Schneider Shorts 19.07.2024 – Critical voices from russia and Iran

Schneider Shorts of 19 July 2024 – a good russian in Estonia, Iranian papermill special with an autophagy god and regime’s top elites, biotech founders sacked, a German in Portugal corrects papers, and finally, when Nature and Science papers become irrelevant.

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Science Elites

Critical voices from russia

You may have heard the affair of Viacheslav Morozov, a russian professor in Estonia who was arrested a few months ago for being a spy for the russian secret service. The Kyiv Independent sums it up in a recent article from 15 July 2024:

“Viacheslav Morozov, a professor of political science at Estonia’s University of Tartu, was for years considered a quintessential “Russian liberal” in Western academia. By all accounts, he was a well-respected, diligent, and accomplished scholar.

His arrest by the Estonian Internal Security Service (ISS or Kapo) in January 2024 on suspicion of being a Russian spy, a charge that he was later convicted of and sentenced to six years in prison, came as a shock to some. […]

According to Kapo chief Margo Palloson, Morozov had been recruited by Russian intelligence officers while at Saint Petersburg State University and trained at a “military faculty,” long before he moved to Estonia. Palloson added that Morozov had likely been a Russian asset for as long as 30 years and directly supplied information to Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.

While Morozov was paid for his services, Palloson and State Prosecutor Taavi Pern said the sums were minimal and that he was primarily influenced by his Russian citizenship and a sense of patriotism.

While Morozov did not have access to state secrets, over the course of the 14 years spent in Estonia, he collected information about Estonian citizens and state security vulnerabilities. His handlers instructed him on which details to include, and he used his academic training to analyze the information.”

Morozov described russia as “postcolonial nation” and “subaltern empire“, he also pretended to be against putin, but only just enough to appear credible. At the same time, he gently insinuated in his interactions with peers and students, and in his scientific publications that putin’s regime was actually not as bad as other authoritarian states. We saw how harmless russia was on the 24 February 2022. This was how the russian agent Morozov reacted back then:

“Immediately after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Morozov denounced Russia’s actions.

“There is no justification for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. My heart is with the people of Ukraine, and it is full of pain,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

“I also call on everyone not to burn bridges unless there is absolutely no other choice. I see no way out of this terrible mess other than by winning the hearts and minds of those who are disoriented and deceived—for now,” he added.

One week later, Morozov shared a post that stressed the importance of not demonizing all Russian academics. “Your ill-considered calls to ban Russian academics might just destroy the only opportunities we have to hear critical voices from Russia,” the post read.”

In March 2022, Morozov also signed an Open Letter protesting the decision of his Estonian university to no longer admit new Russian or Belarusian students. Indeed, Kyiv Independent writes:

“During his tenure, Morozov taught hundreds, perhaps thousands of students, and supervised dozens of MA and PhD theses. Many international students were from Russia…”

Basically, he spied on these russian students, sniffing out dissidents and recruiting new spies among them. Morozov, a “хороший русский”…

Yes, Morozov is a professional spy and always said what GRU told him to say, but thing is: he did sound like a typical “russian liberal”. They may hate putin, but they also wish their empire back, and they do believe in russia’s cultural supremacy, eternal innocence and messianic role.

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None of these were free rides

Daniel J. Klionsky is biology professor at the University of Michigan in USA and the God of Autophagy, publishing as lead author “Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy” every few years, the 4th edition appeared in 2021 and had 2299 authors (not a typo!), many of them outright fraudsters, and it cited several retracted papers.

Autophagy research is about how macromolecules and cell organelles are recycled inside the cell. There was a Nobel Prize for it in 2016 given to Yoshinori Ohsumi, but not to Klionsky.

Klionsky’s institutional website mentions that he “edited five books, published more than 340 research papers“, several of them, including some very recent ones, with Guido Kroemer, who probably needs no introduction (but needs at least 80 retractions).

And Klionsky’s Wikipedia page mentions: “He also proposed that autophagy could be a link between SARS-CoV-2 and cancer“. The reference is this study:

Parham Habibzadeh , Hassan Dastsooz , Mehdi Eshraghi , Marek J Łos , Daniel J Klionsky , Saeid Ghavami Autophagy: The Potential Link between SARS-CoV-2 and Cancer Cancers (2021) doi: 10.3390/cancers13225721 

The Iran-born Saeid Ghavami, associate professor at University of Manitoba in Canada, published several papers with Klionsky. He also has two problematic papers on PubPeer, Dastghaib et al 2020 and McAlinden et al 2019. It seems Ghavami roped in Marek Los, a Polish academic, who even once donated some money to me. Los publishes surprisingly often with Iranians, for example with the papermill fraudster Ali Zarrabi (Zarrabi et al 2023), who in turn is recorded on PubPeer as an associate of the infamous Iranian papermillers like Navid Rabiee, Javad Sharifi-Rad and Sajad Najafi, read about the latter here:

Zarrabi also publishes papermill trash with some Masoud Najafi (PubPeer record) who may or may not be related to Sajad. Here for example, a fake paper by Zarrabi, M. Najafi, and the infamous Rajender Varma!

Now, this Zarrabi connection is important because there is another Iranian collaboration of Klionsky’s on autophagy and cancer, this time Zarrabi himself is on board:

Milad Ashrafizadeh, Mahshid Deldar Abad Paskeh , Sepideh Mirzaei , Mohammad Hossein Gholami , Ali Zarrabi , Farid Hashemi , Kiavash Hushmandi , Mehrdad Hashemi , Noushin Nabavi , Francesco Crea , Jun Ren , Daniel J Klionsky , Alan Prem Kumar, Yuzhuo Wang Targeting autophagy in prostate cancer: preclinical and clinical evidence for therapeutic response Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research (2022) doi: 10.1186/s13046-022-02293-6 

That paper reference 4 studies retracted for fraud, as Alexander Magazinov determined:

• 10.1186/s13046-020-01657-0 retraction
• 10.1016/j.lfs.2020.117672 retraction
• 10.3389/fonc.2020.01172 retraction
• PMID 31933941 retraction

Let’s check other coauthors of Klionsky’s on that authoritative review. Jun Ren had to leave by University of Wyoming (Laramie) accompanied by retractions, and then became a full-time papermiller, read here:

And of course the first author is Zarrabi’s associate Milad Ashrafizadeh, whom we already met above, and do admire his PubPeer record, there’s lots with Varma, Rabiee, Zarrabi, Masoud Najafi, Eder Lima, Michael Hamblin and another high-profile papermillers. Here another one by Ashrafizadeh, Jun Ren and Klionsky, on autophagy and cancer, it has both kinds of silly buzzwords, “nanostructure-mediated autophagy” and “non-coding RNA-mediated autophagy“:

Yi Qin , Milad Ashrafizadeh , Vera Mongiardini , Benedetto Grimaldi , Francesco Crea , Katja Rietdorf , Balázs Győrffy , Daniel J. Klionsky , Jun Ren , Wei Zhang , Xianbin Zhang Autophagy and cancer drug resistance in dialogue: Pre-clinical and clinical evidence Cancer Letters (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2023.216307 

As Magazinov found out, several references in this paper have been retracted, another one was struck by the Vickers Curse:

• 10.1186/s12935-020-01693-y retraction
• 10.1016/j.pupt.2023.102199 retraction
• 10.2147/ott.s241632 retraction
• 10.1016/j.phrs.2021.105575 – a review with some common authors, flagged on PubPeer for the so-called Vickers’ Curse […]
• 10.3389/fphar.2021.659297 – a TCM-themed study, flagged on PubPeer for multiple image concerns, then corrected; the corrigendum does not explain the origin of errors.
• 10.1155/2021/9986376 retraction

Next, without Klionsky, but still an interesting paper by Ashrafizadeh with Zarrabi, Sajad Najafi and a certain former Dana Farber researcher and papermiller Amir Reza Aref who (as Magazinov believes) may be the son of Mohammad Reza Aref, an Iranian academic and “reformist” politician, currently member of the Expediency Discernment Council which supervises all of the Iranian government and is appointed by the Ayatollah himself.

Here is one clue of how this excessive citing happened: Klionsky’s penultimate coauthor Alan Prem Kumar coauthored papermilled trash with that Gautam Sethi, and he also publsihed with Ashrafizadeh (see PubPeer). In fact, several coauthors of Klionsky’s paper Ashrafizadeh et al 2022 are papermillers, for example you will find Sepideh Mirzaei, Mahshid Deldar Abad Paskeh, Mohammad Hossein Gholami, Kiavash Hushmandi, Mehrdad Hashemi, Noushin Nabavi and Yuzhuo Wang together with Zarrabi, Rabiee, Ashrafizadeh and Kumar on this garbage review which references retracted and papermilled studies.

Anyway, Gautam Sethi is not just some citation-buyer, he is also a collaborator of the legendary curcumin fraudster Bharat Aggarwal, who was too much even for MD Anderson, and had to leave the Texas center and USA altogether. In this regard, see Sethi’s PubPeer record and his four retractions (two with and two without Aggarwal). Are you shocked this crook published with Klionsky (and with Ashrafizadeh)?

Milad Ashrafizadeh , Wei Zhang , Rongjun Zou , Gautam Sethi , Daniel J. Klionsky , Xianbin Zhang A bioinformatics analysis, pre-clinical and clinical conception of autophagy in pancreatic cancer: Complexity and simplicity in crosstalk Pharmacological Research (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.phrs.2023.106822

Will you be even more shocked that it is a study pushing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to “regulate autophagy in PC to suppress tumorigenesis“? For example with huaier or Alpinia katsumadai Hayata TCM extracts, or:

“Qingyihuaji formula has displayed potential in apoptosis and autophagy stimulation through suppression of the MAPK/ERK and PI3K-AKT-MTOR axis to impair tumorigenesis in vitro and in vivo [153].”

But rest assured: “Daniel J. Klionsky critically edited paper in improving its quality.” Here is another one by Klionsky, very recent, proving that all “female-oriented malignancies” are caused by “non-coding RNAs“:

Kiavash Hushmandi , Daniel J. Klionsky , Amir Reza Aref , Mojtaba Bonyadi , Russel J. Reiter , Noushin Nabavi , Shokooh Salimimoghadam , Seyed Hassan Saadat Ferroptosis contributes to the progression of female-specific neoplasms, from breast cancer to gynecological malignancies in a manner regulated by non-coding RNAs: Mechanistic implications Non-coding RNA Research (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.ncrna.2024.05.008 

Welcome again Hushmandi (PubPeer record), Aref Jr (PubPeer record), Noushin Nabavi (PubPeer record), and meet Mehrdad Hashemi’s papermilling associate Shokooh Salimimoghadam, whose garbage reviews reference masses of retracted studies.

This by Klionsky is recent also, hello Ashrafizadeh, hello Aref Jr, and hello Yuzhuo Wang!

Yang Yang , Lixia Liu , Yu Tian , Miaomiao Gu , Yanan Wang , Milad Ashrafizadeh , Amir Reza Aref , Israel Cañadas , Daniel J. Klionsky , Arul Goel , Russel J. Reiter , Yuzhuo Wang , Murtaza Tambuwala , Jianyong Zou Autophagy-driven regulation of cisplatin response in human cancers: Exploring molecular and cell death dynamics Cancer Letters (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2024.216659 

There are many more Iranian papers coauthored by Klionsky in the last few years.

Hamed Hosseinalizadeh , Fatemeh Rabiee , Negar Eghbalifard , Hamid Rajabi , Daniel J. Klionsky , Aryan Rezaee Regulating the regulatory T cells as cell therapies in autoimmunity and cancer Frontiers in Medicine (2023) doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1244298 

The last author Aryan Rezaee, published in the same year with the South-African papermiller Michael Hamblin, also in Frontiers, a paper which cited TWENTY-NINE retracted references (Rezaee et al 2023). Read here about Hamblin:

Or this, appeared just recently in the journal Autophagy (founded by its Editor-in-Chief Klionsky), because where else can you publish this nonsense:

Hayder M. Al-Kuraishy , Ghassan M. Sulaiman , Majid S. Jabir , Hamdoon A. Mohammed , Ali I. Al-Gareeb , Salim Albukhaty , Daniel J. Klionsky , Mosleh M. Abomughaid Defective autophagy and autophagy activators in myasthenia gravis: a rare entity and unusual scenario Autophagy (2024) doi: 10.1080/15548627.2024.2315893 

Hayder M. Al-Kuraishy has a solid PubPeer record of papermilling, in particular with Abhijit Dey‘s associate and polymath papermiller Athanasios Alexiou (read here). It is often about insane cures for COVID-19, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Majid Jabir (who roped in Ghassan Sulaiman) also has a record of papermill fraud on PubPeer: for example Ghotekar et al 2024 with a certain Hitler Louis (yes, that’s the actual first name of this Nigerian papermiller, read about him in November 2023 Shorts) as well as with the Iranian papermill giant Abbas Rahdar, read about him here:

A representative study by Klionsky’s Iranian collaborators Sulaiman and Jabir:

Hasan H. Bahjat , Raid A. Ismail , Ghassan M. Sulaiman , Majid S. Jabir Magnetic Field-Assisted Laser Ablation of Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles in Water for Anti-Bacterial Applications Journal of inorganic and organometallic polymers and materials (2021) doi: 10.1007/s10904-021-01973-8 

To sum up: many if not all of Klionsky’s coauthors on certain Iranian studies are known papermillers, the manuscripts were most likely created and sold by Iranian papermills. Which are very likely run by Iranian government. Meaning, the Iranian terror regime has a highly eminent US professor by the balls, all because Klionsky felt he hasn’t published enough. Congratulations all around.

 And then I wrote to Klionsky. He replied right away:

“I think I have been too ignorant about these collaborations, in part because it never occurs to me that anyone would carry out fraud or enlist fraudulent co-authors. […]
Despite my good intentions it appears that I have ended up inadvertently working with people I should probably avoid.“

Klionsky also explained his good intentions, in numbered points:

1. “to keep the autophagy field clean” by helping people who contact him with their papers
2. “to encourage scientists in […] Iran, Iraq, Egypt, etc.“
3. to “read through the cited references […] and to make sure it is correct.” (hence 64 citations to Sethi, I presume?)
4. “Many of these co-authors are in countries that are considered enemies of the US. I do not think it is the scientists who are the problem but rather the politicians. By working with these scientists I was hoping to do my small part in easing tensions between our countries.“

Oh dear, he is so wrong, especially on point 4.

When I asked who approached him offering free rides of their papermilled products, Klionsky replied:

“I need to clarify that none of these were free rides. That is, I wrote part of each paper, often prepared figures and read through and corrected the entire manuscripts. I would have to check my emails but I know that Milad Ashrafrizadeh contacted me as well as Hamed Hosseinalizadeh, Jun Ren, Kiavash Hushmandi, Ghassan Sulaiman and Majid Sakhi Jabir.”

Klionsky also told me that in the last two years, his very close family member has been receiving medical treatment, adding: “I think this has affected my judgment.”

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Father of multidisciplinary approach

A huge loss for Canadian science – an Iranian researcher had to leave the country! The dissident website National Council of Resistance of Iran brought this news on

“In a significant move, the Canadian government has ordered the expulsion of Baqer Ardeshir Larijani, a former high-ranking official in Iran’s Ministry of Health and brother to two influential figures in the Iranian regime, Sadeq and Ali Larijani. Baqer Larijani, who gained permanent residency in Canada in September 2017 under the skilled worker category, has been living in the country with his wife and son.

A recently released document from Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board confirms the decision to revoke Larijani’s permanent residency and expel him. The document reveals that since acquiring permanent residency, Larijani has spent most of his time in Iran, residing in Canada for only 258 days over five years. This falls short of the mandatory 730 days required for maintaining permanent residency.

Larijani attempted to appeal the decision, arguing that his prolonged stays in Iran were due to caring for his elderly mother and his obligations with Tehran University. However, the appeal was rejected.”

According to Wikipedia, Baqher Larijani “was the Chancellor of Tehran University of Medical Sciences from 2005 until 2013 when he resigned“, he remains professor there. On his ORCID profile, Larijani hails his “unparalleled achievements in an international scale” and assures us that:

“he is rightfully hailed as the father of multidisciplinary approach to endocrinology in Iran. However, during the past year, he has focused his research principally on calculation of national burden of Covid-19 and other related projects […] he is considered as one of the most highly cited authors in the field of endocrinology (with an h-index of 91). In an international level, Dr. Larijani serves as a commissioner of the Lancet Commission on Obesity and holds several advisory positions at the WHO, IOF, IDF, and other international institutions.”

And indeed, a man of Larijani’s pedigree has the best access to Iranian papermills:

Moloud Payab , Shirin Hasani-Ranjbar , Maryam Baeeri , Mahban Rahimifard , Babak Arjmand , Hamed Haghi-Aminjan , Mohammad Abdollahi , Bagher Larijani Development of a Novel Anti-Obesity Compound with Inhibiting Properties on the Lipid Accumulation in 3T3-L1 Adipocytes Iranian biomedical journal (2020) doi: 10.29252/ibj.24.3.155 

Persian Wikipedia informs us that “Larijani’s articles have been cited more than 16,000 times (h-index: 103)” and that he is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, which is published by his university. There is more on PubPeer.

Somehow Larijani ended up papermilling together with the notorious Ahmed Shalan:

Reza Eivazzadeh-Keihan , Ehsan Bahojb Noruzi , Sarah Fattahi Mehrban , Hooman Aghamirza Moghim Aliabadi , Meghdad Karimi , Adibeh Mohammadi , Ali Maleki, Mohammad Mahdavi , Bagher Larijani, Ahmed Esmail Shalan Review: the latest advances in biomedical applications of chitosan hydrogel as a powerful natural structure with eye-catching biological properties Journal of Materials Science (2022) doi: 10.1007/s10853-021-06757-6 

That paper was caught on nonsense references, including the moth pheromones of The Vickers Curse:

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Reformed doctor

In other Iranian news. We in the West are always very excited and hopeful when a “reformer” is elected as president in a totalitarian state. We used to be in love with the russian alcoholic and genocidal maniac dmitry medvedev when he kept the presidential seat warm for putin from 2008 to 2012, pretending to be a liberal. We did the same for whoever was appointed as “reformer” president of the Islamist Terror-State of Iran, becasue at least the new dude didn’t openly announce to kill everyone. And since the previous Iranian mass-murderer president died in a helicopter crash, a “reformer” was “elected”: Masoud Pezeshkian, and we all go ahhh and ohhh.

As if Iran will stop helping russia kill Ukrainian children, or stop torturing and killing own citizens (especially women), or financing and arming Hamas and Hizbollah in their war to kill all Jews. In reality, expect Pezeshkian to even increase all that. A “reformer” is always “elected” to fool the West, and it always works.

But isn’t it reassuring that Pezeshkian is a medical doctor? Doctors never do any harm, certainly not when in political office, right? Think of such gentle leaders like Bashar al-Assad, Radovan Karadžić, ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier or Ayman al-Zawahiri…

Anyway, Pezeshkian is also a scientist!

Masood Pezeshkian , Mohammad-Reza Mahtabipour Epicardial and subcutaneous adipose tissue Fatty acids profiles in diabetic and non-diabetic patients candidate for coronary artery bypass graft Bioimpacts (2013) doi: 10.5681/bi.2013.004

Another one by Mr President:

Mirhamid Paytakhti Oskouei , Masoud Pezeshkian , Naser Safaie , Masoud Darabi , Amir Fattahi , Hossain Bijanpour , Maghsod Shaaker , Ahmad Reza Jodati , Mohammad Nouri Fatty acids composition of aorta and saphenous vein tissues in patients with coronary artery diseases Journal of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Research (2017)   doi: 10.15171/jcvtr.2017.13

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Defamatory and false

An old Nature paper by the German neuroscience bigwig Arthur Konnerth was flagged on PubPeer. Seemingly a minor issue, but maybe it is not. Konnerth is Alzheimer’s researcher, institute director and full professor (or as his CV insists, “Ordinarius“) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He is also Member of the national academy of sciences Leopoldina, and carrier of numerous medals and awards, including the Brain Prize (2015), Maier-Leibnitz Medal of the TUM (2006), Max Planck Research Prize (2001) and Leibniz Prize of the DFG (2001).

Here the issue:

Robert Blum, Karl W. Kafitz, Arthur Konnerth Neurotrophin-evoked depolarization requires the sodium channel NaV1.9 Nature (2002) doi: 10.1038/nature01085 

The star-labelled plot was seemingly re-used from a slightly older Nature paper by Konnerth, Kafitz et al 1999. A reader pointed me to this PubPeer post, I contacted Konnerth, and the award-winning TUM Ordinarius replied on 6 July 2024:

“Dear Mr. Schneider,
Thank you for the hint. I have informed my former colleagues in these studies. We will clarify the matter and comment on it in PubPeer.“

The reader had additional comments, specifically on that duplicated plot:

“The whole story of BDNF as a fast neurotransmitter hinged on this IV curve, demonstrating that the reversal potential of the current is at 60mV(sodium), which is the basis for their at the time sensational claim that BDNF activates a fast Sodium channel leading to 3 nature and one science papers.”

The reader also claimed that “nobody in the field could reproduce this“, that “The Konnerthlab at one point in 2004/2005 discontinued all work on BDNF”, and that these BDNF papers nevertheless brought Konnert “gain in prestige, influence etc” allegedly including that 2015 Brain Prize. I asked Konnerth to comment on that, too. His reply, in that one and only email he ever sent to me, was brief:

“I would also like to inform you that statements made by your reader about me are defamatory and false. The BDNF studies were not relevant to the prizes mentioned“

Indeed, the 2015 Brain Prize of €1 million was given to Konnerth for “the invention, refinement and use of two-photon microscopy” in neuroscience. But three Nature and one Science paper on BDNF being totally not relevant for the awards and medals? TUM seems to disagree, it lists 7 “Selected Publications” by Konnerth, of these 4 have “BDNF” or “neurotrophin” in the title already.

Konnerth remained silent when I asked him to substantiate his “defamatory and false” description of the allegations. He never provided any publications from his own lab or from other labs to refute the criticism that his discovery that “BDNF activates a fast Sodium channel” was allegedly irreproducible. He even never protested at my supposition that no such reproducibility studies were ever published.

Maybe the reason why negative results are never published is not the lack of interest or of suitable journals, but the lack of protection from powerful peers whose research was found irreproducible?

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Industry Giants

Single-minded Commitment to Scientific Rigor and Honest Transparency

The travesty of Cassava Sciences is reaching its rather predictable end. Sure one can get rich quickly with biotech fraud, but successful biotech fraudsters know when to sell their startup and run off with the money. The Cassava founders Remi Barbier and his wife Lindsay Burns were even too stupid for that.

This multimillion dollar heavy US biotech managed to convinced a devout group of investors that they have a miracle drug for Alzheimer’s, called simufilam and made from seaweed. The trick was simple: Cassava’s paid advisor and consultant, the CUNY professor Hoau-Yan Wang, fabricated preclinical data for frauduletn research papers, while Cassava worked with some beyond dodgy clinical trial providers to run fraudulent clinical trials with simufilam. Cassava Sciences was valued at over $2 billion, and then it all came down.

As I reported in July 2024 Shorts, in late June 2024, a federal grand jury indicted Hoau-Yan Wang “for defrauding the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) of approximately $16 million in federal grant funds.” Wang is charged with having “engaged in a scheme to fabricate and falsify scientific data in grant applications made to the NIH” together with Cassava, in order to market simufilam.

“Wang is charged with one count of major fraud against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of false statements. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for the count of major fraud, 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, and five years in prison for the count of false statements.”

US Dept of Justice

According to Reuters Cassava announced to collaborate with the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the investigations into two unnamed employees.

The two employers were predictably the company’s founders Barbier and Burns, as it became clear now. On 17 July 2024, the company announced in a press release:

“AUSTIN, Texas, July 17, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cassava Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: SAVA) today announced that the Board of Directors has appointed Richard (Rick) Barry as Executive Chairman of the Board and as the Company’s principal executive officer, effective immediately. The Company is undertaking a search for a new permanent CEO.
Mr. Barry succeeds Remi Barbier, the Company’s Chairman, President and CEO, who resigned from the Company and the Board. Mr. Barbier will remain employed by the Company until September 13, 2024 in a non-executive capacity, without duties or responsibilities.
Lindsay Burns, Ph.D., SVP, Neuroscience, at Cassava is also leaving the employ of the Company. Cassava and Dr. Burns have agreed that she step down from her role with the Company, effective immediately. “

Good luck finding a new CEO, maybe ask Ajan Reginald? The press release also had these announcements:

“Single-minded Commitment to Scientific Rigor and Honest Transparency: Our sole mission at this time is to determine whether simufilam is an effective, revolutionary treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.  The Company plans to achieve that mission through a single-minded commitment to scientific rigor and honest transparency with patients, government agencies and investors. All study results will be posted timely and accurately to clinicaltrials.gov.

Rigorous Clinical Trials:  The ongoing Phase 3 trials are being run according to FDA and industry standards that ensure the integrity of all reported results.”

It is not clear with which money they plan to do this. The Cassava stock is basically worthless. No sane person will invest, and I wouldn’t bet the remaining insane investors will invest even more. And Barbier and Burns probably run off with whatever money was still left.

The end, hopefully?

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Scholarly Publishing

A cropping error

I just had great time in Portugal meeting various sleuths, including those who flagged the following Portuguese paper, which Springer Nature announced to be correcting.

Its lead author is a certain German at the University of Lisbon, Peter Jordan, professor of genetics and former president of the Scientific Council of the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge. Jordan also has a dozen of papers on PubPeer, read here:

Cláudia Almeida Loureiro , Francisco R. Pinto , Patrícia Barros , Paulo Matos , Peter Jordan A SYK/SHC1 pathway regulates the amount of CFTR in the plasma membrane Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences (2020) doi: 10.1007/s00018-020-03448-4 

Actinopolyspora biskrensis aka Cheshire notified the publisher in June 2023. Another pseudonymous sleuth, Claire Francis, found more and contacted the journal again:

On 15 July 2024, Jack Bromley, Senior Publisher at Springer Nature, informed the sleuth that the case has been resolved already:

“A correction for this article is currently underway following a thorough investigation into the concerns you raise, which were also separately brought to our attention earlier this year.
I will share an update with you once the correction has been published.”

That is only fair! Jordan’s other contribution to cancer research was just as fake, and it was alsobecause of “a cropping error” but luckily “these errors […] do not change the conclusions drawn from the data“.

Another falsified gel, this time flagged by Cheshire:

Vânia Gonçalves , Andreia F A Henriques , Andreia Henriques , Joana F S Pereira , Joana Pereira , Ana Neves Costa , Mary Pat Moyer , Luís Ferreira Moita , Margarida Gama-Carvalho , Paulo Matos , Peter Jordan Phosphorylation of SRSF1 by SRPK1 regulates alternative splicing of tumor-related Rac1b in colorectal cells RNA (2014) doi: 10.1261/rna.041376.113

The correction from 1 April 2024 stated:

“In the above-mentioned article, the authors were made aware of western blot panel duplication issues in Figures 3A and 5A.

The original western blot images were shared with the editors and revealed issues associated with the process of assembling the multilayer figures: a cropping error with one of the AKT panels in Figure 3A, and two of the SRPK1 and αTub panels from Figure 3A that were carried over by mistake into Figure 5A. Based on the original data, the corrected versions of Figures 3 and 5 have been published online.

The authors apologize for these errors but note that they do not change the conclusions drawn from the data.”

Cheshire then found this additional forgery, but too late, the conclusions were already unaffected:

This was fixed soon after my 2022 article was published:

Andreia F.A. Henriques , Patrícia Barros , Mary Pat Moyer, Paulo Matos , Peter Jordan Expression of tumor-related Rac1b antagonizes B-Raf-induced senescence in colorectal cells Cancer Letters (2015) doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2015.08.027 

Corrected on 1 December 2022:

“The authors regret that Fig. 2C of our published manuscript contained a representative image already shown in Fig. 1, which was inadvertently duplicated in the process of preparing the revised manuscript version. The correct Fig. 2C is provided below. This error does not affect the data quantification shown in Fig. 2C, or any of the scientific conclusions of the article.

The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

I can’t help thinking this ridiculous correction circus is only possible because Jordan is a German. An deutschem Wesen mag die Wissenschaft genesen.

Anyway, the sleuth Claire Frances, now armed with ImageTwin, found more issues in Jordan’s papers. Here is the new find:

Joana F. S. Pereira , Cláudia Bessa , Paulo Matos , Peter Jordan Pro-Inflammatory Cytokines Trigger the Overexpression of Tumour-Related Splice Variant RAC1B in Polarized Colorectal Cells Cancers (2022) doi: 10.3390/cancers14061393 

To be corrected?

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Erroneously duplicated and stretched

Look what PLOS just corrected. The paper was reported by Elisabeth Bik to the publisher in October 2015 already, i.e. almost 9 years ago:

Angela Mika, Priscilla Goh , Deborah C. Holt, Dave J. Kemp , Katja Fischer Scabies mite peritrophins are potential targets of human host innate immunity PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2011) doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0001331 

Fig 2A is moderately fudged:

Fig 2B is totally fraudulent.

On 11 July 2024, the PLOS journal issued this Correction (highlight mine):

“In Fig 2, parts A and B present lanes that originated on different gels and blots. The Coomassie stained SDS-PAGE gel and the accompanying western blot were both spliced to remove a lane. During figure re-arrangement lane 1 of the western blot in Fig 2B was erroneously duplicated and stretched to represent lanes 4–6, which are blank in the original underlying blot.

With this correction we provide an updated version of Fig 2 with lanes from different blots clearly indicated and notation of where lanes were re-arranged. The underlying uncropped gels and blots supporting this correction are provided in S1 File.

The original underlying data to support all results in the article and Supporting Information files are available from the corresponding author.

The authors apologize for the error in the published article.”

Watching this correction gives you scabies. Another one by same authors, in another PLOS journal, also flagged by Elisabeth Bik years ago:

Angela Mika , Simone L. Reynolds , Frida C. Mohlin , Charlene Willis , Pearl M. Swe , Darren A. Pickering , Vanja Halilovic , Lakshmi C. Wijeyewickrema , Robert N. Pike , Anna M. Blom , David J. Kemp , Katja Fischer Novel Scabies Mite Serpins Inhibit the Three Pathways of the Human Complement System PLoS ONE (2012) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040489 

Happened erroneously also.

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