Schneider Shorts 12.07.2024 – Disinformation, hate, fake news, attacks by foreign intelligence services and internet troll farms

Schneider Shorts of 12 July 2024 – A cancer researcher under terrorist attack, where Retraction Watch went wrong, mass retractions for Indian Editor-in-Thief, a papermiller’s new adventures, a corrected Dana Farberication retracted, obituaries for two great researchers, and finally, a Polish rector proves that Leonid Schneider is a russian bot.

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Table of Discontent

Science Elites

• Disinformation, hate, fake news, attacks by foreign intelligence services and internet troll farms – Krolczyk is a victim of a russian conspiracy!
• Elements of terrorism, bullying, defamation and acts that should be illegal in a civilized society – Wafik El-Deiry under attack!
• So amusing I felt compelled to share it – where Retraction Watch went wrong about Mr Behzadi

Scholarly Publishing

• Errors introduced during figure preparation do not impact the conclusions – Dana Farber fabricators fix paper for a second time
• The possible duplications were unintentional – Concern expressed for Fulda and Debatin
• A close relationship in scientific research cooperation – Pau Loke Show’s new adventures

Retraction Watchdogging

• A shock for Pandey – mass retractions for sacked Editor-in-Thief

Obituaries

• This witch hunt killed him – Czechia’s fallen superstar Vojtech Adam is dead
• Kind, smart, resourceful and passionate – Fazlul Sarkar, the fraudster who sued PubPeer, is dead

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Science Elites

Disinformation, hate, fake news, attacks by foreign intelligence services and internet troll farms

On 4 July 2024, the Polish magazine Opolska brought a story about the vice-rector of Opole University of Technology Grzegorz Krolczyk, who was recently appointed Chairman of the governmental Council for Innovation in Higher Education and Science.

From Opolska (Google-translated):

“At the beginning of May, in a conversation with PAP, the vice-rector of Opole Polytechnic boasted about the growing number of citations of university employees’ works. He recalled that in 2020 there were 6.7 thousand of them, in 2021-more than 11 thousand, in 2022-14.5 thousand, and in 2023-more than 16 thousand. […]

Professor Grzegorz Korolczyk has an H-index of 60. This is a really impressive result! However, the question is how much it reflects the real value of his work. Because if we measured the results only by this measure, then it would turn out that the vice-rector of Opole Poyltechnic is a better scientist than Sir Roger Penrose, professor of mathematics at Oxford and Nobel Prize winner, who has an H-index of 52!”

Krolczyk’s secret is of course papermilling. I was interviewed by Opolska:

“- His name attracted the attention of one of my colleagues, Dr. Alexander Magazinov. This is a Russian physicist who emigrated to Kazakhstan and tracks the dubious quality of the work of authors from China, Iran or Egypt. It was he who noticed that Professor Krolczyk’s name while scrolling among the co-authors, ” says Dr. Leonid Schneider. {…[

In the article, he accused the Opole Polytechnic vice-rector of being involved in a “paper milling” procedure. He noted that Professor Grzegorz Korolczyk has many collaborations with authors such as Munish Kunar Gupta (H-index 60, 368 papers and about 11.5 thousand citations), or Zhixiong Li (H-index 76, 574 papers and about 19.5 thousand citations). It is worth remembering that these scientists appeared several years ago at the Opole Polytechnic University in an aura of great success. At least, that’s what most Opole editors put it.

“These are two scammers who are known in the media for writing low – value works,” says Dr. Leonid Schneider. “As if that wasn’t enough, Professor Grzegorz Krolczyk brought them to the Opole Polytechnic Institute. So he is sabotaging Polish science because he and his colleagues can get grants for research that doesn’t do much. “

Also interviewed was the Polish emeritus professor and research ethics activist Marek Wronski, you will soon see why this is important. And now, Krolczyk’s rebuttal. Ready?

“In response, Professor Grzegorz Korolczyk said that this publication “is part of a hybrid attack on Polish scientists and the subject of proceedings conducted by the Internal Security Agency. Due to the ongoing investigation, this is my only comment on the matter.”

Therefore, we asked Internal Security Agency to provide information about whether it is actually conducting proceedings on this issue and whether the given text given is getting an X-ray for a hybrid attack on Polish scientists. […] The response from the agency’s press office was brief: “Dear Editor, we kindly inform you that the matter you ask about remains outside the scope of the Internal Security Agency.”“

In a LinkedIn comment, Krolczyk accused Elsevier of “stealing” from him and that his two retractions were “done illegally and against COPE“. He also reminded that “Prof. Li has recently been awarded the OPUS project, and Prof. Gupta has been awarded a scholarship for outstanding young scientists.“

No wait, it gets much, much better. Krolczyk’s rector of the Opole Polytechnic, Marcin Lorenc, posted a reply to Opolska reporting. It reads exactly in the style of the russian propaganda.

“…common disinformation, hate, fake news, various types of attacks by foreign intelligence services, and internet troll farms […] hybrid attacks from the East most often take place in Poland […] Special services in many countries also create false personas of scientists […] We do not agree and strongly condemn hate, fake news and post-truth. Today such a situation happened to prof. Grzegorz Królczyk, it could happen to any of us tomorrow.”

But not a single word about Krolczyk’s retractions or the evidence of papermilling by him, Li and Gupta.

Much of Lorenc’ rant is an unhinged and rabid attack on Marek Wronski, whom Lorenc accuses of plagiarism which Wronski allegedly committed in 1990ies by publishing same paper twice, in Polish and in English. The Opole rector also says Wronski acted “in violation of ethical principles and contrary to the law” by discussing Krolczyk’s peer reviewed papers without Krolczyk’s permission. On top, since “approximately 100 articles written by Poles are retracted annually“, it was a crime by Wronski to single out Krolczyk. And then Lorenc attributes to Wronski my email to Opole Polytechnic to Wronski, declaring that it was actually Wronski who wrote it and signed as Leonid Schneider! In fact, Lorenc accuses Wronski of being an agent of the russian secret service GRU, which he says invented the identity of Leonid Schneider:

“Dr. Leonid Schneider introduces himself as “an independent journalist of Ukrainian Jewish origin who lives in Germany.” Dr. Schneider uses an address on the Gmail platform for correspondence, and the content of the messages he sent to the management of our university seem to be written by bots: the style and language are far from the standards of official correspondence, the content is full of insults.
“Opolska” reports that Dr. Leonid Schneider has a German doctorate in molecular biology, and after his defence he worked for several years as a scientist in English-speaking countries. His profile on Google Scholar includes publications by at least three people: two from Germany and one from Brazil, as well as publications in which Leonid Schneider is not listed as the author and these are publications by people from the Russian Federation. Looking through his profiles, you may wonder if such a person even exists?”

Lorenc got me. I admit I do not exist. My family will be shocked.

(About Google Scholar: indeed it keeps adding random people with same last name and same initials to my and probably also to your and to Lorenc’s Scholar profile. That’s why I never use it. And in fact Opolska got something wrong, I did postdoc in Italy, not really an English-speaking country)

It ends with a long tirade against the Opolska newspaper which Lorenc apparently wants to shut down and its journalists imprisoned, because look how great the Opole Polytechnic is in the Shanghai Rankings.

In his diatribe, Lorenc often he invokes “truth” in his attacks on critics while twisting and obscuring facts – this is actually the typical style of the soviet newspaper Pravda. In my view, Lorenc is unfit to even supervise a public toilet, never mind a university, because all he can do is to threaten people, while spouting views which border on totalitarian and possibly on racist. He should be reminded that Władysław Gomułka and his fellow communists are long gone, one cannot blame Jews for everything these days.

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Elements of terrorism, bullying, defamation and acts that should be illegal in a civilized society

Wafik E-Deiry, director of the Cancer Center at Brown University in USA, posted a reply on PubPeer which in my humble view deserves some kind of prize. You can read about El-Deiry’s achievements in July 2024 Shorts and May 2024 Shorts.

El-Deiry was recently appointed Editor-in-Chief of Oncotarget presumably because the owner and his fellow questionable cancer researcher Misha Blagosklonny has late stage cancer – there was even a press release in January 2024, and an editorial by Blagosklonny himself in the Oncotarget‘s clone journal Oncoscience, “My battle with cancer. Part 1.”

This one was published in a Blagosklonny journal and flagged by Claire Francis in April 2024:

Hairong Cheng , Bo Hong , Lanlan Zhou , Joshua E Allen , Guihua Tai , Robin Humphreys , David T Dicker, Yingqiu Y Liu , Wafik S El-Deiry Mitomycin C potentiates TRAIL-induced apoptosis through p53-independent upregulation of death receptors: evidence for the role of c-Jun N-terminal kinase activation Cell cycle (2012) doi: 10.4161/cc.21670 

El-Deiry swiftly threw the first author and the bus and told his critics to contact her. And:

“The paper was being analyzed as the PI was under an open attack by PubPeer going through apparently numerous publications over decades (100’s) to conclude impropriety. The PI who is being targeted in a public was by those who are anonymous is having reputational damage as a result because the attacks are coming faster than anyone can respond. Moreover, the PI has no resources to cover the time to investigate the issues but can say he believes the researcher who was first author of the paper is a person of integrity. The PI did not assemble figures as that is done by the primary researchers in his lab.”

Wait, it gets even better!

“You don’t have the right to publicly damage the reputations of scientists in the way you have been doing. It is clear that my lab and publications have been willfully singled out and targeted in the past week for motivations having nothing to do with the integrity of science or the search for truth. Such barbaric unregulated assault on hard-working people is shameful because of the way it is being done. You don’t have the right to damage people’s reputations that are built over decades in this public way anonymously. There are elements of terrorism, bullying, defamation and acts that should be illegal in a civilized society and certainly within academia. You and the rest of the evil PubPeer mob have been harassing me and bombarding me with email around the clock including on holiday with my family where you have ruined my little time I could spend with them.”

No, it was not a slip-up. On another PubPeer thread, El-Deiry posted something similar.

Wafik, the victim of bullying, blackmail and terrorism:

“This is a form of blackmail and terrorism that the scientific community will deal with. We are not naive, or guilty of anything remotely deserving of what you as an anonymous accuser is doing in the public square. […} I will not let you destroy a career of publishing scientific papers dating to when I was in College in 1981. I never expected to be subjected to this type of terrorism, bullying and blackmail by anonymous accusers who are unregulated. “

The Brown University professor hasn’t raised any sexual harassment accusations against his critics yet, but probably soon? And then this oncologist remembered about informed consent:

“I don’t agree with being targeted in a public way which is damaging to a reputation built over 4+ decades. You do not have a right to do that or my consent.”

I think El-Deiry and Lorenc should meet and compare notes on terrorism.

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So amusing I felt compelled to share it

On 4 July 2024, Retraction Watch brought this story about Sasan Sadrizadeh, a professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in Sweden, and his PhD student, Amirmohammad Behzadi:

“In late May, one of Sasan Sadrizadeh’s doctoral students stumbled upon a paper with data directly plagiarized from his previous work. […] Sadrizadeh told us the methodology reported in the article was “so amusing that I felt compelled to share it” on LinkedIn. In his post, Sadrizadeh calls out “unique Stockholm data magically transformed into an Iraq case study, courtesy of 16 authors from six different countries!” […]

Jianlei Niu, the editor-in-chief of Energy and Buildings, saw Sadrizadeh’s LinkedIn post calling out the similarities in data and reached out to him, Sadrizadeh told Retraction Watch. The paper was later withdrawn.”

This is the original, Bahzadi et al 2023, and this si the now retracted copycat Hassan et al 2024. It is worth visiting PubPeer to understand the full story, i.e. of what exactly was stolen and from exactly whom. The humble PhD student Behzadi is quite likely a papermiller, with an h-index of 26 and almost 2400 citations, more than his PhD mentor Sadrizadeh. Which makes one wonder what Bahzadi’s real function in Sweden is, and who is actually ordering whom around in that Iranian lab at KTH.

So far, Behzadi’s papers were flagged “only” for inappropriate citations to his own and his coauthors’ papers, outside of all scientific context. Also, one of Behzadi’s authors is a certain Pouria Ahmadi, who was seen papermilling with Ibrahim Dincer, read about him here:

Ahmadi currently edits a joint special issue at an Elsevier journal with Bahzadi’s mentor in Sweden, Sadrizadeh. And Sadrizadeh is not that kosher either: his own paper Jamshimofid et al 2024 contains inappropriate citations to his coauthors Mohammad Jamshidmofid and Mohammad Olfati. And here is Sadrizadeh with his little PhD student:

Trond Thorgeir Harsem , Behrouz Nourozi , Amirmohammad Behzadi , Sasan Sadrizadeh Design and Parametric Investigation of an Efficient Heating System, an Effort to Obtain a Higher Seasonal Performance Factor Energies (2021) doi: 10.3390/en14248475 

I am not sure the Retraction Watch story of honest yet heroic Iranian scholars in Sweden was complete. Funny though who those Iraqi thieves stole from…

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Scholarly Publishing

Errors introduced during figure preparation do not impact the conclusions

The Dana Farber Fabricators in Harvard, led by Kenneth Anderson and Ruben Carrasco, achieved to correct an utterly fraudulent paper, twice.

This is the paper, in an elite Nature family journal, originally flagged by Sholto David:

Di Zhu , Zhongqiu Wang , Jian-Jun Zhao , Teresa Calimeri , Jiang Meng , Teru Hideshima , Mariateresa Fulciniti , Yue Kang , Scott B Ficarro , Yu-Tzu Tai , Zachary Hunter , Douglas McMilin , Haoxuan Tong , Constantine S Mitsiades , Catherine J Wu , Steven P Treon , David M Dorfman , Geraldine Pinkus, Nikhil C Munshi, Pierfrancesco Tassone, Jarrod A Marto Kenneth C Anderson, Ruben D Carrasco The Cyclophilin A-CD147 complex promotes the proliferation and homing of multiple myeloma cells Nature medicine (2015) doi: 10.1038/nm.3867 

The first Correction was published on 25 January 2024:

“In the version of the article initially published, three pairs of micrographs (in Fig. 5i and Supplementary Figs. 3a and c) inadvertently contained overlapping areas. These figures have been amended with new micrographs and are available as Supplementary Information with this notice.”

Sholto found some issues with the correction:

“The authors provided the data underlying the figures as an Excel sheet attached to the paper, see: Source data to Fig. 2. The raw data does not appear to match what is shown in the paper.“

And elsewhere, obviously Nature Medicine editors were too busy to check it for themselves before correcting:

Obviously a second Correction was in order on 5 July 2024 to reassure everyone:

“Based on a comprehensive review of all data items, additional instances of image reuse or discrepancy between figures and associated data were identified. Duplicate images were found in Supplementary Fig. 8d and Supplementary Fig. 7h (Supplementary Fig. 8d has been corrected), Supplementary Fig. 3c and Fig. 4h (Supplementary Fig. 3c has been corrected), Supplementary Fig. 6a and b (Supplementary Fig. 6a has been corrected), Fig. 1b and Supplementary Fig. 1a (Supplementary Fig. 1a has been corrected), and two images in Supplementary Fig. 1f (Supplementary Fig. 1f has been corrected). Additionally, the lower panel of Fig. 2f was based on an incorrect dataset (source data for Fig. 2f in Supplementary information has been corrected) and the standard deviation bar for BMEC-60 in Fig. 1e was incorrect (Fig. 1e has been corrected). The original and corrected figures can be found in the accompanying Supplementary information. These errors were introduced during figure preparation and do not impact the conclusions of the article.”

The Dana Farber coauthor Constantine Mitsiades also featured in this article:

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The possible duplications were unintentional

A paper by the fallen ex-president of the University of Kiel in Germany, Simone Fulda, received an Expression of Concern. Her coauthors are her mentor Klaus-Michael Debatin (professor and former Vice-Rector of University of Ulm, about to retire) and Debatin’s other mentee, Irmela Jeremias, currently professor at Helmholtz Center in Munich.

This is the paper concerned:

H Ehrhardt , S Häcker , S Wittmann , M Maurer , A Borkhardt , A Toloczko , K-M Debatin , S Fulda, I Jeremias Cytotoxic drug-induced, p53-mediated upregulation of caspase-8 in tumor cells Oncogene (2008) doi: 10.1038/sj.onc.1210666

Obviously it should be retracted. But with 3 German professors involved, two of them at the pinnacle of German academic power, the German authorities are working on inventing reasons to terminate the investigation with no findings of misconduct because papers are too old or senior authors are too uninvolved or conclusions are too unaffected.

But then again, there was massive media coverage of Fulda’s case and resignation in Germany. Hence, the Expression of Concern from 4 July 2024:

“The Editors-in-Chief would like to alert readers that concerns have been raised regarding some of the western blot data presented in figures included in this article, specifically:

• Fig. 1a CADO and CEM-TR a-Tubulin blots appear highly similar.
• Fig. 1a J-TR Casp-8 MTX+ band appears highly similar to Fig. 2e J-TR Casp-8 MTX 72h.
• Fig. 1a CEM-TR and CADO Casp-8 MTX+ bands appear highly similar to Fig. 5c Casp-8 Control group (also treated with MTX) in the same cell lines.
• Figs. 3 and 5c CADO Casp-8 and a-Tubulin blots appear highly similar.

The authors have stated that the possible duplications were unintentional and confirmed that the issues raised do not affect the results and conclusions of the article. The original data are no longer available due to the age of the article (16 years), in line with rules of the German Research Foundation. Readers are therefore advised to interpret these figures with caution.

H Ehrhardt, K-M Debatin and I Jeremias agree to this Editorial Expression of Concern. S Fulda does not agree to this Editorial Expression of Concern. A Borkhardt has not responded to any correspondence from the editor or publisher about this Editorial Expression of Concern. The publisher has not been able to obtain current email addresses for S Häcker, S Wittmann, M Maurer and A Toloczko.”

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A close relationship in scientific research cooperation

The papermiller Pau Loke Show gets two retractions and a stealth correction. He also now features in Vietnamese news over his past retractions in Frontiers. First, the corrected paper, flagged in February 2024 right when the paper was published online in an Elsevier journal:

Jun Wei Roy Chong , Kuan Shiong Khoo, Kit Wayne Chew, Huong-Yong Ting, Iwamoto Koji, Roger Ruan , Zengling Ma, Pau Loke Show Artificial intelligence-driven microalgae autotrophic batch cultivation: A comparative study of machine and deep learning-based image classification models Algal Research (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.algal.2024.103400 

There was also a “mistake” in Table 3: “the results of the Recall and F1- score are identical.” In July 2024, one of the authors left this anonymous message on PubPeer:

“Thank you for pointing out these two problems, authors corrected these above errors, including image misuse and data issues without correction notice.”

The paper was indeed stealthily corrected, without any notice or trace. Publishers often do that in “pre-publication” stage which apparently is possible for certain respected scholars even months after the paper was published.

Now, Show’s 6th and 7th retraction, both on culinary recipes with black soldier fly larvae, and both in MDPI (sic!):

• Chung Yiin Wong , Yeek Chia Ho, Jun Wei Lim , Pau Loke Show, Siewhui Chong, Yi Jing Chan, Chii Dong Ho , Mardawani Mohamad, Ta Yeong Wu, Man Kee Lam, Guan Ting Pan In-Situ Yeast Fermentation Medium in Fortifying Protein and Lipid Accumulations in the Harvested Larval Biomass of Black Soldier Fly Processes (2020) doi: 10.3390/pr8030337 
• Sabrina Hasnol , Kunlanan Kiatkittipong, Worapon Kiatkittipong , Chung Yiin Wong , Cheng Seong Khe , Man Kee Lam, Pau Loke Show, Wen Da Oh , Thiam Leng Chew , Jun Wei Lim A Review on Insights for Green Production of Unconventional Protein and Energy Sources Derived from the Larval Biomass of Black Soldier Fly Processes (2020) doi: 10.3390/pr8050523   

Retraction notice Nr 1:

“Following publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the Editorial Office regarding concerns relating to the major scientific errors and the overall validity of the findings [1].

Adhering to our complaints procedure, an investigation was conducted by the Editorial Office and Editorial Board, which included an evaluation of the scientific content and findings of the paper. While the authors fully cooperated with the investigation through the clarification of the complaint, the Editorial Board was unable to satisfactorily verify the integrity of the central findings of this study based on the presented material. As a result, the Editorial Office and Editorial Board decided to retract this article as per MDPI’s retraction policy (https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#_bookmark30) and in line with the Committee on Publication Ethics’ retraction guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines).

This retraction was approved by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Processes.

The authors did not agree to this retraction.”

Retraction 5 July 2024

Retraction notice Nr 2 was similar and appeared on 8 July 2024.

The Vietnamese newspaper Tuoitre reported about Show’s cartel of mutual editing and peer-reviewing on 9 July 2024. Specifically, about the retractions of Show’s associate Vo Nguyen Dai Viet, deputy director of the Institute of Technology Application and Sustainable Development at Nguyen Tat Thanh University. The occasion was the recent retraction for Dai Viet and Show in Frontiers for Te et al 2020, issued on 19 June 2024 (see June 2024 Shorts). Google-translated:

“Analyzing information from dozens of scientific articles published in international journals by the above people in the past few years, we discovered that the authors, reviewers and editors are all related to each other.
Among them, we can see the “pairs”: Vo Nguyen Dai Viet with Pau Loke Show, Chin Kui Cheng, Yasser Vasseghian and Mu. Naushad; Nguyen Thi Dong Phuong and Pau Loke Show.”

“Dr. Vo Nguyen Dai Viet confirmed that as of June 15, he and Professor Pau Loke Show were co-authors of 12 scientific articles. From 2013 to 2019, Mr. Viet worked at the University of Malaysia Pahang (Malaysia) as a senior lecturer, while Pau Loke Show worked at the University of Nottingham Malaysia.
“Because we are colleagues at the same level and have comparable research directions, Professor Pau Loke Show and I have had a close relationship in scientific research cooperation. We just had our first joint publication in 2020,” Mr. Viet said.”

These people are even proud of their scams.

A follow-up article by Tuoitre from 10 July 2024 interviewed Frontiers PR person Anastasia Long. that indeed Frontiers authors can appoint their own editors and reviewers. And:

“Dr. Vo Nguyen Dai Viet, Dr. Su Shiung Lam and Dr. Pau Loke Show have all been removed from the editorial board of Frontiers in Energy Research journal.
Dr. Viet and Dr. Lam had their names removed earlier this year due to their lack of participation in editorial activities. Dr. Show was clearly informed that he would be fired because of conflicts of interest with authors that he had not declared, as clearly stated in our editorial policy.”

Frontiers speaker also admitted that there was also “possible manipulation of data in the article” in Te et al 2020. Another Tuoitre article from 10 July 2024 addresses the authorship networks in this paper:

“…according to Tuoi Tre’s research, Ms. Nguyen Thi Dong Phuong is a regular co-author of the Pau Loke Show. These two people have shared their names in at least 17 articles before, after and even during the review process of the article that was just retracted by Frontiers Publishing House. 

Of the total 21 articles published by reviewer Phuong, up to 80% (17 articles) have the same name as Show. In addition to the articles under her name, Ms. Phuong often reviews Show’s articles. […]

Notably, according to a Vietnamese scholar living abroad, the data in the article by Viet and Show that was just retracted also shows signs of abnormality and is likely fabricated. In the article, experiments 15 to 20 are 6 independent experiments with input variables of the same value for the purpose of evaluating experimental error. 

All 6 independent experiments gave identical results, without a single digit difference, from biochar yield to the ratio of each element in biochar.”

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Retraction Watchdogging

A shock for Pandey

Mass retractions for the sacked Editor-in-Chief on an Elsevier journal, Ashok Pandey of CSIR in India. He is a noxious papermiller (see PubPeer record) – and a close associate of Pau Loke Show and Jörg Rinklebe, plus other papermillers like Mohammad Taherzadeh and even of Rafael Luque and Changhe Li! See also June 2024 Shorts.

Pandey’s personal website informs us:

“Professor Ashok Pandey is currently Distinguished Scientist at the Centre for Innovation and Translational Research, CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, India and Executive Director (Honorary) at the Centre for Energy and Environmental Sustainability – India. Formerly, he was Eminent Scientist at the Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing, Mohali and Chief Scientist & Head of Biotechnology Division and Centre for Biofuels at CSIR’s National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Trivandrum. His major research and technological development interests are industrial & environmental biotechnology and energy biosciences, focusing on biomass to biofuels & chemicals, waste to wealth & energy, industrial enzymes, etc. 

Professor Pandey is Adjunct/Visiting Professor/Scientist in universities in France, Brazil, Canada, China, Korea, South Africa, and Switzerland and also in several universities several in India. He has ~1600 publications/communications, which include 16 patents, 108 books, ~850 papers and book chapters, etc with h index of 114 and >57,000 citations (Google scholar).

Professor Pandey is the recipient of many national and international awards and honours, which include Highly Cited Researchers (top 2% in the world), Rank no 1 in India in Microbiology under Enabling and Strategic Technologies sector and No 4 in overall in science and engineering- Elsevier Citation Report (2021); Highly Cited Researchers (h>100), …”

See how much you can achieve by dedicated and hardworking papermilling. Now, the list of freshly retracted papers coauthored by Pandey, all in the same journal Bioresource Technology:

• “An organic-solvent-tolerant esterase from thermophilic Bacillus licheniformis S-86″ (2009) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2008.07.009
• “Hydrolysis of biomass using a reusable solid carbon acid catalyst and fermentation of the catalytic hydrolysate to ethanol” (2015) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2015.03.012
• “Genetic modification: A tool for enhancing beta-glucosidase production for biofuel application” (2017) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.05.126
• “Biotransformation of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural by Acinetobacter oleivorans S27 for the synthesis of furan derivatives” (2019) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2019.02.125
• “Lignocellulosic ethanol in India: Prospects, challenges and feedstock availability” (2020) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2009.11.049
• “A novel sono-assisted acid pretreatment of chili post harvest residue for bioethanol production” (2016) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2016.02.079
• “Genetic and metabolic engineering approaches for the production and delivery of L-asparaginases: An overview” doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2017.05.057
• “Genetic and metabolic engineering approaches for the production and delivery of L-asparaginases: An overview” (2018) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2018.03.127
• “Thermostable xylanases from thermophilic fungi and bacteria: Current perspective” (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.01.044
• “Pretreatment strategies for enhanced biogas production from lignocellulosic biomass” (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.122725
• “Valorization of food and kitchen waste: An integrated strategy adopted for the production of poly-3-hydroxybutyrate, bioethanol, pectinase and 2, 3-butanediol” (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2020.123515

A recurrent author is a Christian Larroche of Université Clermont Auvergne in France. The retraction notices were all very similar, here is one:

“This article has been retracted at the request of Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team and an independent ethics advisor.

A journal-wide investigation identified violations of the journal’s policies on authorship and conflict of interest related to the submission and review of this paper.

Review of the initial submission of this paper was handled by the then journal Executive Editor (Ashok Pandey) and revision required. Upon submission of the revised version, the journal Executive Editor was added as a co-author and the Executive Editor continued to handle the review process, eventually accepting the paper for publication. This compromised the editorial process, and breached the journal’s policies.

This investigation was carried out by Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team, independent of the journal editorial board. The findings and recommendations have been confirmed by an independent ethics advisor.

The authors disagree with the retraction and dispute the grounds for it.”

These retractions for Bioresource Technology papers without Pandey as coauthor, reveal something else:

• “Biotechnological applications of inulin-rich feedstocks” (2018) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2018.11.031
• “Fabrication of thermostable and reusable nanobiocatalyst for dye decolourization by immobilization of lignin peroxidase on graphene oxide functionalized MnFe₂O₄ superparamagnetic nanoparticles” (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2020.124020

“The former Editor-in-Chief (Ashok Pandey) of the journal was listed as an author on two revisions of the submission of this paper. Although the Editor-in-Chief’s name was removed from the paper after the second revision, he continued to handle the review of this paper and ultimately accepted the paper for publication. This compromised the editorial process and breached the journal’s policies.”

There will probably be more retractions. This by the Editor-in-Thief Pandey and his French buddy Larroche was outright plagiarised (but not yet retracted):

Reeta Rani Singhania, Anil Kumar Patel , Rajeev K. Sukumaran , Christian Larroche , Ashok Pandey Role and significance of beta-glucosidases in the hydrolysis of cellulose for bioethanol production Bioresource technology (2013) doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2012.09.012 

As it happens, Pandey remains Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal Systems Microbiology and Biomanufacturing. He is accompanied there by his friends Mohammed Taherzadeh (professor at University of Borås, Sweden, see PubPeer record), Christian Larroche, and Anh Tuan Hoang, read about him here:

Alexander Magazinov notified Springer about Pandey’s retractions at Elsevier, but received no reply.

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Obituaries

This witch hunt killed him

Vojtech Adam, once Czechia’s greatest scientist and nanotechnology superstar who almost became rector of the Mendel University in Brno, suddenly died. Extremely young in fact, aged only 42. You can read about the affair of Adam’s cancer theranostics research which ended with research misconduct findings, lab closures, sackings and resignations, here:

Here is the obituary, published by Vojtech’s institute CEITEC in Brno on 23 May 2024:

“Our former colleague and head of the Smart Nanodevices research group at CEITEC BUT, an exceptional person, scientist, visionary and a fair man, has passed away. Sometimes in our lives we meet people who appeal to us greatly, who impress us, and Vojta was such a person. He did his job to the fullest, with the highest degree of empathy and consideration for his surroundings. At the same time, he had clear priorities and goals, which he had been gradually fulfilling. […]

A number of his original works are among the most cited works today and arouse considerable scientific interest. In particular, publications from recent years have been published in prestigious scientific journals. This is in spite of several works that have been questioned. Vojta faced these allegations head on and took responsibility for the disputed errors in the figures without hesitation, even though he did not have to, as they did not directly stem from his own scientific errors. This, too, documents his friendly and open nature and his collegiality towards his fellow workers as well as subordinates.”

A CEITEC colleague of Adam’s sent Elisabeth Bik another obituary, with this message:

“He was not behind the misconduct, but this witch Hunt killed him.”

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Kind, smart, resourceful and passionate

Also Fazlul Sarkar died, aged 72.

You may recall this former Wayne State University professor with 40 retractions from Retraction Watch. In 2016, two years after his “resignation” from Wayne State, Sarkar famously subpoenaed PubPeer to release the identities of his anonymous critics, won in the first round but failed in the appeal. Retraction Watch also published the investigative report by Wayne State, which ordered those 40 retractions and found Sarkar’s lab guilty of “tailoring results toward specific conclusions, image manipulation, viewing figures and images as merely representative or irrelevant to experimental outcomes, and a reckless disregard of a meaningful use of control groups or control conditions“, of destroying or hiding original data, and of “copying and re-using and manipulating images […] practiced by many if not all lab members.”

Sarkar’s obituary was posted by a funeral company on 6 March 2024. Some Denis Callewaert, founder and CEO of the biotech Oxford Biomedical Research, left this message:

“I was fortunate to know and collaborate with Fazlul for almost 40 years. […] A couple of years later I managed to recruit Fazlul to be the Director of Research at my fledgling biotechnology company. Although he only worked there full time for a year or so – having the desire and talent to work at larger institutions and academia – we continued to collaborate for decades.[…] Fazlul was kind, smart, resourceful and passionate about his research in cancer biology.”

That’s not how almost everyone else remembers Sarkar…

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