article which was about his planned sale of Celixir for £135 million.

In some cases, the notice I received was redacted, so I had to guess what alleged copyright infringement is being claimed and by whom. This happened with the removal of a January 2022 article about Ajan scamming NHS with garbage PCR tests for COVID-19. Same kind of anonymous copyright claim had a February 2024 article delisted about the spectacular failure of the Celixir sale.

Eventually, Ajan got bored with pretending to be Wales Online. He started to impersonate other people. Here, Ajan had this June 2023 article delisted by Google which briefly mentions the (now failed) sale of his and Evans’ company Celixir. To achieve his goal, he pretended to be Retraction Watch to claim copyright for a quote of an unrelated article:

Also here, Ajan succeeded in getting my article from September 2022 delisted by Google. Strangely, he did not pretend to be The Times whose celebratory reporting about him and Evans I quoted. Instead, Ajan became the image integrity sleuth Elisabeth Bik, owner of the blog scienceintegritydigest.com, to claim copyright for a quote on an unrelated topic:

In this case, I received a reply from Google:

“We have received your counter notice. We’ll forward it to the user who requested removal of your content. If we don’t receive proof that they have filed a legal action against you within 10 business days, we’ll reinstate the material in question. A legal action may be a lawsuit against you or a claim with a qualified alternative dispute resolution provider that names the URL(s) at issue and seeks a court order to restrain your alleged infringement. “

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