Schneider Shorts 21.06.2024 – Intend on raising ‘suspicions’ and ‘questions’

Schneider Shorts of 21 June 2024 – Nobelist hounded again, retractions for stem cell and superconductor zombies, nine things melatonin does, EMBO being unstoppable, with coffee and cheese, a Declaration of Marseille, an obituary to Chinese virologist, plus proud scamferencers, a German breakthrough in Iran, and finally, what it takes to become associate editor.

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Obituary

Prof. Wu made indelible contributions

For Better Science is where you get to read the best obituaries for dead scientists to whom the Max Planck Rule definitely applies.

In October 2022, the Chinese virologist Jianguo Wu died, aged 65. He was the former director of the National Key Laboratory of Virology at Wuhan University and dean of Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Virology at Jinan University. Here is an “In Memoriam” published in MDPI by his colleagues Yang et al in August 2023:

“In 1999, he resolutely gave up the preferential treatment in the United States and went back to his motherland, China. He worked diligently at Wuhan University for more than 20 years. After retiring, he continued to engage in teaching and research at Jinan University, and also made remarkable achievements there. As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, he devoted himself to work on SARS-CoV-2 testing and research until the end of his life. […]

Throughout his career, Prof. Wu made outstanding achievements. He published over 230 papers in scientific journals, and he was selected as one of the most cited Chinese Researchers in 2021 by Elsevier.[…] In short, Prof. Wu made indelible contributions to education, virology research, and the welfare of society. He achieved many great things in his short life.”

There are around two dozens of problematic papers by Wu on PubPeer, most of the record was created by Claire Francis. It contains important contributions to virology like this one, against hepatitis:

Yi Yu , Pin Wan , Yanhua Cao , Wei Zhang , Junbo Chen , Li Tan , Yan Wang , Zhichen Sun , Qi Zhang , Yushun Wan , Ying Zhu , Fang Liu , Kailang Wu , Yingle Liu , Jianguo Wu Hepatitis B Virus e Antigen Activates the Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling 2 to Repress Interferon Action Scientific Reports (2017) doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-01773-6 

That kind of inappropriate loading control reuse happened quite often in Wu’s papers, e.g Yang et al 2020, Li et al 2012 or Yue et al 2012. More western blot reuse against hepatitis:

Qi Zhang , Liang Wei , Hongchuan Yang , Wanqi Yang , Qingyu Yang , Zhuofan Zhang , Kailang Wu , Jianguo Wu Bromodomain containing protein represses the Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK pathway to attenuate human hepatoma cell proliferation during HCV infection Cancer Letters (2016) doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2015.11.027

Not just dodgy western blots, also fudged microscopy helped Wu’ fight ‘s fight against the hepatitis viruses:

Quanyan Liu , Jiwei Chen , Li Liu , Jun Zhang , Dongfeng Wang , Lu Ma , Yueming He , Yingle Liu , Zhisu Liu , Jianguo Wu The X Protein of Hepatitis B Virus Inhibits Apoptosis in Hepatoma Cells through Enhancing the Methionine Adenosyltransferase 2A Gene Expression and Reducing S-Adenosylmethionine Production Journal of Biological Chemistry (2011) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m110.167783 

No chance, hepatitis, when gel bands replicate like viruses! Look at these two papers:

Kai-Lang Wu , Xue Zhang , Jianlin Zhang , Yongbo Yang , Yong-Xin Mu , Mo Liu , Lu Lu , Yan Li , Ying Zhu , Jianguo Wu Inhibition of Hepatitis B virus gene expression by single and dual small interfering RNA treatment Virus Research (2005) doi: 10.1016/j.virusres.2005.04.001 

Quanyan Liu , Li Liu , Yuhong Zhao , Jin Zhang , Dongfeng Wang , Jiwei Chen , Yueming He , Jianguo Wu , Zhonglin Zhang , Zhisu Liu Hypoxia Induces Genomic DNA Demethylation through the Activation of HIF-1α and Transcriptional Upregulation of MAT2A in Hepatoma Cells Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (2011) doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.mct-10-1010 

How Professor Wu cured both hepatitis and AIDS with one hit:

Kailang Wu , Yongxin Mu , Jing Hu , Lu Lu , Xue Zhang , Yongbo Yang , Yan Li , Fang Liu , Degui Song , Ying Zhu , Jianguo Wu Simultaneously inhibition of HIV and HBV replication through a dual small interfering RNA expression system Antiviral Research (2007) doi: 10.1016/j.antiviral.2006.11.004 

This one served to find a therapy against enteroviruses:

Wenbiao Wang , Feng Xiao , Pin Wan , Pan Pan , Yecheng Zhang , Fang Liu , Kailang Wu , Yingle Liu , Jianguo Wu EV71 3D Protein Binds with NLRP3 and Enhances the Assembly of Inflammasome Complex PLoS Pathogens (2017) doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006123  

Following the first SARS epidemic, Wu fought against coronaviruses:

No wonder the coronaviruses eventually won:

Mo Liu , Yongbo Yang , Chunfang Gu , Yinpu Yue , Kenneth K. Wu , Jianguo Wu , Ying Zhu Spike protein of SARS‐CoV stimulates cyclooxygenase‐2 expression via both calcium‐dependent and calcium‐independent protein kinase C pathways The FASEB Journal (2007) doi: 10.1096/fj.06-6589com 

This presumably sealed the fate of SARS viruses forever:

Xue Zhang , Kailang Wu , Di Wang , Xin Yue , Degui Song , Ying Zhu , Jianguo Wu Nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV activates interleukin-6 expression through cellular transcription factor NF-κB Virology (2007) doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2007.04.009 

Yes, awful, but don’t bother writing to Elsevier or to Karger. Wu and his Wuhan colleagues were read to take any new SARS threat.

Xue Zhang , Kailang Wu , Xin Yue , Ying Zhu , Jianguo Wu Inhibition of SARS-CoV Gene Expression by Adenovirus-Delivered Small Hairpin RNA Intervirology (2007) doi: 10.1159/000097391 

A few years later, this fraud contributed to Wu’s fight against COVID-19:

Pan Pan , Miaomiao Shen , Zhenyang Yu , Weiwei Ge , Keli Chen , Mingfu Tian , Feng Xiao , Zhenwei Wang , Jun Wang , Yaling Jia , Wenbiao Wang , Pin Wan , Jing Zhang , Weijie Chen , Zhiwei Lei , Xin Chen , Zhen Luo , Qiwei Zhang , Meng Xu , Geng Li, Yongkui Li, Jianguo Wu SARS-CoV-2 N protein promotes NLRP3 inflammasome activation to induce hyperinflammation Nature Communications (2021) doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-25015-6 

Another former mentee of Wu’s wrote in another obituary:

“Professor Wu was a well-known gentleman and scholar for his erudition, modesty, graciousness and generosity. […] His charm and personality had enormous positive impacts on his students and colleagues. Under the influence of the holy spirit, more and more students are willing to engage in charitable activities and civic duties.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to describe that jointly created fake virology research as charitable activities, holy spirit or not.

As reminder, Wu worked in Wuhan. The place where the pandemic started. Where the SARS-CoV2 virus was most likely created in a lab to be published as aNature paper, then accidentally escaped, the rest is suppressed recent history because our global economies depend on Xi’s warmongering dictatorship. But think about it: people who aren’t able to manage even western blots were managing a deadly virus.

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Science Elites

Intend on raising ‘suspicions’ and ‘questions’

Thomas Südhof ticks all criteria of a persecuted minority. He is a old white German heterosexual male multimillionaire, plus a Nobel Prize laureate and Stanford professor. No wonder he feels hounded and persecuted.

Again! By a whole mob which includes two Dutch people, Elisabeth Bik and Maarten van Kampen, and an anonymous cat.

The previous case (see May 2024 Shorts) has just been corrected, now the new travesty begins:

Ok-Ho Shin, Jun Lu , Jeong-Seop Rhee , Diana R Tomchick , Zhiping P Pang , Sonja M Wojcik , Marcial Camacho-Perez , Nils Brose , Mischa Machius , Josep Rizo , Christian Rosenmund , Thomas C Südhof Munc13 C2B domain is an activity-dependent Ca2+ regulator of synaptic exocytosis Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (2010) doi: 10.1038/nsmb.1758 

Südhof replied on PubPeer right away and dismissed Bik’s evidence as “a bizarre accusation“. In another comment, he linked to his rebuttal on his institutional website (screenshot on the left):

“The most likely explanation here is, like for many of the ‘mistakes’ identified by Dr. Bik’s A.I.-powered software, that these random microduplications are simply a reproduction artifact of a digitized image.”

Cheshire aka Actinopolyspora biskrensis aka [real name here] described Südhof’s rebuttal as “non-responsive to the concerns” and containing “several incorrect assumptions and errors.” Südhof retorted: “we have addressed all reasonable questions a person purporting to be concerned about science integrity might ask“, but more importantly, the Nobelist refused to provide raw data despite being asked for it repeatedly. Cheshire explained that the image is objectively manipulated, and that only Südhof can figure out by whom and why:

“This editing may have been done by the authors in an innocent attempt to beautify an image. This editing may have been done by the publisher (or outside vendor) in order to “improve” the appearance. This editing may have been done by the authors in an attempt to generate a less ambiguous result of the original experiment. This may have been done by the authors to misrepresent the results of an experiment.”

Of course there is no outside vendor aka papermill, and Nature family journals aren’t known to falsify the figures of their authors. Which leaves editing by authors. Then Maarten van Kampen joined the debate and supplied this analysis for Südhof:

Obviously someone didn’t like some signal on the blot and removed it by copy-pasting blank areas:

Südhof reacted by lashing out at his critic and declaring conclusions unaffected:

“Dr. van Kampen et al. seem to admit that the alleged manipulations have no beneficial effects on the images or paper, but appear to intend on raising ‘suspicions’ and ‘questions’ about my lab’s papers.”

He then added that he left all original data behind at UT Southwestern and never made any digital copies because he was not “not the legal owner“, while hinting that his postdocs may have “kept copies, possibly illegally“. The multimillion-heavy Nobelist then hinted that he doesn’t give a toss what the scientific community thinks because the real authorities, the “journals and institutions“, mostly “agree that these accusations are off the mark, to put it mildly“.

I am ready to abandon my earlier theory that Südhof is merely a narcissistic bully who refuses to accept that his leadership style may have driven his minions to falsify scientific results to please him. His aggressive attitude and his dishonest replies begin to suggest something even more nefarious.

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Widespread ignorance of French law

In Marseille, France, things are their usual. The Didier Raoult legacy of litigious untouchability for fraudsters still rules supreme. And this time, it isn’t even about Raoult or any of his stooges, but some nobody at the same Aix-Marseille University.

Cheshire notified the university of two fraudulent papers, a common lead author is L’Houcine Ouafik, professor at the Institute of Neurophysiopathology of the Aix-Marseille University (AMU) and clinician at APHM (Assistance Publique – Hopitaux de Marseille).

Ghizlane Khalfaoui-Bendriss , Nadège Dussault , Samantha Fernandez-Sauze , Caroline Berenguer-Daizé , Romain Sigaud , Christine Delfino , Mylène Cayol , Philippe Metellus, Olivier Chinot , Kamel Mabrouk , Pierre-Marie Martin , L’Houcine Ouafik Adrenomedullin blockade induces regression of tumor neovessels through interference with vascular endothelial-cadherin signalling Oncotarget (2015) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.3167 

L’Houcine Ouafik, Caroline Berenguer-Daize Yolande Berthois Adrenomedullin promotes cell cycle transit and up-regulates cyclin D1 protein level in human glioblastoma cells through the activation of c-Jun/JNK/AP-1 signal transduction pathway Cellular Signalling (2009) doi: 10.1016/j.cellsig.2009.01.001 

For both cases, Cheshire received on 13 June 2024 this reply from Audrey Zeitoun-Calvo, signing as “In charge of ethics and research issues” and “Coordinator of the AMU Ethics Committee”:

“The University of Aix-Marseille has made an official written reply for each article for which there was a problem raised in pubeer [sic!]. This is due to a widespread ignorance of French law. Please contact the journals that published these articles to obtain the University’s response; researchers do not respond individually”

I asked Zeitou-Calvo if she meant to convey that the French law on defamation forbids all criticism of publications by French scientists. It seems it does because she explained:

“I am referring to the French Law and the Declaration of Helsinki concerning the protection of persons in research.”

The two papers deal with commercially obtained cell lines. No human patients were involved. The Declaration of Helsinki protects human subjects of medical research from abuse by medical researchers, not medical researchers from having to answer for their fake western blot figures. But then again, Zeitou-Calvo was put in charge of AMU ethics exactly because she is that clever. She even refuses to believe that Leonid Schneider is a real person:

“Dear anonymous admirer, 
The University only takes official requests into account and as I have already written to you we have officially replied to the reviews concerning this.“

Anyhow, Qaufik published even more fake cancer research. More fake gels:

Fabienne Brenet , Nadège Dussault , Jonas Borch , Géraldine Ferracci , Christine Delfino , Peter Roepstorff , Raymond Miquelis , L’Houcine Ouafik Mammalian Peptidylglycine α-Amidating Monooxygenase mRNA Expression Can Be Modulated by the La Autoantigen Molecular and Cellular Biology (2005) doi: 10.1128/mcb.25.17.7505-7521.2005 

And fake immunohistochemistry:

Maybe it is actually legal to falsify science in Marseille? After all, the only people on trial there are Raoult’s critics like Alexander Samuel, he also sued Elisabeth Bik and yours truly for harassment.

And then, Zeitou-Calvo wrote to me:

“We know who you are and that you have already been prosecuted for harassment for several years now, so we will not respond to you under penalty of filing a new complaint against you”

Shove your new complaint where the sun doesn’t shine, Audrey.

It is not an oversight that the Raoult University of Marseille installed a lying gormless sociopathic bully as head of ethics. Someone has to drown all the whistleblower rats they catch among foreign students, I guess.

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Unveiling the Quantum World of Materials

A scamference with yet another western science bigwig listed as participant. This time, the 80 years old Michael Graetzel, professor at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, is listed and portrayed as Plenary Speaker at a March 2024 online conference (“Unveiling the Quantum World of Materials“) by Iconic Meetings. There’s nothing to discuss, it is a classic predatory scam, badly disguised even. The domain was registered in 2022, the real offices are in India.

According to Wikipedia, Graetzel has an h-index of 300 and is author of over 1000 publications and one of the most highly cited chemists in the world. His presence at a predatory conference is unusual but this occasionally happens to very old white men at the very apex of academic pyramid who in their retirement suffer from not receiving enough attention. For example, two Germans: the late Nobel prize laureate Harald zur Hausen, whose weird cancer theories were ridiculed everywhere else, or Herbert Gleiter, who fell in love with Ashutosh Tiwari:

The Iconic event featuring Graetzel was found by Nick Wise, who was chasing an elusive and possibly fictional character named Rami Ahmad El-Nabulsi (here is his papermilled paper stricken by the Vickers Curse).

I wrote to Graetzel and EPFL, and received no reply. Despite my explicit request, EPFL never denied that Graetzel indeed voluntarily participated in that scamference. Anyway, here is a likely papermilled product by Graetzel and his former EPFL colleague and now Rector of Uppsala University, Anders Hagfeldt:

Faranak Sadegh, Seckin Akin, Majid Moghadam, Valiollah Mirkhani, Marco A. Ruiz‒Preciado, Zaiwei Wang , Mohammad Mahdi Tavakoli, Michael Graetzel, Anders Hagfeldt, Wolfgang Tress Highly efficient, stable and hysteresis‒less planar perovskite solar cell based on chemical bath treated Zn2SnO4 electron transport layer Nano Energy (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2020.105038 

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Being designated a Fellow of IAAM is a high distinction

We remain on the topic of scamferences. I think I need to invent an award for those who love fake awards. Hence, a warm round of applause for our Scamference Plonker of the Month,

Hamed Dalir of University of Florida (UF)!

An announcement by the UF Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering from 3 June 2024, also shared on social media:

“ECE Associate Professor and member of the Florida Semiconductor Institute Hamed Dalir was elected as a Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) in recognition of his outstanding contributions in the field of nanomaterials science and technology with dedication to indium thin oxide (ITO) and graphene for high-speed applications. […]

IAAM is a well-known non-profit worldwide scientific research organization founded in 2010 and located in Sweden. Its objective is to provide a high-level academic platform for the rapid development of breakthrough materials science, engineering, and technology. The IAAM routinely hosts worldwide academic conferences, such as the World Conference on Advanced Materials and Advanced Materials Conferences, throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia. IAAM brings together the world’s top experts in materials science and technology, and it has evolved to be a powerful worldwide academic organization with over 10,000 members from 125 countries. Being designated a Fellow of IAAM is a high distinction bestowed to academics and scientists in appreciation of their outstanding achievements and devotion to the advanced materials community.”

In reality of course, IAAM is a predatory conference scam operated by Ashutosh Tiwari from his bathroom. Being designated a Fellow of IAAM is actually even less than worthless, it is a sign of very low morals and even lower intellectual capacities. The only required “outstanding achievement” for an IAAM award is a willingness to embezzle public money to pay Tiwari.

Actually, Dalir is exactly the right person to be decorated with a fake award.

Moustafa Ahmed, Ahmed Bakry , Ammar Qasem , Hamed Dalir The main role of thermal annealing in controlling the structural and optical properties of ITO thin film layer Optical Materials (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.optmat.2021.110866 

I wrote to Dalir, his department head, and the UF office of research integrity. Nobody replied, and the IAAM Fellowship announcement remained online. What can you do, in Florida’s universities it is a crime to speak of racism or LGBTQ, but it is a celebrated achievement to pay scamference fraudsters and to flaunt fake awards.

In this regard, let me remind you of yet another associate professor of engineering at the same UF: Katerina Aifantis, whom this university supports not despite, but because of her financial fraud:

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Scholarly Publishing

I make the decision

While the papermill fraudster Pau Loke Show has been retracting papers in Frontiers, he and his papermilling buddies are inviting contribution to their special issue in a Springer Nature journal.

This is the call for papers in Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery:

Pau-Loke Show , Dai-Viet N. Vo , Senthil Kumar Ponnusamy , Saravanan Rajendran Alta , Gopalakrishnan Kumar Advanced Thermochemical and Biochemical Processes for Biomass Transformation To Biofuels and Biochemicals Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery (2024) doi: 10.1007/s13399-024-05794-w  

“Topics of interest in this thematic issue include but are not limited…”

An open sewer for every papermill. Pau Loke Show is the gang leader, his assistants all have PubPeer records, click on the hyperlinks: Dai-Viet N. Vo, Senthil Kumar Ponnusamy and Gopalakrishnan Kumar. Vo recently featured in Vietnamese media due to his joint retractions with Show, where he explained how he gets to publish a paper every 3 days. Show published a papermilled product in Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery before (Asif et al 2021), together with his usual papermillers and peer-review networkers Muhammad Mubashir, Kit Wayne Chew, Jiří Jaromír Klemeš (RIP) and Awais Bokhari.

The journal has a problem with papermill fraud. Fuad Ameen published there (Ameen 2022), and so did Abduladheem Turki Jalil (Alijani et al 2022). Other publications contains clearly fabricated data: Hangargi et al 2023, Khalatbary et al 2014 or Zahedifar et al 2022. A paper from Egypt was published twice, once in June 2023 and then again in July 2023. One papermilled product (Zaied et al 2023) was striken with The Vickers Curse.

And if you still think the editors of Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery weren#t warned enough to prevent Show’s Special Issue: in 2023, their journal had to retract 3 papermill fabrications by the notorious Kittisak Jermsittiparsert, namely Dai et al 2023, Lakovic et al 2023 and Milic et al 2023, with the note:

“The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article after an investigation by the Publisher found evidence of manipulation of the peer review process, authorship and citation.”

In March 2024, the papers Ramasamy et al 2023 and Devarajan et al 2022 were retracted by the two Editors-in-Chief after “An investigation by the Publisher found evidence to suggest that authorship in this article had been offered for sale prior to acceptance by journal and its peer-review process might have been manipulated“.

Now, one of the two Editors-in-Chief of Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery is Martin Kaltschmitt, engineering professor at the Hamburg University of Technology in Germany. The other EiC is his Austrian collaborator Hermann Hofbauer of Vienna University of Technology. Now, the journal’s editorial board is unusual in its composition of Associate Editors. On the right, you can see the editorial board between after the first round of clean-up.

Normally, Associate Editors are established professors, representing different countries and research areas, and handling peer review fully independently. Not in this journal! 8 of them were members of Kaltschmitt’s group, only one of them had a PhD degree, and three only had a BSc title to declare. Those people are indeed current students at the Hamburg University of Technology. I wrote to Kaltschmitt (who published quite some papers of his own in his journal), and he explained:

“The associate editors where some are employed within the institute I am heading are only responsible to invite potential reviewer for the papers I allocate to them. Based on the reviews coming in I make the decision. The associate editors have no rights to decide on the acceptance or rejection of a papers. Additionally, if we would publish a paper within this Journal (what we rarely did in recent years) the person responsible for the Journal from Springer side allocate the review process without my knowledge to someone within the editorial team most likely from outside Germany.“

What a load of bollocks, Kaltschmitt basically admitted to have installed his sockpuppets as Associate Editors. And then whoops, after I wrote to the publisher Springer Nature, all three Master students with BSc degree disappeared as Associate Editors, while another postdoc of Kaltschmitt’s was added in their stead. Also, someone cleaned Google cache and online archives. But since I saved their names, I could find records of these three MSc students with BSc degrees listed as Associate Editors until 17 June 2024:

Four Associate Editors with MSc degree (i.e., current PhD students of Kaltschmitt’s) remained, but not for long. A few hours later, the Associate Editors board consisted entirely of a Turkish network, which is not entirely independent from Kaltschmitt either. Aslı İşçi is since 2022 professor at Ankara University, and before that she was… Kaltschmitt’s postdoc in Hamburg. Assoc Prof Özge Şakıyan Demirkol of Ankara University is Kaltschmitt’s collaborator, Assist Prof Simel Bagder Elmaci is her mentee, both have common papers with Kaltschmitt. Also Bayburt University Assoc Prof Naciye Kutlu trained in Ankara under Şakıyan Demirkol.

The person in charge of thematic issues like the one by Show is Kaltschmitt’s faculty colleague in Hamburg, Dr Ulf Neuling. He is a member of a thinktank on mobility transformation. Hence, Pau Loke Show as guest editor?

Kaltschmitt never commented on Show’s Special Issue. But his university’s Ombudsman Thomas Wrona told me that it will be “retracted”.

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Where does the buck stop?

EMBO Press has been again overdoing with its hospitality towards EMBO members. It is not the first time the society publisher throws all morality out of the window for Kristian Helin instead of throwing him out as EMBO member. I wrote about an earlier case in March 2024 Shorts. This time, it’s even worse.

Helin is EMBO member since 2002. This cancer researcher used to be group leader at IFOM-IEO in Milan, Italy, then professor at Copenhagen University in his home country Denmark, before taking the post of President of ICR London in UK, which is a massive fraud factory. Eros Lazzerini Denchi, now group leader at NIH Center for Cancer Research in USA, is present on the worst fabrications Helin published. Including the now corrected one:

Eros Lazzerini Denchi, Kristian Helin E2F1 is crucial for E2F-dependent apoptosis EMBO reports (2005) doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400452 

EMBO Reports proudly informed the PubPeer sleuth that this fraudulent travesty has been fixed with an “author correction” on 14 June 2024:

“The Journal contacted the authors after becoming aware of potential image aberrations in the paper. Based on the exchanges with the authors and internal analysis at the Journal, the editors correct and retract the following figure panels. Available source data and quantification tables are published with this notice.

Figure 1A figure panels are retracted. The figure legend is updated.

Figure 1B TUNEL Tg + TAM figure panel is retracted.

Figure 1C TUNEL p53+/+, Tg and p53-/-, Tg panels are retracted.

Figure 2B is corrected. Corresponding source data is published.

Figure 3B Ac. Casp3, E2f1+/+ & E2f1-/-, Tgpanels are retracted.

Figure 3B TUNEL, E2f1+/+ & E2f1-/-, Tgpanels are retracted.

Figure 3B PCNA, E2f1+/+ & E2f1+/+, Tg panels are retracted.

Figure 3B BrdU, E2f1-/-,Tg panel is retracted.

Quantification tables for all immunohistochemistry data are published as source data.

Figure panels 1A and Figure panels 3B (PCNA & BrdU) were re-used in different experimental contexts between EMBO Reportshttps://doi.org/10.1038/sj.embor.7400452 and Molecular and Cellular Biologyhttps://doi.org/10.1128/MCB.25.7.2660-2672.2005. […]

We affirm our unwavering support for the conclusions presented in this paper, along with sincere regret for the errors that occurred during the assembly of the manuscript. We are confident of the accuracy of the quantifications of the data used to generate all the graphs of this manuscript, and that the results displayed accurately reflect the findings in the study. We acknowledge the oversight in the assembly process and want to reassure the editorial board and the scientific community that these errors in no way compromise the fundamental accuracy and validity of our research. The conclusions drawn in this study remain robust. We appreciate the opportunity to rectify these matters and appreciate the diligence of the editorial team in upholding the standards of scientific inquiry.

Both authors agree with the above statement.”

“Where does the buck stop?” – asked EMBO Reports Editor-in-Chief and EMBO Head of Scientific Publications Bernd Pulverer a few years ago, in his expert opinion paper on “Research ethics and publishing“.

Where the buck does this stop, Bernd?

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Retraction Watchdogging

Confidence into multipotent adult progenitor cells

Belgian zombie scientist Catherine Verfaillie finally retracted that disastrous Nature paper from 2002 which fraudulently claimed that bone marrow cells were pluripotent, i.e. able to differentiate into all cells of the body.

That was of course wrong and based of fraud, but the paper was corrected in 2007 following New Scientist reporting, a later investigation by Verfaillie’s current employer KU Leuven refused to address that study. Read here:

Verfaillie’s fake science created enormous damage and led to the death of many people. Paolo Macchiarini and Bodo-Eckehard Strauer were just two of many surgeons who built their own fake clinical fraud on Verfaillie’s preclinical fraud, damaging and killing patients by nonsense stem cell therapies with bone marrow cells.

Now finally, this Nature paper by Verfaillie is finally gone, due to Elisabeth Bik‘s sleuthing and my reporting.

Yuehua Jiang , Balkrishna N. Jahagirdar , R. Lee Reinhardt , Robert E. Schwartz , C. Dirk Keene , Xilma R. Ortiz-Gonzalez , Morayma Reyes , Todd Lenvik , Troy Lund , Mark Blackstad , Jingbo Du , Sara Aldrich , Aaron Lisberg , Walter C. Low, David A. Largaespada, Catherine M. Verfaillie Pluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adult marrow Nature (2002) doi: 10.1038/nature00870 

Bik summed up the 2007 Corrigendum:

• “In the Supplementary Information, the sequence of the primers rex-1 and oct-4 were incorrect; correct sequences are provided.
• In Figure 1b, the IgG isotype control tracings for several of the plots (n=5) differ by 1 log in fluorescence intensity; a new version of Figure 1b are provided but for a different set of MAPC cells
• in the original Fig. 1b, the plot for MHC I was a duplication of the FACS plot for Mac-1
• In the legend to Fig. 1b, the superscripts ‘k’ in MHC II (I-Ak) and MHC I (H- 2Kk) should be ‘b’.
• In the Methods under ‘Differentiation culture and analysis’, the concentration of 109 M dexamethasone should be 0.05 mM.”

And then she found more, in December 2019:

The retraction was published on 17 June 2024:

“The Editors have retracted this article because concerns have been raised regarding some of the panels shown in Figure 6, specifically:

• the lower half of Figure 6a (CD45/β-gal) appears to be identical to the upper half of Figure 6e (Gr-1/β-gal)
• the upper right corner of Figure 6m appears to have two regions that are duplicated within the upper right corner itself

The original images for Figures 6a, 6e and 6m could not be retrieved by the authors; therefore the Editors no longer have confidence that the conclusion that multipotent adult progenitor cells (MAPCs) engraft in the bone marrow is supported.

Given the concerns above the Editors no longer have confidence in the reliability of the data reported in this article.”

Apparently, until now the Nature editors were convinced that multipotent adult progenitor cells do exist in the bone marrow.

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The match between computed and experimental spectra was very good

Yet another retraction for the superconductor fraudster Ranga Dias! I expect soon all of his papers and his PhD thesis will be retracted, and the only thing left standing will be his fake paper in Science about metallic hydrogen (Dias & Silvera 2017) where Dias and his mentor Isaac Silvera claimed was irreproducible for all eternity because their magic material magically disappeared.

But I digress. Here is the new retraction for Dias and his business partner-in-fraud Ashkan Salamat:

Elliot Snider , Nathan Dasenbrock-Gammon , Raymond McBride , Xiaoyu Wang , Noah Meyers , Keith V. Lawler , Eva Zurek, Ashkan Salamat, Ranga P. Dias Synthesis of Yttrium Superhydride Superconductor with a Transition Temperature up to 262 K by Catalytic Hydrogenation at High Pressures Physical Review Letters (2021) doi: 10.1103/physrevlett.126.117003 

In December 2023, an Expression of Concern was issued because “Questions have since arisen regarding the origins and integrity of the transport data in Figs. 1(c), 2, 3, S10(b), and S13, and Table S1.”

The retraction appeared on 17 may 2024:

“Following publication, a majority of the co-authors of this study raised concerns about the origins of the superconductivity in this study as presented in Fig. 1C, Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. S10B, Fig. S13, and sections of Table S1. These figures and the table were provided solely by Ranga P. Dias. After the origin of the data for these figures and the table was put into question, Physical Review Letters published an Expression of Concern.

After repeated attempts to locate the raw data and obtain an authoritative account of its origins, Physical Review Letters concurs that the article is not supported by its data and that it needs to be retracted. Ranga P. Dias stands by the data in the aforementioned figures and table, and does not agree to retract the paper. The remaining authors regret any confusion or inconvenience caused to the scientific community.”

The superconductor community would like you to think that Dias was one rotten apple who misinterpreted his findings, case closed and all is well now. Not so fast.

I recognise the University at Buffalo professor Eva Zurek as coauthor on that now retracted paper. She has previously positioned herself as the honest arbitrator of superconductor research. Quote from a long interview with Zurek in Undark from January 2024 about “Retracted Papers and Collateral Damage“:

“In high-pressure experiments, such as those that Dias did, it is difficult to design the experiment so that you measure what you would like to measure. The next difficulty is in interpretation of the experimental results. You measured something, but what does it correspond to in reality? […] Intentional fraud is something very different, and should not occur, nor be tolerated.”

So intentional fraud is something very different from what Dias did? Zurek must have known what the investigators found – Dias was officially and publicly certified as a massive fraudster who personally faked everything and bullied his subordinates into fraud only a few weeks later (read April 2024 Shorts). At the time of the interview, Zurek’s paper with Dias was under concern, but not yet retracted. And she seemingly insisted this and other collaborations were perfectly fine:

“My group calculated the Raman spectra of potential superconducting hydrides, for which Dr. Dias had obtained experimental data. They gave us their experimental results first, and we calculated the Raman spectra of possible structures to try to determine the structure of the material that they made. The match between the computed and experimental Raman spectra was very good.”

Zurek also explained who to trust in the superconductor field:

” So, for example, I think that the work of Mikhail Eremets on H3S that was shown in numerous experiments and also in theoretical calculations to have particular superconducting properties — that should be hailed as a success. There has been work on LaH10 by Eremets [and Russell] Hemley.”

University of Illinois professor Russell Hemley not only collaborated with Dias on irreproducible superconductor studies, he also “independently” reproduced in his lab’s preprint something which cannot possibly exist: Dias’ fraudulent results of the now retracted Nature paper (read June 2023 Shorts). And the superconductor of Mikhail Eremets, group leader at Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany, which “should be hailed as a success”? Uhm, a part of that discovery is now circling the drain after Maarten van Kampen extracted raw data from Eremets’ 2022 paper, and found it didn’t fit the published figures:

Speaking of Eremets, and returning to that ridiculous metallic hydrogen fraud which Dias published in Science and which Science will never retract because Holden is a Thorp. Well, here is Eremets’ closest collaborator defending Dias in 2017:

“Alexander Drozdov, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, wrote in an email that “disappearing” samples are fairly common in the field.
“When you unload the cell and decrease pressure diamonds will be totally broken. Sometimes we can open the cell and observe just a lot of dust and no diamond at all. It is impossible to find any 10 microns sample in this heap of dust.”

I call russian bullshit. Cute how the superconductor community has been defending Dias for years, while fighting the whistleblower Jorge Hirsch with everything they have, including the police.

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Melatonin prevents, inhibits and modulates

Retractions rained for the Spanish researchers Javier González-Gallego, physiology professor at the Universiyt of Leon, and his faculty colleague and quite likely his wife, María Jesús Tuñón González, all at the same Journal of Pineal Research, published by Wiley. You can read about this case below, uncovered by the sleuth Aneurus Incostans. Gonzalez-Gallego has almost 60 problematic papers on PubPeer.

According to Retraction Watch database and Friday Shorts of May 2023 and June 2023 Gonzalez-Gallego already had 3 retractions, two of them with Tunon.

Here a list of 9 papers retracted on 17 June 2024, all retractions announced in the same journal issue. Fittingly to the journal’s topic, all these now retracted papers tell of amazing feats of melatonin, in a series of its various adventures:

1. Sánchez et al 2018, Melatonin modulates dysregulated circadian clocks in mice with diethylnitrosamine-induced hepatocellular carcinoma (Retraction)
2. Sánchez et al 2017 Melatonin prevents deregulation of the sphingosine kinase/sphingosine 1‐phosphate signaling pathway in a mouse model of diethylnitrosamine‐induced hepatocellular carcinoma (Retraction)
3. Crespo et al 2018 Melatonin inhibits the sphingosine kinase 1/sphingosine‐1‐phosphate signaling pathway in rabbits with fulminant hepatitis of viral origin (Retraction)
4. San-Miguel et al 2015 Melatonin inhibits autophagy and endoplasmic reticulum stress in mice with carbon tetrachloride-induced fibrosis (Retraction)
5. Alonso et al 2006 Melatonin inhibits the expression of the inducible isoform of nitric oxide synthase and nuclear factor kappa B activation in rat skeletal muscle (Retraction)
6. Mauriz et al 2007 Melatonin prevents oxidative stress and changes in antioxidant enzyme expression and activity in the liver of aging rats (Retraction)
7. Martín-Renedo et al 2008 Melatonin induces cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in hepatocarcinoma HepG2 cell line (Retraction)
8. Tuñón et al 2011 Melatonin attenuates apoptotic liver damage in fulminant hepatic failure induced by the rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (Retraction)
9. Laliena et al 2012 Melatonin attenuates inflammation and promotes regeneration in rabbits with fulminant hepatitis of viral origin (Retraction)

Here is a representative finding in one of those papers, San-Miguel et al 2015:

All retraction notices mention that “concerns were raised by third parties” about figures of that paper, and that the authors couldn’t provide original data, but provided something else instead. But:

“but this was not sufficient to resolve the concerns, and the authors were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the concerns. The retraction has been agreed because of concerns that portions of the figure were duplicated, affecting the interpretation of the data and results presented. The authors disagree with this decision.”

As I wrote in August 2022 Shorts, the Editor-in-Chief the Elsevier journal Translational Research basically told Aneurus Inconstans that only Gonzalez-Gallego and his coauthors were allowed to investigate their own papers. Since then, no action was taken of course.

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Added to the revised paper without explanation

Finally, some light comedy retraction, from Elsevier’s papermill-only Journal of Molecular Lipids. The retracted paper features the papermill freak Maria Jade Catalan Opulencia (based in Emirates, read June 2024 Shorts) and bunch of people from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, russia, Egypt, Iran, India and Malaysia:

Kadda Hachem, Maria Jade Catalan Opulencia , Walid Kamal Abdelbasset , Andrey Sevbitov , Oleg R. Kuzichkin , Abdullah Mohamed , Sahar Moazen Rad, Aref Salehi , Jupinder Kaur , Ravinder Kumar , Andrew Ng Kay Lup , Ali Arian Nia Anti-inflammatory effect of functionalized sulfasalazine boron nitride nanocages on cardiovascular disease and breast cancer: An in-silico simulation Journal of Molecular Liquids (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.molliq.2022.119030 

“Imagine my surprise to find meaningless, absurd References. References that tend to turn up as a block in irrelevant contexts across multiple papers, as if citations had been coerced or purchased. […] It turns out that J. Carcin. (cited twice) and J. Natural Sci. Biology Medicine (cited three times) are pirated, predatory journal from a single publisher.”

Smut Clyde on PubPeer

Here is the fresh retraction (highlights mine):

“In investigating concerns brought up regarding inappropriate citations within the article, the editor reached out to the authors for an explanation.

Post-publication, the editor also discovered suspicious changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper.

In summary, two authors were removed from the paper (including the original First Author). Subsequently, the author’s names Kadda Hachem (New First Author and Corresponding Author), Maria Jade Catalan Opulencia, Walid Kamal Abdelbasset, Andrey Sevbitov, Oleg R.Kuzichkin, Abdullah Mohamed and Sahar Moazen Rad (New Corresponding Author) were all added to the revised paper without explanation and without the exceptional approval by the journal Editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship.

The authors failed to provide a satisfactory explanation to the above points.

Overall, the Editor feels that the findings of the manuscript cannot be relied upon, and the article needs to be retracted.”

Totally normal editorial process at Elsevier…

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Science Breakthroughs

Distinguished Visiting Professor eases heartbreak

The best science news are in The Guardian, and here is the breakthrough story from 16 June 2024, headlined “Electrical brain stimulation can ease heartbreak, study finds“:

“But help could be at hand for those seeking to mend a broken heart. Research shows wearing a £400 headset for just a few minutes a day may ease the misery, negativity and depression that can accompany a failed relationship.

In a study, 36 volunteers with love trauma syndrome wore the device, which stimulates the brain with a mild electrical current. […]

A month after the treatment stopped, volunteers still felt better. The study’s authors said: “These promising results require replication in larger trials.””

This is the paper:

Jaber Alizadehgoradel , Seyed Danial Razavi , Zahra Shirani , Mobina Barati , Mina Taherifard , Vahid Nejati , Michael A. Nitsche Targeting the left DLPFC and right VLPFC in unmarried romantic relationship breakup (love trauma syndrome) with intensified electrical stimulation: A randomized, single-blind, parallel-group, sham-controlled study Journal of Psychiatric Research (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2024.05.020 

“This was a registered clinical trial (ClinicalTrials.gov IRCTID: IRCT20181013041327N3), and the trial was performed according to the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Ethics Committee of Zanjan University (Ethics code: IR. ZNU.REC.1401.039). Written informed consent was obtained before study participation. […] Direct current stimulation was administered by a transcranial electrical stimulation device (V.L340. liv. Iran)”

The clinical study was done in Iran, where all of world’s bestest science comes from because Iranian scientists are superior to everyone else. Most authors are affiliated with the Shahid Beheshti University, where Ghafouri-Rad & Taheri do their own clinical studies, without ethics approvals.

We shall never assume an Iranian papermill here, for the simple reason that I don’t want to get sued. Because the last author is a German Michael Nitsche, Deputy Director of the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors at Dortmund University. Not just that, but also a “Highly Cited Researcher” and Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina. The brain stimulation study credits Nitsche with “Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Conceptualization“. So we firmly believe the bizarre clinical trial was done as described by Nitsche as one of the principal investigators.

And indeed, Nitsche had until 2023 an additional affiliation at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran, as “TUMS Distinguished Visiting Professor“. Bcause this Islamist Terrorist Regime is our fossil-fuel-rich friend who pays well and never mind what Iran is doing to its own people and that it is actively assisting fellow terrorists russia and Hamas with advanced weapons to commit genocide against both Ukraine and Israel…. ahhh, sorry sorry sorry please don’t sue me Professor Nitsche…

Anyway, Nitsche didn’t reply to my email when I asked whether his German institution approved such clear case of ethics dumping in human medical research. Another German bigwig, Axel Haverich, once got in serious trouble for oursourcing his clinical experiments to Moldova.

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Coffee and Cheese

Finally, two recent studies provide nutritional advice on what to consume to avoid death. Cheese and coffee! Even weirder: both studies are from China where coffee and cheese are not exactly part of a national diet, except for the wealthy upper classes.

The Washington Post announced on 17 June 2024:

“Sedentary coffee drinkers had a 24 percent reduced risk of mortality compared with those who sat for more than six hours and didn’t drink coffee, according to the lead author of a study published recently in the journal BMC Public Health.

The finding, which was not part of the original article, was calculated at The Washington Post’s request and provided by Huimin Zhou, a researcher at the Medical College of Soochow University’s School of Public Health in China and the lead author of the study on coffee and health.

In the article, researchers reported that non-coffee drinkers who sat six hours or more per day were 58 percent more likely to die of all causes than coffee drinkers sitting for less than six hours a day, indicating both the risk of sedentary behavior and the benefit of coffee drinking. […]

Additionally, those who drank the most coffee (more than two cups per day) showed a 33 percent reduced risk of all-cause mortality and 54 percent reduced risk of cardiovascular disease mortality compared with non-coffee drinkers.”

The Chinese study used data from over 10k participants of the the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES):

Huimin Zhou , Jing Nie , Yanmei Cao , Linjing Diao , Xiaoli Zhang , Jiafu Li , Siyu Chen , Xu Zhang , Guochong Chen , Zengli Zhang , Bingyan Li Association of daily sitting time and coffee consumption with the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality among US adults BMC Public Health (2024) doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18515-9 

The study didn’t say how much coffee an average office worker must drink per day in order to never die at all.

Now, onto cheese. Newsweek informed on 18 June 2024:

“Improving your mental well-being by eating cheese could help you stay healthy as you age, research has found. […] In the study, researchers describe how they analyzed the genetics of people across 8 datasets—each containing information on 800,000 to 2.3 million people—to determine if mental well-being was associated with healthier aging. […]

They also found that lack of activity, smoking, and watching too much TV were associated with poorer well-being, while eating more cheese and fruits were associated with better well-being.”

This is the study:

Chao-Jie Ye , Dong Liu , Ming-Ling Chen , Li-Jie Kong , Chun Dou , Yi-Ying Wang , Min Xu , Yu Xu , Mian Li , Zhi-Yun Zhao , Rui-Zhi Zheng , Jie Zheng , Jie-Li Lu , Yu-Hong Chen , Guang Ning , Wei-Qing Wang , Yu-Fang Bi , Tian-Ge Wang Mendelian randomization evidence for the causal effect of mental well-being on healthy aging Nature Human Behaviour (2024) doi: 10.1038/s41562-024-01905-9 

I agree, instead of sitting in front of TV watching Chinese state propaganda, go out and eat some fresh fruit. If you can afford it.

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